Chuck Yates Needs A Job

0:20 So my ex-wife worked at Torch and Torch had the relationship. Oh, what was the name of your company? Nueva. Nueva. But when you and I actually kind of got to know each other and work together,

0:33 we were looking at some piece of crap, waxy oil company that you enter basin. Do you remember that? Oh, I do. I don't remember much detail about it, but I - So last night, I spent all night - I

0:47 think you guys brought us a deal to look at it Yeah. It was a publicly traded company and I'm gonna make this up 'cause I thought about it last night. When you get old, it's not a storage problem,

0:56 it's a retrieval problem, but was it inland resources? Was that the name of it? Does that sound right? That rings a bell, it rings a bell, yeah. Yeah, we were looking at waxy crude and somehow

1:06 that made sense tomorrow. Well, we were an expert in dealing with crap crude.

1:12 I mean, anything approaching WTI pricing was ruled it out for us

1:19 We had to have super high operating leverage, which meant really low prices and really high expenses. And you know what's so weird is the 25 year old oil and gas guy sitting in the audience

1:31 listening to that is, what do they mean? Right. That heavy oil gets a premium today because we need it for our refineries or something the in back, God. Yeah.

1:40 day because the UAVO was Southern California stuff, right? Well, right I didn't start that way, but when I came over was because they had just, you know, sort of like the dog chase in the car

1:55 and if the dog catches the car now, now what? All right. The, you know, the UAVO caught this big deal was a divestment by Unical, which was all of their onshore and offshore properties in

2:11 California. Is it what year is this circa? Oh, I would '96 say, probably. Okay, so this is kind of mid-90s, okay.

2:20 And it was too big of

2:24 a deal for torch to finance using its sort of existing circle of friends and contacts. And so it required, you know, about500 million worth of banks. And, you know, so I was at the time, the

2:38 treasurer of seagull energy. And I had 25 banks in my bank group So when Mike Watford came looking for a CFO, I just, I just opened up my, you know, my list of banks and there you go. So we only

2:55 needed about half of them to get the Unical deal done. So this is crazy blast from the past seagull. I was Barry Galt's company, right? That's correct, yes. And what was it and where did it wind

3:11 up? Well, I mean, seagull is this interesting company that had,

3:17 you know, It had an intrastate pipeline network of this and that. It wasn't a tremendously well-oiled intrastate pipeline, but a collection of gathering lines, you know? And it also had oil and

3:33 gas operations mainly on the Gulf Coast. And then they had bought this gas utility in Alaska, which is just printed money, you know? Had an allowed rate of return, the number that sticks in my

3:48 head was 1565. No matter how shitty I am on expenses, 156.

3:57 Well, I mean, you could still, you could, now that's on the rate base. So I mean, if your expenses are bad, you could still, you could go down to 13 maybe. But the, so the whole goal of that

4:07 was to never ever, ever have to go in for a rate case. Oh, of course not, yeah. Leave that as long as possible. So that was a cash cow. It was a really interesting thing And yes, Barry Galt

4:17 was the - chairman and CEO, and he hired me from a bank to be his treasurer when I was 29. So that was my big break in life, was very gold. And my wife dressed me up to go play golf with him and

4:31 made sure that my shorts match my shirt. You're not screwing this up, King. That's right, that's right, yeah. So, okay, where did it wind up? Devin owns it So, Seagull was merged into ocean

4:48 energy and then Devin bought ocean. Oh, okay, sure. So that's how that happened. Gosh, yeah. And is Torch still around today? Probably not in the way that you and I remember it. I'm sure it

5:03 still is an entity with fractional ownership and stuff that JP, Brian,

5:13 you know, still, but I don't think it's exist in the sense that you know, there to provide outsourcing services for client businesses. I think that was like the tail redefining the head of the dog,

5:25 you know. Right. But, you know, but there was a certain elegance to it that made, and it was perfect for me, perfect for me, because I came to the job of CFO without any real operational

5:39 accounting background. I was a banker, you know, and I knew how to do bank deals, basically So I'll say this, but you correct me, and feel free to take it over. As I recall, Torchmark

5:51 Insurance Company wanted to have exposure to oil and gas. JP Brian got with them. They raised a series of institutional funds to in effect by producing type properties, and they morph that into, I

6:10 believe, two publicly traded companies, Bellwether and Nueva. And then the thought was, we have all this infrastructure. We can do all the back office for everyone. And I don't think they wound

6:24 up being very successful on the back office just 'cause we're so crazy private about all our information that who wants to give their information to torch energy, even though they're technically -

6:37 Well, it was easier to grow a client than it was to go out and sell a new client. I'm sure they tried Yeah. And it ultimately created some governance issues for us as a public company when you're

6:54 not really in control of certain of your own control operations. Right. Becomes a problem. And then that problem becomes compounded when the board is controlled by a guy who owns the private

7:07 company that is providing these outsourcing services. And so ultimately, you know, the question is, does the board running the company for the shareholders? Or is the board running the company

7:23 for torch? And that's, you know, that was the conundrum. And I came into it at that time. And that was a fate. That was something I had to live with. But it didn't last long because of the Mike

7:35 Watford incident, you know. And - Oh, what is the Mike Watford incident? Well, incident may be a, maybe the wrong word, but the Mike Watford situation, he, you know, after the Unical deal,

7:51 we, our stock price ran very nicely. And Mike Watford was out there and then I was out there and, you know, talking to analysts and, you know,

8:04 portfolio managers about our company. And

8:08 we finally got big enough that people started looking at. the composition of our board and in this funny relationship we have with torch and ultimately Mike Got to the point. I think where he felt

8:26 confident enough in his position that he could say yeah We kind of need to do something about that. Yeah, and JP wasn't real high on Mike having that opinion or let alone Stating it publicly. Yeah,

8:38 and so our investors were really kind of upset about the Situation. Yeah, and ultimately, you know, Mike, you know, got fired. Yeah by JP who was chairman of the board and JP had the right to

8:54 do that and then JP, you know said oh and in your new CEO is Doug Fosche who was my chief operating officer at torch, right? So he sort of doubled down on the problem with Doug, right? Yeah, the

9:08 good thing is that Doug was You know, he completely understood the public corporation requirement that we, you know, make decisions based on what's in the best interest of our shareholders and not

9:24 what's in the best interest of a vendor. Yeah, let me throw one thing in there because young me at Stevens, saw joined Stevens in '94. Maybe this was

9:40 '95 Torchmark Insurance Company had owned all of Torch Energy and at some point, the regulators said, you can't be an oil and gas company and an insurance company. So Torchmark sold Torch Energy to

9:51 JP Bryan and

9:57 pick a host of other people, you know, Mike Smith, Michael Smith, Doug Foshe,

10:05 Danny Wine guest, I forget who else was in that mix. Bobby Gary, I'm sure. Bobby Gary was in there. Well, and what was the lawyer's name? Good dude. I still got a church with him blanking.

