Best of the Program | Guest: Gov. Pete Ricketts | 4/4/22

At blinds.com, it's not just about window treatments, it's about you, your style, your space, your way.

Whether you DIY or want the pros to handle it all, you'll have the confidence of knowing it's done right.

From free expert design help to our 100% satisfaction guarantee, everything we do is made to fit your life and your windows.

Because at blinds.com, the only thing we treat better than windows is you.

Visit blinds.com now for up to 50% off with minimum purchase plus a professional measure at no cost.

Rules and restrictions apply.

Today's broadcast is fantastic.

That's why it's graded F.

Is that it?

I'm not sure.

Anyway, great show today.

We, yes,

I went to a Billie Eilish concert.

Oh my gosh.

You have to hear the story.

I want footage.

It's available, but

you don't want to see me now.

No.

No, that's a good point.

That's a good point.

Also, we talk about Ron DeSantis and the kick-ass job he's doing in Florida.

Pardon my French.

It's technically not French, but pardon it anyway.

And what he should do with Disney.

Remember, I'm a big Disney fan.

I hate them.

And we talk about the history of the power that Disney has.

Did you know they don't have to call the Environmental Protection Agency?

They don't have any EPA rules.

They don't have to worry about, you know, government regulations on buildings.

And, excuse me, what?

No building inspectors?

No, they have their own mouse building inspectors.

Fascinating.

We also talked to a governor, a Republican governor, pushing back against other Republicans who are trying

to get a bunch of money from a COVID bill.

That doesn't.

He ended, this is Governor Ricketts in Nebraska.

He ended the emergency, and the Republicans are overriding his veto of taking COVID money, which they don't need.

What's wrong with you, Republicans in Nebraska?

Call your senator if you're in Nebraska, your state senator.

All this and more on today's podcast.

You're listening to the best of the Blenbeck program.

My disinterest in awards shows continues unabated.

However, there are a couple of things that are kind of interesting about the Grammys that happened last night.

Zelensky appeared, and I think that is really interesting.

There was a big push for him to be on the Oscars, and he didn't respond or anything else.

And I think he knows Americans hate the Oscar and he didn't want to be a part of that Hollywood crowd.

I'll bet you.

Maybe.

I I mean, I don't know how much we love our musicians more.

No, but I think it's more popular.

It doesn't have the backlash that the Oscars has.

It's probably true.

And it certainly would have been overshadowed by

the whole Will Smith situation, the Oscars, anyway.

So that would be a good thing.

I think even what happened, Louis C.K.

got a Grammy.

I think this is way more fascinating than anything that's happened in any of these award shows.

I think it's bigger than, again,

he got

off the front page, Zelensky, because Louis C.K., A, he did an album

and he was nominated for a Grammy.

I didn't know that he was, it was cool to be Louis C.K.

again.

No, I don't think it is.

That's what I think is the most fascinating part about this,

is he released an album on his own website.

None of the streamings, or like nowhere else you could find it.

You could only find it on his website.

Wow.

And

yeah, just on his own, unannounced, just released it.

So it comes out, and there's no buzz about it.

Because there's no sales.

There'd be sales for him, but nothing.

He's not climbing a charge or anything.

There's no way to verify its existence or power.

Yeah.

And Louis C.K.

is a guy who was caught up in the Me Too

thing that happened, but has not, at least in my mind, had the moment where people step back and say, eh, maybe we reacted poorly to that.

Maybe, maybe we overreacted.

Like Aziz Ansari is another comedian.

He got caught up in the Me Too thing, was sort of canceled for a time.

And then people sort of stepped back and said, wait a minute, like we, there's, we don't have anything on this guy.

This is crazy.

He shouldn't be canceled.

And then he was back on Netflix again, right?

Like there was that process where everyone said, okay, that one was, we went too far on that one a little bit.

That did not happen with Louis C.K.

Now, Louis C.K.

I think was

an example of, I don't think he acted like a good guy.

I think he's very creepy, a little weird.

Yeah.

But never was, was even accused of

doing something that he did not have consent to do.

On.

It was just weird.

It was like, he was weird.

He was doing stuff to himself in other people's presence after he asked for consent.

And the claim was that these women felt as if they couldn't say no.

So they said yes and state.

So

I don't know any female comedian that would have a problem going, You're gonna what?

No.

If you.

Yeah.

Right.

So, I mean, I've always thought the Louis C.K.

thing, you know, was a little strange the way it was handled, but that's not like the mainstream view.

Not used the way it was handled.

Yeah, thank you.

And so he releases this album and somehow not only gets nominated for a Grammy, but wins.

Yeah.

Wins best comedy album.

That shows white guys just don't pay for their crimes.

And of course, that's what everyone's reaction is, which is bizarre because Aziz Ansari, who is not white, got right back on Netflix a few months later

after his allegations.

As far as I know, Bill Cosby did a lot more than any of these people, and he's out of of prison.

So I don't tell you what's crazy is

I think this is happening just because so many people are just done with it.

They won't say it out loud, but I think they're just done with it.

Maybe you're right, but these are like Grammy voters.

This isn't right.

I think they're done with it.

They won't say out loud.

It's a secret palette.

You think I don't think he would have won Grammy if everybody had to raise their hand.

I think you're totally right on that.

I totally right.

And if you have not heard, I mean, look, Luis C.K.

was always very talented.

It's a really funny album.

I mean, it's really, really a good special.

And it deserves to win.

I mean, it was really good, but

I'm shocked.

Did the guy who did, what was it, Inside?

What was his name?

Oh, yes.

He didn't win?

I don't know.

That was even really.

Was he nominated for that?

That was a Bo Burnham, right?

Yeah, yeah.

That was brilliant.

I remember there was some weirdness about where he was nominated.

Like, he wasn't nominated in Best Comedy Album for some reason, like our best comedy musical album.

I don't know.

There was something like that.

Because

they talked about it because of, it's a lot of songs in that one, in case you haven't seen it.

Did Billie Eilish win anything?

I don't know.

I mean, she won your heart, I think.

Well, no, I'm a fan of Billie Eilish and her brother.

I think they're amazing.

He produces all the music, right?

He's a big producer, and he's also a songwriter and singer himself.

And I like him better than her.

But,

man, I went, I flew to Phoenix this

weekend with my daughter, my older, my second oldest daughter, Hannah, and she's a big fan.

I'm a big fan.

And so we we went.

This is a bizarre scene.

Glad you back.

You went to Billie Eilish in

Vegas?

No, in Phoenix.

Oh, in Phoenix.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I just want to imagine that crowd.

Was there anyone taking video of you at the

I want some 20-year-old to recognize you and turn around and take video of this and post it on the internet.

It would have been fantastic.

No, I mean,

Hannah took video.

I mean, we could post that.

But

it was interesting to watch.

First of all, all these people, and I'm kind of sensing this from you, you hate Billie Eilish?

No, I don't hate her.

Oh, okay.

No.

All right.

I just like others better.

Yeah.

Aw.

Yeah.

No.

And you know what?

The reason why I started listening to it is because my son got in the car and

he said,

have you heard this song, Dad?

This is what all the really dark goth girls are listening to at school.

And I'm like, you got a lot of those?

And so I listened to it and I'm like, this is about suicide.

This is really, this is not good.

And then, so I started really listening and I listened to her lyrics and then I started doing my homework on it.

She's actually, and she proved me to be absolutely right.

It's one of the best concerts I've ever been to.

It's up with Michael Bouble.

She has the same effect on her audience that Michael Bouble has.

I've never been to any show, any show, where the spotlight 40 to 60% of the time is not on the artist.

She's singing, but even the Jumbotrons, they were grainy because it was so dark on her.

She does not make it about her,

which is weird to see.