10:16 But anyway, so it became a standalone entity and we wroteThe Fairness opinion at Stevens for that. So that was, and then that's how my ex-wife, Kim, wound up at torch to some degree. Is, hey,

10:21 you ought to go talk to these guys They're doing cool stuff. Well, you know, they were nimble and

10:33 they did do cool stuff.

10:36 It

10:39 was basically an investment bank with an operating arm. Yeah, yeah. They just had a blind spot as to the corporate governance issue. And I like JP and all, but I mean, he was a swashbuckler,

10:52 you know? So yeah, so he wound up with a lot of fans and a lot of enemies. Yeah, I'll never forget the story about his Canadian acquisition. It was a Gulf 88 or Canadian Gulf was a Gulf, Canada

11:07 Gulf, Canada. Yeah. And the very first day he took over, he had workmen come and remove all the doors from every office in the building. So nobody had a door anymore. And I was like, you know,

11:22 there's a new sheriff in town. He can't hide from me. The, the, the single greatest collection of Texas art, too. Yes The, the JP pulled together. And I wonder where that is. These, I think

11:36 most of it's in Galveston. He's got a museum in Galveston now. And it's well, I mean, if you're ever down there, it's worth going to. It's beautiful. You know, of course, you know, when you

11:45 worked where we did, we worked amongst most of all of his collection, you know, his curator curated the office. So it was full of old maps and old saddles and old art. And she went to rice with

11:58 me She was an art history major and I'm totally blanking on her name. uh, but yeah, it was the only company, only oil and gas company with a curator. And she and Kim were really good friend,

12:11 better friends from rice. Um, and so she would get stuff that popped in and she'd call Kim, Hey, sneak over. I want to show you something, but yeah, it was fast and cool. And, and you know,

12:21 he also owns the gauge hotel out in a marathon, Texas and a bunch of his stuff's out there. So if you're ever, you know, I mean, like, if you're ever just like passing through marathon, Texas,

12:33 you know, on your way to the big bender to go to see the Marfulites or something, you, you got to go to the, the gauge hotel, which is a historic hotel that he bought every Texan should spend the

12:45 night there at least once. I would say if you're a real Texan, if you're a real Texan, right? Right. The, and I could, I could talk old torch and JP stories, kind of all on and out of the

12:57 shape, he's still live. I'm pretty sure he is. Yeah. I didn't get him. I talked to him a couple years ago. I need to try to get him on the podcast 'cause we need to capture him. Oh man, you

13:06 would have a great time talking to you. Well, and we need to capture all those stories, you know? I mean, I would - You need about a five hour podcast. Yeah, let's just sit here and talk. And

13:14 'cause, you know, I kicked myself, you know, I should have done a podcast with Boom Pickens, you know, and just capture all those kind of stories. The, I could talk this all day, but, so

13:27 this is weird. So that's how we kind of know each other. Probably really haven't seen each other since then It's been a long time, yeah. And I saw - You haven't changed. Zephyr, I mean, you

13:36 don't shave now. Yeah, exactly. Other than that. You get fired, you don't have to shave anymore.

13:42 But the, I appreciate that the, but this was crazy 'cause I got a text saying, Hey dude, I'm running for Congress. Right. How did that happen? Well, you know, I was,

13:56 have always been interested in politics, but decided in college,

14:02 double majored in political science and economics. I said, well, when I, you know, when I finish, I'm going to make a decision which way do I want to go? I want to go to law school and a career

14:11 in politics, or do I go to business school and a career in finance? And, you know, finance had a whole bunch of economic reasons why that was a better route. And I also met enough politicians in

14:23 college to go, Man, that's a slimy business. And the people in that business - You're selling out as a lobbyist to make Jack in politics That's the sad side of it. Yeah. 'Cause I was kind of the

14:34 same way. I was undergrasp - It's a grift, yeah. It's a grift. I really thought I'd be governor of Texas. That's what I wanted to do. But if you wanna make money, you go grift. Well, in

14:45 politics. In politics, totally. Or I mean, I think the ethical way to do it is to go make money in something else and then come back in a second career and try to do something lofty with it. Yeah

14:60 So, you know, Certainly, if I had wanted a career in politics, 63, which is my age today, it would not be the ideal age to start.

15:13 But, so I made that decision early on, I was gonna go into business finance, but I've always, of course, been really interested in politics, and sort of always saw myself as kind of a liberal

15:23 Republican, you know, kind of a pragmatic Republican, maybe And so, you know, I just, you know, just was a citizen, had been a citizen and a taxpayer for these 40 years, and in the past

15:38 couple of years, you know, the disgust factor in both parties just overtook me. And so, you know, I've been voting for libertarians, for president, for three or four election cycles now. And,

15:56 but it didn't occur to me to run for Congress until. two things happened, that it's sort of a, you know, just like a last straw kind of thing. I, number one was that I did the math on how big

16:12 the debt is. Okay. And what we're doing to our children's and grandchildren's generation. So, you know, if you go online and you Google the debt clock, you'll find we're just about to flip

16:26 over35 trillion right now But that's only the debt that's sort of on the books officially today that has interest cost ticking on it, right? That doesn't include the present value of the future

16:42 deficits that are going to be run up by our entitlement programs. And if you add those, that just dwarfs the35 trillion. You add those into it. You're talking like120 trillion. Now, you and I

16:56 were in the finance business And we dealt with some big numbers.

17:01 120 trillion. Can you even imagine what that is like? Not even close. That's, yeah, that's like a lifetime of work for a city of people, you know, or more. Yeah. And, you know, and so, and

17:17 I think politicians like it that way, because it's so big that it people's eyeballs roll, and they quit thinking about it, because what's the point of thinking about a number so big, right? Well,

17:28 if you divide that number by the number of taxpayers in the United States, you get a sense as to not even citizens, not divided by numbers by the number of taxpayers, because that's our number of

17:42 technically the number of tax returns. So you and your wife would return. Okay, taxpayers. So how many tax payers are economic entities? How many different tax returns funneling income taxes into

17:55 the government? If you divide the 120 trillion by that number, you come up with tax payer of about700, 000. Okay. So

18:07 first of all, that's a number that is big enough to choke any horse, but it's also small enough that you can understand it, right? It's like two median homes in small towns in central Texas,

18:21 where I, you know, I'm in New Braunfels So, in a

18:26 sense, what the government has done through spending money that they don't have is they've run up a tab on our children and grandchildren that is the equivalent of two mortgages or mortgages on two

18:40 median homes. And

18:44 so, you know, if you studied economics and you know there's an effect on interest rates, inflation, all these things are going on. So it's bad economically, but at an even more fundamental level.