The lights are up on the audience a good portion of the time, and I've never been to a concert where every song everyone is standing the entire time unless she says sit down

everyone's standing and they're all singing at the top of their lungs I mean you heard the audience almost at parody with her it was bizarre I wouldn't like I go to an a concert to hear the artist me too not the audience me too and

Hannah said the same thing beforehand I said I'm going to be really pissed if I'm just hearing all these people who can't sing.

But it became a really cool experience, very, very different.

And her message,

and I knew this, I became a fan of hers when I started reading about her and her brother and how they work.

She is, she's dark.

He's light.

Wasn't there serious depression with her?

Serious depression.

And she

writes about the things that she experiences,

A, to get it out of her system and to conquer it.

It's the way she kind of conquers things.

But also she writes and sings about them because she knows other girls are going through the same thing.

And so like the first song was, I don't know, it might have been a,

I want to off myself or whatever.

It was a really dark song with dark imagery.

And right out of all of this, she says,

you know, these nightmares are not true.

These are, we all have them we all have these kinds of thoughts and fears and we have to listen to each other and be there for one another and that's what tonight's all about this concert all of you i always want i don't care who you're sitting next to but we're here for each other and it was a really cool experience and very different than anything people my age are used to And I thought it was great.

I thought it was really good.

Did you throw your underwear up on stage?

I did.

Yeah.

I did.

Cover the whole stage.

Draped over the entire drum set,

including the drummer.

It was weird.

Wow.

I'm at the age where I have a nine and a 10-year-old, and I listen to a decent amount of kids' bop.

Yeah.

Now, kids bop, if you don't know, is

a long series of albums, you know, 30 albums or something, where they do the biggest hits of the year, and it's usually kids singing them.

Now it is all kids singing them.

But they're safe.

They're safe.

So they take songs that have very bad lyrics and they change them.

Like I was listening to one the other day and it's a song.

I think it's a country song.

It's the Applebee song.

The country Applebee song.

You know what I'm talking about?

Bougie like Applebee's.

Okay.

Huge, huge, huge, huge song.

I can't believe I'm the only person in the world that's ever heard this in this room.

It's amazing.

But anyway, they talk about natties, meaning like, you know, beer, natty ice, you know, right?

And they change it to soda.

So in the middle of zone, it's like bougie likes soda, which again, I don't know why.

Soda.

But I'm, you know, we're listening to this kids, Bob.

And all of a sudden, they get to I Had a Dream by Billie Eilish, which is literally a song about killing yourself, right?

Like, she's the whole song.

The entire all the lyrics have to be, it could include like the bridge.

Right.

Like, it's about like when she jumps off a bridge.

If I remember right, you tell me if I'm wrong, Glenn.

She jumps off.

She jumps off a bridge.

She jumps off a bridge and she has a dream about it and she thought it was a nightmare because she was killing herself.

And then she realized, that's actually what I wanted in the end anyway, is to be dead.

Basically what happens.

And it turns around.

It only turns around in the lyrics.

So

do you know the story behind this song?

It's amazing.

Yes, I heard the whole, there's a whole podcast out about this,

which is really interesting.

And I happened to listen to it at one point.

And the story is fascinating.

And it winds up, obviously, in a happy place.

She didn't land, obviously, because she's still alive and doing concerts for Glenn Beck and his underwear.

So she didn't die.

That's the good news, I guess.

But I don't know if you need to have a kid's mind version about the sky.

What do the lyrics say?

What do you mean, what are the lyrics?

On the kids' side.

I mean, when I was listening to it, I didn't see much change at all.

You can't think.

No, I don't think you need that.

I think if you listen, if you've never heard this song, which apparently in this room, no one's heard any songs, but

if you've never heard this song, it's not quite obvious.

It's not like, hey, I went to the bridge and killed myself.

It's a little more artistic, you know.

Abarely.

A little bit.