18:58 It's just a sin. I It's a violation of the eighth commandment, they'll shall not steal. It's one generation stealing from future generations because we can, and because the younger generation

19:10 haven't taken back their credit card yet. It's still a bunch of boomers who are in charge of Washington, and neither party gives a crap about it. The Republican party has always paid lip service

19:23 about it, but when they've had the opportunity to do something about it, the political pain, inflicted on them of doing anything to cut the deficit dissuades them from doing it, because to them,

19:37 staying in power is more important than using that power to fix the problem. So that's kind of the number one reason why does that work? And I want to cut you off there real quick to delve down into

19:47 that, 'cause I've only, I'm 55, since I turned 18, I've only voted for the Libertarian for president my entire life. Well, you're the man. Good for you. Well, and my whole thought process -

20:02 Where were you when I needed to go to the 90s? Right, in the 90s. Well, my only thought process in doing that was - because people always say you're throwing your vote away. And I always said,

20:13 well, with the crackpot, dope smoking weirdos that the libertarians always run,

20:21 if they can get 3 of the vote, then maybe a good candidate like Bob King will go, man, if I come here and run on this platform, there's a shot I can win. So that's why I've always done it. I

20:35 don't feel like I'm throwing my vote away. But the big thing when you get to the debt and you start thinking about it, and I don't know how we make this case, but at the end of the day, every fiat

20:53 currency in the history of the world has imploded.

20:58 And what happens is you go along, you go along, it's bad, and then boom, it hits, and you have Weimer Republic in Germany where you're running around with wheelchairs. It's like a bank run,

21:08 it's a confidence deal, and once you've lost confidence over. And that's good. And it happens in one night. And that's the scary thing is we don't know what that night is. We're a cat that

21:17 doesn't know when we're on life number nine. Right, that's a good way of putting it. That's the really scary part I was actually talking to my daughter two days ago, just that's my fear for the

21:30 future is, and there's been some academic research done on it, and there seems to be a little bit of data to suggest that it's 120 of GDP or north. Well, that's where we are right now. And that's

21:45 where we are. I think 123 is where we are. Well, you know, my financial advisors, you know, Uh, stock brokers and people like that they just, you know, you talk these kind of concerns with

22:02 them and they say, ah, we're just the, you know, we're the, we may be a dirty shirt, but we're the cleanest dirty shirt in the closet. Healthiest member of the leper colony. Yeah, that's

22:13 about the way they put it. And so Bob, what other currency would the world go to? You know? And you know, my response to that kind of as well, you know, finance background So the market cap of

22:26 the United States is about 45 of the world, something like that. Yep. It's a little bit less than half of the world. Right. That number certainly coming down as China comes up, although China's

22:39 got its own problems coming. Yeah. But, so financial manager, tell me if the market cap of the world, the United States is 45 of it. Why is 90 of my portfolio in dollars? You must be saying you

22:56 know something. that the market doesn't know, right? That's right. And so I've tried, you know, it's hard to get. I mean, of course you can

23:08 take back control and self-direct and all that kind of thing, but I'm not smart enough to do that myself. But I have sort of negotiated with my own guys to pull back and put, you know, I've got

23:19 like 12 in gold and a whole bunch. I'm way over invested in oil and gas and of course your real estate So you got to have real assets to have a meeting, it's a survive, that kind of apocalyptic

23:31 world. But the other thing is, you know, do you really want to live, you want to be one of those guys who's hoarding cans of beans in your basement because that's what they're doing, you know.

23:43 It's such a horrendous future that nobody thinks is possible until it's happened. Yeah I think that, so funny story Um,

23:58 Skarmucci created this conference in Las Vegas, and I forget, it's big investor conference, and I forget what it's called, the Salt Conference, something like that. Anyway,

24:13 and so I was on a panel one time at this thing where it was the head of commodity trading for Goldman Sachs. Oh, what's the guy from Chicago? He was Obama's economic advisor He's on the Fed now.

24:28 He's a professor. I know who you're talking about. You know exactly what I'm talking about. We'll think of his name. He's a great dude. He and I, he and I had lunch afterwards. So it was - He'd

24:36 be a guy, it'd be fun to meet. Oh, he was great. So it's Goldman Sachs Commodity Trader. It's, let's call him John Smith till we figure out his name. A Goolsbee. Austin Goolsbee. Austin

24:46 Goolsbee. So it's Austin Goolsbee and it's me. And we were supposed to talk oil and gold commodity futures prices. And I told the moderator,

24:57 I don't know anything about gold, but I know oil, you know? And so we had this great discussion. Austin Goldsby and I actually went back and forth. And at one point we're talking about the

25:07 Comanche Indian tribes and how the status of a warrior was based on the status of his enemy. And it was, we had a blast. It was really good. But the kind of the close question was, what's the

25:20 price of oil in a year? And then the close, the second close was, what's the price of gold? And so the commodity trader at Goldman laid out a great case. It's going to be up 10. Here's why,

25:31 blah, blah, blah. Austin Gould's because, hey, I'm an economist. If gold is1, 200 today, it's going to be1, 200 at the end of the year. I mean, that's just our assumptions. And they go,

25:41 Chuck, what do you think? And I said, It's going to be1, 800 an ounce. And the audience's kind of, Whoa! He goes, Explain that. Well, the Yates girls are getting their ears pierced this year.

25:49 So there's going to be a run on gold

25:54 earrings in Houston, Texas like you've never seen before. Everybody kind of laughs at that, blah, blah, blah. And then Kobe Bryant actually came up next to speak at the salt con. You hang out

26:05 with some interesting people. The beauty of having your own podcast, you can name drop whenever you want it.

26:13 But anyway, Yahoo Finance picked up Yates calls for1, 800 oil, and it was like the headline on Bloomberg stuff. And so Kane Anderson's freaking out going, You can't be making gold. It was a joke.

26:29 I mean, it was obviously a joke. But anyway, those old tweets, 'cause that was call it 2014 or something like that. Those old tweets I have, I retweet them consistently saying, See, I was

26:43 right. You knew it all along. Well, the reality is that gold hadn't gone anywhere. the market hadn't gone anywhere, the price of the value, or I should say the value of a big Mac hasn't gone

26:58 anywhere, what's changed is the value of the dollar. Totally. Right. So if everything's defined, see we just live in a world in which the dollars are fixed thing, and therefore everything else

27:09 is getting expensive, but the reality is real things don't change in

27:13 value, the fiat currency is dropping in value Same lines, do you have a view on Bitcoin? 'Cause if you look at the analysis by the Bitcoin, hardcore folks, they'll show you the price of housing

27:28 in Bitcoin, very consistent, you know? Yeah. Same point you're making. Yeah, I mean, I haven't studied Bitcoin enough to want to make

27:38 a point about it, other than to say that Bitcoin's popularity is just further evidence of - some fear of of being too exposed to the dollar. That's why that's it. And I think Bitcoin is being a

27:55 gold investor, I think Bitcoin has kind of held our gold back, you know? Because it's an alternative place you can go. Yeah, no, that's right. And it's ultimately though the same concept

28:08 because truly if we're really being intellectually honest about it, aside from looking moderately attractive on the queen's neck, there's nothing too gold. You can't really do a lot with it.

28:21 There's no different than tulips in Holland, right? I mean, at one point that was the coin of the realm. It's all about what people have confidence in. Exactly. And I'm the ability to limit the

28:33 amount out there. Right, right. So I think, you know, we're in a political cycle right now where Americans are uniquely aware of the limitations of the two parties, let's just move that way.

28:48 And, you know, there's never been an opportunity in my lifetime where people are so thirsty for an alternative that is based on

29:04 a philosophical or ideological or principles, you know? And so what I say is, look, I go into a room and I go, you know, there's Democrats in this room and there's Republicans in this room and

29:19 there are lots of independents in this room and there may even be some libertarians in this room.

29:26 No libertarian is going to, when dogcatcher anywhere, unless he or she converts Republicans and Democrats to voting, you know, for them. And to do that, you have to express some principles that

29:39 they agree with and then you have to talk them over this wasted vote issue, you know? So what was number two? So number two?

29:48 Number one's the debt and we'll preach it to the choir there. Okay, number two, retired guy, flipping through Travel and Leisure magazine, saw this article that was sort of a clickbait-y kind of

30:00 thing on the 10 most affluent counties in America. And I go, Oh, this'll be a fun read. It'll have Carmel by the sea and it'll have La Jollaor whatever, it'll have the East Hamptonsand Nantucket

30:17 and places like that, right? No.

30:21 Five of the top 10 most affluent counties as measured by median income in the county are suburbs of DC. Five of the top 10. Four of them are in Northern Virginia and one of them's in Maryland. Now,

30:38 as a Texan, if you told me, Hey, five of the most affluent counties are in California? Well, my pride would be wounded. right? Because, you know, they should be in Texas, right? But we'd at

30:52 least go, well, you know, California did create something, right? Those counties that Silicon Valley did something that created value. What in hell has Washington ever done to create value? Why

31:06 should five of the top 10 counties in affluence be the governing class of the United States? Well, I mean, the answer is obvious. They're taking in for every dollar they take in, they're putting

31:21 out to the world about 80 cents worth of value. And they're hoarding about 20 cents of it. And as a result, their houses are worth more. They're earning higher, you know, salaries than the rest

31:33 of us. I got better benefits than the rest of us. And their kids all go to Georgetown or Yale or someplace like that. And they get recycled back in where their dad was, you know, in the society

31:45 there. and the other 48 states sit back and let it happen. I would think 96 senators would be infuriated by that travel and leisure article, right? You would think that, well, of course,

31:57 Maryland, that's two senators in Virginia, that's two senators, but the other 96 ought to be pissed off because it's just proof that we're being fleeced. And so it's not just the money. So, you

32:09 know, like reason number one is the money. Reason number two is the power dynamic that you have this, you know, little area that that Lord's over us. And it doesn't have to be that way. It's

32:21 evolved that way, you know, before the Pony Express and before the internet that everybody has to be within, you know, a five minute walk of the White House in order to be able to be of service to

32:33 the president. But, you know, the world's not like that anymore. So we need to disperse that power at the same time we're getting rid of just thousands and thousands of bureaucrats.

32:46 Did you get a chance to watch the hearing yesterday with the director of the Secret Service? I listened to a fair amount of it yesterday. Yeah, and Chuck, wouldn't you think that the Secret

32:58 Service would be the best run or at least among the best run of the agencies in the US. government? Well, one would hope. One would hope. Yeah. One would think a culture of excellence would be.

33:10 It's not political. We want to protect both

33:14 sides, Democrats and - But what did we learn yesterday? We learned that the bureaucrats act like bureaucrats. They're not, their mission is not

33:24 what they're focused on. It's their power that they're focused on. And of course, since the Democrats and the Republicans all ganged up on her this morning, she resigned. Right. And, but if the

33:37 Secret Service has a bureaucracy, by the way, the Secret Service budget now, a little bit more than it was when President Kennedy was shot. Their budget now is3 billion a year. 3 billion is their

33:52 budget. Now, my guess is what Congress is going to decide is the problem with the Secret Service is they don't have enough money. We need to give them more.

34:03 But if the Secret Service is that bad, and it was proven yesterday how poorly led it is, just imagine how every other department and every other agency and where the biggest tragedy is some

34:18 department runs out of paper clips. How well do you think they're run? Yeah, the scary thing for me, and I'm going to say this is a statement, but this is teeing you up to disagree, agree,

34:31 whatever. The scary thing for me is I can conceptualize government getting bigger Let's

34:41 create this thing to protect the president. Secret service, okay. And I understand that when you run an agency, you want more people, you want more of a mission. And so I can understand the

34:56 scope creep, if you will. I kind of get that, don't agree with it, but I can at least see it. The thing that is truly terrifying me, and this is somebody that wrote their senior thesis at Rice

35:12 30 some odd years ago on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. So I've kind of always been the libertarian, 'cause I always describe myself, I'm a bleeding heart liberal, I'm just very scared of

35:23 the government. What's really scaring me about this creep is not just the money like you're, it's the unaccountability bordering on malice that happens from this Because if you look back of just the

35:41 last couple of years,

35:44 They literally told us that Intermectin was Orstee warmer. That's not intellectually honest. They literally told us they mandated vaccines on us, and I'm actually pro-science. I'm from a medical

35:59 family and there've been some great vaccines in history and all, but they literally told us, mandated, you have to get this shot so we won't spread the virus, and they hadn't even tested it I mean,

36:12 no testing, it's not a bad assumption to say if you get a vaccine and get an immuno-response, you can't pass it on, but you do have to test and see if that's true. And the reason that they

36:25 dumped all over Ivermectin and things like Hydrochloric, Gwen, or whatever, is that in order to get the emergency,

36:35 to qualify for the emergency passage or the emergency treatment, They had to show that there were no viable treatments. Okay. So in order for Moderna and Pfizer to rake in all these billions of

36:50 dollars from the government, you know, and of course, they also got all kinds of immunity from the government. Oh my God. Don't have showed data for 60 years and all that stuff, but they also

37:03 got the government to say, oh, and there, there's no other, you know, there's nothing else out there Now, I don't know. I'm not a scientist. So I don't know about Ivermectin or

37:13 hydrochloroquine or whatever, but I'm just a believer that a free market of doctors and scientists and people trying different things get ultimately get to the right answer And to my scope creep

37:26 versus malice. I can kind of live with that we have this pandemic. We're so scared. We need a vaccine. Maybe we need to fudge a little It literally moved in. But a lot of that was just flat out