Like, you wouldn't necessarily hear, I had a dream, I thought it was a nightmare, but it turned out to be good.

It sounds like it could be anything.

There are parts of it, though, that I think are...

specific to suicide, but it might go over kids' heads.

I don't think most kids would necessarily notice it at nine or 10 years old, but like, do you need a kids' bop version of a suicide song?

It seemed like it.

It seemed like that one you just skip and do whatever other tunes.

I don't know.

Suicide

has become a thing.

I mean, it has.

It is really

the last couple of years.

Yeah, the suicide rate in this country.

You know, I went on Instagram.

I posted something that just Hannah and I screwed around and said that I was in Phoenix for the Billie Eilish concert.

Oh my gosh.

My Instagram posts were all like, she's from from the devil.

She's.

Really?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Really serious

backlash on it.

And I thought, you know,

you should read about her.

Not just take the songs

for what they're saying, but what the message is behind the songs.

What I like about her, I like her brother better.

I mean, you know, I don't mean it that way, but I mean,

he's really

positive.

He's got a new album out called Optimist.

It's one of the better albums I've heard in a long, long time.

He's great.

And his lyrics are all very philosophical and positive.

And that's where you get the balance.

She had a dream.

I thought it was a nightmare.

He's the one that said, no, no, no, you're safe.

You're safe.

He pulled her out of this.

Yeah, he pulled her out.

And that song is the split between the two and why she's so intent on making people know

this isn't normal to feel this way.

Do you think you have to have people that tell you you're okay?

Do you think when she looked out in the audience and saw you, she reconsidered?

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program, and we really want to thank you for listening.

I want to introduce you to a governor that you should know.

He's from Nebraska.

His name is Pete Ricketts, and he's joining us now because he is actually trying to veto federal funding

that he says will make people more reliant on the government.

I tend to agree with him on this, but he's a Republican who's fighting the Republicans who are going to override his veto.

When you hear this story, I hope if you're in Nebraska, you will call

your legislator and say, enough is enough.

Welcome, Governor.

How are you, sir?

I'm doing great, Glenn.

Thanks very much for having me on.

You bet.

So tell me the situation.

This is about the money that was going to help people pay rent because of COVID, right?

Right, exactly.

So this is the Emergency Rental Assistance Program.

It was about a $25 billion program.

And, you know, when we have emergencies, we recognize we need extra assistance.

You know, first of all, Nebraskans always take care of their neighbors.

We saw that in the floods we had in 2019 and through this pandemic.

And so we have an emergency, we ask for extra assistance.

But we also at some point have to recognize that the emergency is over and we don't need the money for the assistance anymore.

And that's what's happening right now.

I ended the emergency for the pandemic last June here in Nebraska.

Good for you.

And so we just don't have a justification for taking this money.

It's supposed to be tied to paying for

people who are impacted by COVID.

And we do this for floods, we do it for tornadoes, we ask for emergency assistance, but we don't ask for the money if we don't have an emergency.

And right now, we don't have an emergency.

We've got the lowest unemployment rate in the United States and lowest in state history.

We've got more people employed today, 16,000 more people employed today than we did pre-pandemic.

More people employed in manufacturing since 2008.

And frankly, none of the nonprofits who are asking for this money have ever been able to show me that somehow things today are are different from 2019.

So we just don't have a justification for taking this money.

And now, of course, the second round of this emergency rental assistance program is not even tied to COVID.

You can just pay people's rent.

Well, that's big government socialism, right?

We don't want to just pay people's rent.

That's not who we are in this country, and certainly not in Nebraska.

And yet I've got a legislature who is trying to, who has passed a bill, which I vetoed, that is trying to force me to take this additional federal money.

And the veto override will be tomorrow, Tuesday, April 5th.

And so I'm encouraging people to reach out to their state center and tell them don't take this big government socialism program.

So what is the Republican excuse for this?