37:41 driven by. patents, the NHS owns half the patents on those things. So it came it came down to money and it moved to malice. Right. I mean, it literally moved to they public this is this is my

37:54 pet peeve and I'm sorry you're gonna have to sit through this. There are only four vaccines on the planet that provide better immunity immunity to a person than natural immunity. Two of them are

38:06 viruses that when you're three years old, just pass through you, you don't get sick. But if you make a vaccine out of them and you attach this one protein, it'll make an immuno response happen and

38:17 you get you get vaccine immunity. So that's better than natural because you can't catch it, you know, at age three. But if you get it age 10, you can die from it. Those kind of seem like flukes

38:30 Okay, those are flukes. Then HPV supposedly out in the real world is a weakened virus that if you get in a lab, you can get distill a really pure form of that. And so the vaccine's actually better

38:44 than surviving it naturally in terms of a response. And then the fourth and final one is tetanus. And if you get tetanus and you survive it, it is the deadliest thing on the planet. You didn't get

38:58 that much tetanus. So you didn't really build a big huge immuno response to it. So even if you get tetanus and survive it, they say go get vaccinated. That's it, they're only four The federal

39:10 government said based on a study in Kentucky that the vaccine was providing better immuno defenses, the natural immunity, that's a weird thing. That's out of the ordinary, and they push that. And

39:27 that's why we needed to get vaccinated, even if we had it. Under freedom of information, it's come out that the studies from the 49 other states said no Natural immunity is so much better than the

39:38 vaccine immunity. And that makes sense 'cause natural immunity, you're fighting against 25 or 30 proteins within the virus and you build an immuno response to that. And with the vaccine, you were

39:49 just fighting one protein, the spike, you know? And so it makes a lot of sense. And that just, that to me is malice. That's bad. Well, the desire for money being

40:02 the root of all evil, right? Yeah. I mean, it's crony capitalism that you have ginormous, that's an SMU word, by the way, not a rice word. Yeah, exactly. You have these enormous companies

40:17 that have these sweetheart deals with the government

40:22 and that not only that, I don't want to use the word kickback because that's a crime, right? But you've got all these guys that work for Fauci who are receiving royalties on patents that they

40:33 regulated. And favorable press clippings. And it even goes kind of beyond just You know, so what the libertarian in me would say, hey, I don't mind there being an NIH, and I think the government

40:44 should do research. They just shouldn't be in charge of mandating anything to any doctor anywhere. Yeah. Doctors are, they went to college too. They went beyond college. They're doctors, right?

40:58 And, you know, if you believe in Adam Smith's invisible hand, if you believe in what's it called the, the power or the, is it the power of the crowd or the wisdom of the crowd, if you believe in

41:10 the wisdom of the court, which is just the same thing, right, right? Sure. That you just believe, you know, a thousand doctors doing what a thousand doctors thought was the right thing would,

41:21 would arrive at the answer a whole lot faster than five geniuses in Washington DC. who, you know, prevent anybody else from entering into the discussion. And that's what they did. They, you know,

41:34 my doctor in New Braunfels at the beginning, I was saying, look, I'm a libertarian. Tell me what you really think. And you could tell he didn't want to say. Yeah. You know, they were really

41:45 intimidated. Yeah. They were, you know, they were threatened with the loss of their license. Okay, once we got past the critical part and we were into the second or third or fourth, you know,

41:58 booster. You know, my doctor started saying, Ah, you've had two shots and you've had COVID three times. You know, you've got one more. There's not a lot we can do about Well, he said now, you

42:09 know, your body, you know, has enough immunity, you can handle whatever. And I'm an old guy and I'm a fat guy. And he's not making me, you know, do anything, so. My dad's a doctor. We did a

42:22 podcast at the time about it. And what I found really interesting about dad, dad's quote was always, Is this boronavirus unique?

42:37 it's unique. We've never seen it before. But that's also like saying your child is unique. Yes, your child's unique is still a baby. We've had billions of babies on this planet and we know a lot

42:49 about it. And the inability for the ruling class to say, yeah, this is unique, but hey, we know a lot about viruses. Here are the things that are going to happen That, to me, got to malicious

43:04 real quick. And I know that we should approach the world as never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. I know we're supposed to do it, but that's what really scared me. Yeah.

43:17 Well, in good God, I mean, like, we haven't seen our president in almost a week. And that's like the third weirdest thing of the last two weeks. I mean, what a crazy last couple of weeks it's

43:32 been. Yeah. So so rant on that if you want. for just a second, and then what I wanna do is I wanna come back and hear about your campaign, where it is, all that. Okay, well,

43:45 yeah, I think what we've seen is just confirmation that the two parties really do not care what's in the best interest of the country, they just care what their calculus is that gets them power.

43:59 That's the entire gig. So, you know, the whole Biden discussion doesn't have anything to do with whether he is qualified, but whether he is competent cognitively or able physically, right?

44:16 'Cause it's a hard job. You gotta work nights, you know. Whether he's

44:23 able and cognitively competent to do that job doesn't really matter because I think we all kind of suspect he's not making too many of those calls anyway It's a group of, you know, I don't want to

44:34 say deep state, because that's, that makes me sound like a, you know, a right way in that case. But it's, it's a group of unelected people who have power and they're going to seamlessly move

44:47 this from him to camera. We only had two cabinet meetings. That's what I think's just crazy is. I mean, at least a cabinet appointee, the president who was elected chose that person in the Senate

45:01 confirmed. There's some touching of democracy there. We've had two cabinet meetings. Yeah, and does anybody think cabinet members make policy anymore? I mean, they're there to execute on what

45:16 the president's staff, the White House staff wants, and they're there to walk the plank if something goes wrong. So we're seeing that today, you know, should have been my orcas, you know, who's

45:28 proven his incompetence over and over and over But we'll talk about border issues later. But, you know, that's the - You're right. Anyone who is worried about the concentration of power has got to

45:44 be concerned that Congress has basically abdicated almost its entire mission. And all it is is a debating society. And that says, ah, we'll make this law with these generalities and we'll flip it

45:57 to the executive and let him decide what it means. Well, thankfully the Supremes recently took away some of that by overturning the Chevron deference. That'll be the best thing that the Supreme

46:09 Court's done in a long time. But so Congress has to take charge and do what they're supposed to do. Congress is supposed to declare wars. How many wars have we been in since the last congressional

46:21 declaration? Because 1942, when we declared war on Italy, I think, that's the last one. So Congress is abdicated And why? Because they don't want the consequences of - making hard decisions.

46:37 And those consequences are you might not get re-elected. And that's the worst thing to a congressman is not getting re-elected because then you lose all that insider information you get to trade on,

46:47 you get to lose all those speeches you get paid to give, and all the book advances and all that. 160,

46:55 000 is the salary of a congressman now, right? And to the average person that sounds like a decent salary, but to somebody who's had an executive job, that's not a really a decent salary Well,

47:05 and the other thing too is spread it across two homes. I mean, in effect, you need a house in DC and you need a house in your district. Yeah. So, you know, if that's all you pay a congressman,

47:16 do you really expect they're not gonna look out and how else could I monetize the situation I'm in? That's what they're doing. And it's not just Democrats or it's not just Republicans, it's all of

47:29 them. They all live there. You know, the reason the 96 senators who don't live in Maryland and Virginia. don't get upset about the concentration of power and wealth in DC, is 'cause they're there

47:40 also. And, you know, so 48 states have got to step up and do something about it. Yeah. And that's part of, that's, you know, so I got all kinds of reasons why I'm running. Yep. But I'm, you

47:54 know, just the level of disgust and really wanting to look at my two sons, age 34 and 31, in the eyes and say I tried to do something. Yeah, so tell me what, give me details on what you're

48:05 running for, what district, where is it? Okay, so I'm running in Texas 21, which is in the hill country of Texas. So it's a very gerrymandered district

48:19 in order to give the incumbent the advantage, of course. But it basically starts in the northeast corner in about dripping Springs, Texas, which is kind of a southwestern suburb of Austin It does

48:32 get slightly into Travis County. but not much. So, dripping springs is in Hayes County, which is, you know, like where San Marcos is the, is the county seat. So, dripping springs, Wembley,

48:47 San Marcos, all down 35, including New Braunfels, where I live. And then into San Antonio, all the way down into Alamo Heights. Oh wow, okay. So that was the change in 2020 to get to put more

49:02 Republicans in the district. And then it goes all the way west that into the hill country and has, you know, places like Blanco and Bernie and Fredericksburg and Kerville and, you know, which,

49:15 you know, you get very far away from Interstate 35. You get away from where the voters are, but about 80 of the voters are in a corridor along I-35 between Austin and San Antonio. But it's

49:27 basically the district that gave us LBJ. And it's that part of Texas. And you would think, you know, that part of Texas would be. super independent and super open to the idea of libertarians.

49:40 You know, leave me alone, right? Just let me live my life and stay out of my way. And I don't care. You know, if you want to have smoked dope over there, it doesn't bother me. Just,

49:51 you know, but it, but the district is kind of like every other district in that it's been

49:59 polarized horribly. Who's the incumbent thing? The incumbent is Chip Roy Chip Roy, Republican? Republican. And then who's running as a Democrat? There is a Democrat named Kristin Hook, who is a

50:13 newcomer to Texas politics and she is a former, she's a scientist, we had all the scientific talk. She's a biologist from Cornell, but really what the Democrats are doing, and I think she's an

50:30 example of this, and I haven't met her, so I'm sure she's bright, I'm sure she's a great person. Right. I'm sure I wouldn't agree with her on many things, but I'm sure she's a delightful person.

50:43 But the Democrats have her there because their interest in districts, I know they can't win, and this is a district they cannot possibly win, is

50:51 to mobilize females over the

50:56 abortion issue. And she's a biologist specializing in human reproductive health and has worked for the NIH and has worked on Capitol Hill for Liz Warren. And so she couldn't be a better opponent to

51:14 Chip Roy. I mean, she's easy pickings for Chip Roy, but he couldn't lose anyway because he now has a district that's about two thirds Republican. Before the 2020 redistricting, it was very close

51:26 to 5050, and he ran against Wendy Davis, who is a well-known Texas Democrat, he won, but just barely twice. So the legislature awarded him with a bright, shiny new set of boundaries that made

51:42 him just about impossible. But I guess my point is that not one day while the Texas legislature was debating the gerrymandering of Texas 21, did they say, well, I wonder what would happen. I

51:57 wonder how this change would affect libertarian voters I mean, that of course isn't even in the consideration. And so the only risk that Chip Roy has is that somebody can peel votes away from him

52:13 based on principles. And what I've found is, and I don't know, I don't know how well you know who Chip Roy is. Not at all. Okay, well, I mean, you've seen him if you've been watching TV, he's

52:25 ubiquitous. He's on TV all the time And he's yelling and ranting and raving, that group of Republicans that includes Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene and people like that.

52:42 And he is of course using the border issue for all it's worth, making sure not to fix any problems but making sure to throw kerosene on the problem, you know? And so Chip is

52:59 unquestionably what he's doing and his appeal to the extremists is he's positioning himself to run against John Cornyn for the Senate in 2026. He wants to primary John Cornyn. Yeah. And so he

53:15 doesn't care about getting things done. He's a right wing ideologue. And I do agree with some of his rhetoric but in his case, it's just rhetoric. He really, he doesn't want to solve problems.

53:28 So I had a coach coming back to Houston, Texas, I had a football coach here in Houston named Oscar Crips at Stratford High School. And we were state champs my senior year. Was Craig James on that

53:40 team? Yeah, he was. Yeah, he was. Yeah, I remember that team. It was our stud running back. The rest of us just blocked. And this actually sets up the point.

53:50 The only real problem that we might've had is if 40 of us had gotten jealous that one guy was getting all the ink

53:59 And, you know, 'cause the other 39 of us had the block for the guy, right? So our coach would tell

54:09 us over and over and over and Oscar Crips is a great man who

54:13 we'd learned so much from and he's such a father figure to me. But the thing he taught us was it's amazing how much can be accomplished if nobody cares who gets the credit. That is the truest thing

54:25 in the world any organization you work for. It's undermined by people's desire to glom on to personal credit for things. And it's equally true, and we're living it with Congress that it's

54:39 completely obvious that nobody, nothing will get done if all anybody cares about it, so he gets a credit. And Chip Roy is one of those guys who just wants to get the credit. We could have gotten a

54:52 border deal last year that would have been imperfect for sure It would have only been 70 of what the Republicans have wanted. But in doing so, they would have had to share the credit with Joe Biden.