Because you have, if I'm not mistaken, you have about 40%

of all the money from the first round still sitting there waiting to be used.

So if people need to have a bailout on their rent because of COVID, I find it kind of hard to believe at this point.

But if you did, all right, you got 40% of the money you got last time.

So what is their excuse as Republicans?

Yeah, no, you're exactly right.

We've used, actually, we've only used about 40% of the money, so we still have plenty of money left through the end of the year.

You know, you can apply in September, and it'll take you through December.

And I don't think anybody's thinking this emergency is going to last longer than that.

In fact, our hospitalizations are the lowest we've had since maybe July of last year.

And so their excuse when they say this is like, well, it's free federal money.

And of course, it's not free federal money, right?

It's not free.

We pay that.

It's our taxpayer dollars, right?

Yeah.

And they're like, well, what if some other state gets it?

I'm like, well, first of all, when we have emergencies like floods or tornadoes, we ask for money if we need it.

But if we don't have an emergency, we don't ask for the money.

If another state has a tornado, they ask for the money.

So this is not, we're not in an emergency.

We shouldn't be asking for this money.

It's just wrong.

And then, of course, they're like, well, if we don't take the money, somebody else will get it.

That just means that somebody else is going to be paying people to stay home.

That's bad for them, right?

If you're paying people's rent and all the other benefits we've doled out here in the state of Nebraska now, we've either distributed or in the process of distributing over $21 billion,

you're paying people to stay home.

And I've had landlords contact me to tell me that they see the people that are in these programs, and they're, by and large, a lot of people who could be working.

And that's the problem is if we're paying people to stay home, they will.

And that's what we need to get people back to work.

These programs are corrosive.

They teach people to be reliant on government, especially when they're not even related to being COVID-related anymore.

Yeah, I understood, you know, when the government was putting people out of business and then telling people

you don't have to pay rent, okay, what about the landlords?

And, you know, what about I didn't have a job because I didn't have a business because you told me to close down.

At that point, I understood it.

Especially, however,

in your case, where there are more people employed than there were prior to the pandemic, You seem to be on the right track.

One of the few places that are really on the right track.

I know wanted, help wanted signs are everywhere here in Texas.

And it's not because we're growing jobs faster than we're importing people.

It's that there are too many people that just have decided not to go back to work or that those jobs are beneath them.

This is very un-American.

Have you asked those Republicans where their principles are?

Well, that's part of the problem, isn't it?

When I talk to some of these Republicans about this, they're like, well, I'll take that into consideration.

Take it into consideration.

Yeah, I know, I know.

It's like, hey, guys, this is about principles.

Like, we as Republicans stand for, of course, we help people when they're in need.

But if we're not in need, we don't just dole out government money to people.

That's not who we are.

But unfortunately, many times you get so many folks who get elected that don't have fundamental principles, and so they kind of blow in the wind, whichever the

trend is,

whatever the du jour of the day, you know, the policy that their buddies all are all trying to get them to do.

You know, you got all these lobbyists in our capital building telling them they got to take the money, and that's part of the problem.

So may I ask you, I just looked up your unemployment rate.

It is 2.1.

And I don't want to just go off the unemployment rate, but

there are more people in Nebraska employed than pre-pandemic because

they've recalculated the way that we look at our unemployment now.

They just stopped counting those people who could be working but aren't.

So what are you doing to get it to 2.1?

Well, first of all, we never shut down.

We never had a statewide mask mandate.

We never did vaccine mandates.

We slowed the spread of the virus while letting people live a more normal life so that we were able to keep our mortality rates down, keep kids in schools, keep people in their jobs.

And that momentum helped to carry us through this pandemic.

And like I said, I ended the emergency last June on the pandemic.

So

we're actually pretty much back to normal now which is why we don't need additional programs to pay for people's rent.

We're back to normal here.

There's always been people who have been impacted by different circumstances that need help with their rent.

And we should work to help those people.

But a big government program like this, where it's another $120 million coming into our state that would just basically teach people to stay home, that's not what we need.

That's not how we're going to get people back to work.

We need to engage people, get them back into the workforce.

You know, here in Nebraska, we do have the highest workforce participation rate, the highest employment to population per capita ratio.

So Nebraskans do like to work, but we need more people back in the workforce, and paying them to stay home is not going to do it.

Governor, I have to tell you, this is the best story I've heard in a while.

The story that I always love from the Depression was Hoover.

Hoover, there was a big storm.

I think it was here in Texas, a big storm that went on, and he decided to dispatch the feds to help.

And

the county turned him around

at the

county line.

The people, not the police, the people blocked the road and turned the trucks around and said, we don't need any help.

We're fine here.

Sent the trucks back home.

Congress wanted to pass for all this support.

It failed, and the American people actually raised more money than what the bailout would have been.

We are in a time now where people are just expecting everything.

We're living in

a time where everybody feels they're entitled to something.

I am glad to see the state where my grandmother lived and my mother was born in.

I am glad to see that you are

holding up the work ethic and the ethics that made America truly the breadbasket of the world.

Well, thanks.

And, you know, Nebraskans do, they take care of each other.

That's what we should continue to do is look to take care of folks in our local communities and not ask for federal money when we don't have a federal emergency.

We're supposed to be taking care of ourselves.

That's always been the strength of our country.

Going back to Alexis de Tocqueville, he commented on that, you know, in the 1830s.

That's the strength of America.

So a lot of people who aren't in your state would go, oh, as a politician, he's probably running.

You're term limited out now.

That's correct.

What's next for you?

Well, first thing I'm going to do is go on vacation with my wife.

Yeah.

Because I want to stay married.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then I want to stay involved in politics and public policy.

I just don't know what that looks like right now.

Okay.

Good for you.

Thank you very much, Governor.

I appreciate it.

All right.

Hey, well, thanks a lot, Glenn.

Thanks for having me on.

Governor Pete Ricketts from Nebraska.

Isn't that amazing?

Call your senators

if you live in Nebraska and tell them, okay,

enough is enough.

Do we have some principles here?

Well, other states are going to get it.

If just say this.

If everybody was jumping off a bridge, would you jump off the bridge?

Do I need to be your mother?

For the love of

the best of the Glenbeck program.

Elon Musk.

He did a couple of things that I love.

He acquired almost 10% of Twitter.

It makes him the largest stakeholder.

Jack only has about 2% of the company.

Now, so far, I believe this is a silent partnership part.

I mean, he can do some things, I guess, to gain some seats on the board.

And I wish you would, Elon, please.

I mean, and this is what he, his 9% stake is what he disclosed in a financial disclosure, right?

So we don't know how much he has now.

Could be more.

Oh, that's what, yeah, that's what he bought.

Yeah, this is what he bought so far, but he could be, he could have been acquiring it the whole time.

He seems to be pretty focused on Twitter.

He seems to be critical of Twitter.

And he seems to be stepping up to the plate.

And if you happen to be Twitter, you might not want him stepping up to the plate.

Oh, please step up to the plate.

Wouldn't it be nice to have somebody that like Elon Musk is out there actually saying the truth and batting for you?

And I say this.

I mean, look, I don't agree with Elon.

The guy is a global warming guy.

Okay.

Like, not just a global warming guy, a guy who believes it so much, he's building spaceships to get off the planet.

Now, I personally believe that it is global warming plus what he sees coming in technology, because he believes transhumanism is coming.

And he believes that the human species

will

not exist on Earth by 2050.

And so he believes that the only chance of the humans actually being like we are now, not engineered, but being like we are now, the only chance of survival is on another planet.

But anyway.

Well, that's the point, though.

And this is a guy who

acts on what he believes.

He believes it.

Yep.

And he's living an incredible life.

He really should ask or something.

He earned it.

I mean, he made his own money.