55:05 So that's not, you know, that wasn't going to happen. Same is true with the Democrats and George Bush back in the early 2000s. That I, because I mean, ultimately this trade is going to come down

55:17 to it. Nobody's going to be happy about it is the people that are here get to stay, but we tighten up the border so that, so that. people coming through, we actually know who they are, national

55:31 security type stuff. And then there's gotta be a corresponding, okay, we let y'all's folks in reduce this huge social safety net that's potentially bankrupting us. I mean, that's the deal and

55:45 everybody's gonna be pissed. And I think they had that under George Bush and the Democrats ultimately backed out because. Right, but you see, to me the big picture is that both parties want there

56:00 to be a bright shiny object to distract voters and to get them angry, right? Totally. And the Republicans use the border for that and the Democrats use abortion for that. Now, both of those

56:14 issues would be easily solved somewhere in the middle, right? 99 of all abortions happened before the 20th week of gestation, right? So if we just said, hey, as soon as the baby, As soon as we

56:27 get to 20 weeks or whatever, viability. I mean, to me, the most obvious logical solution is viability is when the baby's right to life exceeds the mother's right to

56:44 choice, right? And if Democrats accepted that, they'd have a 99 win. But they won't because they want the 100 win because there's so much money involved in it, right? And so both of these

56:57 parties are keeping people focused on things like that, which could be solved in the middle. Meanwhile, neither party wants to look at the money thing, the debt thing, because that's hard to

57:09 solve. You cannot solve that without paying. Yeah, that's a 10 whack to everything, right? If we just whack the annual budget, 10 a year. 10 is not enough right now. Yeah

57:25 Because right now we're. the taxes that we're taking in, the revenue of the government's about5 trillion a year. Yeah. Okay. And it's the most we've ever taken in. By far, we're taking in more

57:40 revenue than ever, okay? I hate you. But yet we're spending7 trillion. And I hate to even admit this 'cause I was always a supply sider, particularly when it came to tax policy. You know what?

57:52 For all this talk about tax cuts to the original, you go back and you look through history and tax revenue to the government grows slightly more than population and GDP each year. It doesn't matter.

58:07 You do the Trump tax cuts and all. Guess what? The revenue's greater than before. You actually look at George Bush's no new tax pledge in the '90s, the tax revenue the government was more. Right

58:20 'cause tax receipts are dynamic It's more than just the rate. and you change behavior and also, yeah, I always hate this. Right, but the spending is on such a huge ascent. Yeah. And both

58:33 parties have just quit even trying to restrain it. So do this for me. So we've been talking for an hour, good stuff. People are out there going, all right, this guy, Bob King, seems like a

58:47 pretty cool guy. What

58:51 the hell is a libertarian? Give the quick stump speech on what a libertarian is. Well, on the back of my business card, I should have brought it, stupid thing I didn't, but there's basically

59:02 five points and it's more personal freedom, more economic freedom that come from less government, that's three, less government.

59:15 Stop the endless foreign wars and always follow the constitution.

59:22 You know, I'm a little different from many people in the Libertarian Party and that, well, first of all, I'm not an anarchist. And there are a few of those, right? I'm not an anarchist. I

59:32 think we should have a government, right? It's obviously, you know, light year is bigger than it needs to be, but I'm a constitutional libertarian. So the way I look at things is we should

59:44 follow the rules. The constitution is the basis of our law, right? We should follow those If we're having a hard time enforcing a law, then we should ask, is it worth having this law that we

59:56 can't seem to be able to enforce, right? I'm a constitutional libertarian. So if we, I think both parties use the constitution when it's convenient and they ignore it when it's inconvenient,

1:00:09 because their objectives don't have anything to do with following the constitution. Their objectives have to do with gaining power and money for their interests So those are the five things.

1:00:20 You know, and a libertarian basically believes that you, the

1:00:26 American people can decide how to spend your money and how to live your life. And as long as you're not hurting the next person, then the government should leave you alone. And that's as simple as

1:00:39 can be. Well, and I think one other point to libertarianism that I wish we could make the case on is ultimately free and fair markets, I think, punish bad behavior much better than regulation by

1:00:55 the government. 'Cause regulation by the government gets abused. 'Cause there are so many things that just in life, man, this is unfair. And unfortunately our default is, well, we should pass a

1:01:08 law against that and build an agency to monitor it. And there's not a panacea, if there was one way, but I just think when you weigh - Also, just to, you know, so we're here in Houston. two

1:01:20 weeks after a hurricane in which we're one week after getting the power back up from it, right? If there were competitors for center point, then you wouldn't have to regulate it so hard. Yeah.

1:01:33 But what we're dealing with with center point is gotta be, I'm not an expert on this, and you may have a more learned opinion than me, but my guess is, Relate, but okay, my guess is that the

1:01:47 government affairs people at center point are doing an excellent job in keeping the state of Texas off their back.

1:01:54 That ultimately, the hindsight being 2020 is, yeah, trees are gonna break and draw up power lines, but why haven't we started burying lines in the last 20 or 30 years? Yeah, the thing I hate

1:02:09 about the center point situation is the wire that goes from generation to lighting your house is a monopoly. Now, we did deregulate a bunch of that, and I think if you look at it, it's overall

1:02:23 good, but I think what you get tagged with on CenterPoint is see we deregulated and look what happened. But you didn't deregulate distribution. And it's still a utility, a monopoly. It's still a

1:02:34 utility, and there are just some things in life that are pretty hard to deregulate like one of them. And that's one of them to the house. So right, so to your point, what libertarians need to

1:02:44 point out is we're not pro-business, we're pro-market Yeah. Right? And being pro-market means we believe in competition. And we believe there's a whole lot of

1:02:59 antitrust law that has been forgotten because crowning capitalism pretty powerful. And these regulated monopolies are among the biggest donors to politicians. And so what I would say in terms of

1:03:15 regulation, Yes, ideally. you know, you have the lightest possible regulation. That's a libertarian truism, right? But to the extent, but what we're doing is we're regulating way too many

1:03:29 small people, right? I mean, there's cities and state and local ordinances that say that you're not allowed to sell these tortillas unless you've paid the government to come inspect your kitchen,

1:03:43 right? We got too much of that kind of regulation and not enough of it focused on things like center point, right? And so, you know, one of the things that has been a great addition to my life in

1:03:56 recent, you're not about the last 10 or 12 years as I've, almost every year I go to Mexico to a little town called Juan Huato in Mexico. And I do that because I'm learning Spanish and my Spanish

1:04:06 teacher lives there. And it's a little town where there are almost no gringos. So nobody speaks English. So you have to immerse or you die, right? And if you go to a town like that, you see all

1:04:17 the little abuelitas, the grandmothers, they're out, you know, they're not begging, you know? They're not out begging. They're out selling tortillas and tamales and chiliquilas and whatever.

1:04:28 They're working, they're part of the economy. And the city's not shutting them down because they're making their tortillas on a comal in their home, right? The city, now, I mean, I'm not saying

1:04:42 that we shouldn't care if there's mercury in our tuna or something. But we just overdo it. I've got a friend here in Houston who ran a yoga studio in Katie, but it was in the Harris County party,

1:04:57 as I understand it, of Katie. And Harris County came and said, you know, you haven't been paying your fees because you're a healthcare-related business, your regulatory fees You know,

1:05:11 essentially they basically ran her out of business. being a yoga studio, right? When I built my house at New Braunfels, the house inspector came and said, You know, your banister is one inch too

1:05:22 high. And I said, Well, that's because my wife and I are tall. And he says, Well, it's not code. You're going to have to change it, or I'm not going to give you an occupancy certificate. And

1:05:33 so we spent another2, 000 or whatever it was and moved. The banister is one inch and then paid that guy another500 to come out and re-inspect it again. And it's that kind of crap that libertarians

1:05:45 hate, right? Libertarians do not object to the fact that if you have a monopoly that is, you know, a type of business that is where a monopoly is inevitable, right, like electricity distribution.