I mean, he took bailouts or not bailouts, but he took money during TARP,

which I didn't like.

Was it TARP or was it he got a lot of the cash for clunkers or something?

There's tons of incentives to buy electric cars built into our economy.

I think money laterally.

Well, yeah, Tesla gets a ton of that money because they're the only, really the only electric car out there.

I don't think now.

You have to be able to.

He's been opposing it now.

He's been saying he doesn't want it.

Because it comes with strings attached now.

You have to be a union shop.

You have to be creating good union jobs.

And that's not them.

No,

it's such a fascinating.

This is one of the reasons why people are fascinated by him, but he does not fall into

any easy category.

And, you know, he's been opposing one of the big things in this, one of these big Biden bills, I think it was Build Back Better, was a fortune to build an electric car charging network across the country.

He's like, well, we're already doing that.

We don't need your money for that.

We're doing it already.

And you don't want him to do that because you can't control that.

Yeah.

And

we've talked a decent amount about the car industry over the past few months.

And as people may note, I'm now past seven months of ordering my car and still do not have one.

I'm already looking for a gift for your 12-month anniversary.

It's going to be special.

I'm going to bring candles in.

But there is, you have the Tesla chargers, which work on Teslas.

And then you have other charger networks that are being built by other companies.

Like Volkswagen is building a big one across the country.

But you see the locations locations of them.

If you buy a car that is not a Tesla, that's an electric car, and you want to use a fast charger.

Now you can charge it at your house, but it takes a long time, multiple days if you're just plugging it into a normal outlet.

You can get it done overnight if you get special industrial strength stuff installed into your house.

Right.

But I mean, that's what you do if you're going to get it.

You want to save money at the gas pump.

Yeah.

You just get one of those big, expensive superchargers, you know.

Or, you know, if you can't afford it, and a lot of people can't, don't worry.

Your car will be charged in three days but you have some place to go i hope not

but it's true you can find tesla chargers at malls and restaurants and and all over the place gas stations movie theaters movie theaters places you pull up there's one at the place i take the kids to breakfast they've got two tesla chargers right out in front of it for i mean they're rarely filled but still they're there they're there a lot of times they're there in better parking spots than the handicapped spots.

Yeah, they're always in the front or close to the front, which is incredible.

Yeah.

But that network is built out relatively widely depending on where you live.

You look at the other one, one of them is called Electrify America, which is, I think, the Volkswagen one, and they're building it up.

And they have like fast chargers located like for the Dallas Fort Worth area, which is a big, you know, city, huge city.

It's only on the like on the extended excurbs, right?

Like if you're going from here to Austin,

on the way out of Dallas, you can find a charger, right?

But that's it.

And there's one place there on the road.

You better stop there, or you're going to have to plug in and wait for three days at somebody's house, right?

You've got to stop right there if you're not driving a Tesla.

If you're driving a Tesla, well, there's 15,000 places to go.

And they're building that out.

You know, you would think that maybe people would learn the lesson of a universal plug.

How about everybody just makes the same plug?

I mean, if I'm running a car company, I'd be like, will it work on everybody else's plug?

Oh, there's, there's already, even outside of Tesla, there's two different options.

You look at the places, some of these charging stations have to have three different kinds of quote-unquote pumps to be able to hook up to the three different kinds of plugs.

That is just so stupid.

I mean, eventually, I think it is going to unify behind something, but Tesla wants it to be there.

So,

here's the other thing: fine, fine, whatever.

If you're Volkswagen, make it like Tesla.

You'll double the value.

You'll double the value.

Anyway,

another thing that he tweeted this weekend, let me see if I can find the exact verbiage.

The more I study it, I don't have it right in front of me.

Hang on.

I think he said, the more I study it.

Here it is.

I'm increasingly convinced that corporate ESG is the devil incarnate.

Now, that's saying something.

That's not Glenn Beck saying that.

No, that's coming from a guy who believes in global warming.

Built an electric car company.

Built a spaceship company.

Right.

Okay.

A spaceship company.

Right.

He believes it's the devil incarnate.

That's remarkable.

Anybody,

Elon Musk saying this this will change the direction.

Because Elon Musk, there's a lot of people who, you know, don't listen to me or don't like me or whatever.

That's definitely back to that house.

Okay, all right.

Non-Stephanus.

Confirm.

But Elon Musk

is

okay.

We got it.

But Elon Musk has such a wide reach universally.

Yeah, I get this from people all the time when we have events and stuff and people are walking around.

Like we have the museum here or something and we're talking to people who've been listening to the show for a long time.

And they, to convert it to this particular topic, it's I've had to listen to through,

get through 25 segments of Glenn blathering on about ESG scores and I never heard it from anybody else.

And then all of a sudden, everyone's talking about it.

And that is, I think, the case here.

You're seeing it with Elon Musk.

You're seeing it.

If you read any financial publication, they're talking about it all the time now.

All the time.

These things, you know, people try to say it was a conspiracy theory.

Obviously, it's not.

It's something that is building in a big way, is already taken over Wall Street.

And like, you know, like the concept is somewhat understandable, right?

Like, if you could, if they gave you an option to invest in things that promoted the free market, promoted individual rights,

I would be for that.

It's like, you know what?

I don't like these algorithms that

sort my news.

Okay.

I'm not against them.

I'd like to control it.

Yeah.

I'd like less of this, more of this, less.

Give me a dashboard so I can control it and find the setting for me.

You know what I mean?

So I don't have a problem with that.

And if you wanted to do ESG, then could you do,

you know, one on the Constitution,

one on

values,

one on, you know, not

having your son sell out to communist countries.

I mean, I just say.

It's not as catchy as ESG either.

It's not, but, you know, Burisma would be out.

You know, Bank of China would be out.

The city of Moscow, I couldn't invest in.

You know,

if you wanted to have ESG, because this is the dumbest part of their argument.

This is only done for people.

A lot of people want to invest that way.

Yeah, I know a lot of people that would like to not throw their money behind places like Disney.

But are you showing me all the ones, all the companies that are so woke and are spending tons of money?

Verizon,

giving money to Planned Parenthood.

I'd like just a

fund called B for babies.

You know, hey, these are all the companies that are not investing in killing babies.

That would be great.

And you can pick whatever you wanted.

That's not what this is.

Right.

A menu of options is something I think

it is a free market thing.

However, the way that they're instituting the ESG is not necessarily stopping at a menu.

They are implementing it in a way that they can't get capital if they do not hit the requirements of this menu.

And so it's controlling the way that companies do business.

And that is the problem.

You know, like, how you can look at what has happened over the past couple of months and think that what we need to do is invest less in fossil fuels is beyond me.

We absolutely should be investing more.

Even Elon Musk, who is, again,

not just a global warming believer, but is completely insane in this belief.

Yeah.

I mean, he is.

farther to the global warming alarmist side than almost anyone I know in the entire public life.

He is literally that far.

He's done certainly more to not just step up and tweet about it, not just hashtag.

He's built multiple companies to address this.

He's risked his entire fortune to do this, to stop global warming.

And here is he, he's saying things like, hey, we need to really ramp up our oil and gas

drilling here in the United States because it only helps his company.

Right.

But it doesn't in the end.

By the way, the new budget from Biden, 11 different tax increases on the oil and gas industry,

which

the deduction, they're getting rid of the deduction for intangible drilling costs, which allows independent producers to immediately deduct business expenses related to drilling, such as labor, site preparation, repairs, and service work.

2014 by Wood McKenzie Consultant, repealing the deduction for those would result in a $407 billion reduction in investment, roughly 25% of the capital used by producers to continue investing in new projects.

Okay?

But only 25%.

That's one of the taxes that he's putting on oil and gas, plus your ESG.