1:06:02 It should be regulated. They should be saying, Are you spending enough of your capital bearing your line so that the next hurricane doesn't put the city on its ass again?

1:06:14 So, You know, a libertarian thinks that competition is always better than regulation, but a libertarian acknowledges, I think, that there are situations where competition is virtually impossible,

1:06:29 and therefore, that's why we have antitrust laws, so we should enforce them. Yeah,

1:06:35 I think where I got

1:06:39 to with my, 'cause I was a Reagan conservative when I was in high school and

1:06:46 he made it cool to be an American again, right? And so I was a big Republican all, but I quickly got to the point in my life where, man, that sounds like a great idea. If we put that law in

1:06:59 place though, what could my mortal enemy do with it? And that really comes back to my mother and me being the oldest of four boys. She figured out one, she's the greatest person on the planet,

1:07:13 but two, She figured out, I can be judged during an executioner on every event in these four kids life for the rest of time, or I can just put a rule in place that makes them solve it. And so it

1:07:25 was stuff like, Mommy, there's one Snickers bar left. Chuck, you cut it in half, Kenny gets first pick. Mom, I don't want to eat there tonight. Chuck picks on Monday, you pick on Tuesday.

1:07:36 And so one of the things that I just wish that everybody that proposes something, whether it's Republican or Democrat, if you're Democrat, I'd say, okay, assume Donald Trump is making that

1:07:48 decision. And to the Republicans, I would say assume Bernie Sanders is making that decision. Right. 'Cause I think we would see it a lot of, okay, well, maybe these libertarians are on to

1:08:01 something. There's a, you know, libertarians are focusing on the process of government, not on who's pulling the lever at any one moment. I truly, truly love that. And that's why I say, hey,

1:08:13 follow the Constitution. We've just ignored so much. One of the things that I believe is that, you know, this culture war feels like we're on the path of, and boy, I tell you, we might've been

1:08:26 two inches away from it a couple of Saturdays ago of an event causing something along the lines of a civil war. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. That war war, why? Right, I mean, think

1:08:40 of how close it was, think about what 50 of America would have done if their beloved candidate had been taken from them. Do you expect that they would just sit there and take it? I'm not sure they

1:08:55 would have. I know. And so you have this world in which you have two locomotives that are coming at each other, and we ought to be looking for off-ramps, right, structural off-ramps. that the

1:09:10 Libertarian

1:09:13 Party should be, a third party in the mix would reshuffle the deck, right? So that there's a better discussion of the issues and more things trying to get resolved rather than be politicized into a

1:09:25 collision, right? But if you ask the Republican and the Democrat parties, what's your strategy for avoiding the Civil War? They would say by winning. Yeah, in other words, I'm the train

1:09:39 engineer and I'm just gonna pedal to the medal because if we're gonna have a collision and I need to be going as fast as possible,

1:09:47 right? That's what we're doing. So if, but if you look in the Constitution, there is this thing called the 10th Amendment, right? Federalism. Why should we make Washington DC be in charge of

1:09:57 everything? You know, why don't we let California do what they wanna do and let Texas do what we wanna do and let people vote with their feet? And why, I mean, that's the only way you can keep

1:10:08 this country together. Without it, we wouldn't come together in the first place. The 13 colonies wouldn't have agreed to the Constitution without the 10th Amendment, right? But then at some point,

1:10:20 like in the '60s or whatever, I can't remember which ruling it was when everybody decided the Interstate Commerce Clause trumps the 10th Amendment in every possible way. And so now nobody pays any

1:10:33 mind to

1:10:37 the 10th Amendment, right? So everything's gotta be solved in Washington But that's an off ramp that's already in the Constitution that would solve the problem. Just let the states do more things.

1:10:46 Yeah, no, a lot to be said, said for that being, I mean, could you got 50 entities that could experiment and figure out some really cool stuff? Right, if you think about it during the pandemic,

1:10:57 right? Do you really think that the same rules that make sense in New York City would make sense in Marfa? know exactly exactly. No, of course not. Exactly. Well said, Bob King. How do people

1:11:13 get in touch? How do they find out about the campaign? I have a website. I have way more stuff on that website than any politician, political consultant told me I should because I believe in

1:11:26 transparency and so everything I have is out there and it's

1:11:36 wwwbobkingforfowar. Bobkingfortexas-21org. So I'll say it one more time wwwbobkingfortexas-21org.

1:11:44 And I've got Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and I've got a young person who's putting stuff on TikTok for me. I'm not so paranoid about the Chinese. It's gonna destroy America. Yeah, I think

1:12:00 we're doing equal parts destroying them if they're truly watching all this stuff. So yeah, so I've got a website and I'm campaigning

1:12:10 Most libertarians running for Congress are running a paper campaign. I mean, many of them just scrape together enough money to pay the filing fee and that's it. They're just on there to give people

1:12:20 it. I'm raising money, I'm campaigning. I'm a retired guy, I got the whole year. I've got 12 events every month in 12 different parts of the district where I've got happy hour. I got one tonight

1:12:32 in New Braunfels. And so I'm

1:12:35 campaigning hard, I'm raising money I've raised more money

1:12:41 than all the other congressional candidates in Texas, plus the Senate candidate combined. So I'm actually raising money. The Libertarians? The Libertarians, yes. Now, admittedly, that's a low

1:12:52 bar to clear. But I'm clearing it, and the reason is that I have circles of friends. I did something of substance in my career And there are people who think, hey, Bob wouldn't be bad. Yeah,

1:13:10 and he's willing to do something we're not willing to do so well that's part of it let him let you know Let's get Mikey to eat it. Exactly Well, Bob you were cool to come on and standing invite to

1:13:23 come back anytime you want to update us on the campaign This has been fascinating check. It's been great It's fun and the time flew and it's fun. Just you know talking old times with you. Yeah, I

1:13:34 could say one more thing please did I Did not leave the oil business could have didn't love it. I left it because I wanted to do something different I think back to my time in the business and I and

1:13:47 and you know people at from other industries Asked me about the all business and I say the greatest people in the world Work in the oil business. They say why and I say well because they do deals in

1:13:57 partnership with each other Almost every deal out in the field is done in partnerships and You know if you don't behave you don't get invited to the next deal That's well said. And I think that has a

1:14:09 lot to do with the fact that, you know, I'm not talking about Exxon and Shell, they're at a different level, right? But at our level, kind of at the independent level, it's all about what kind

1:14:20 of a, you know, what kind of word, you know, your integrity is very important. And I've found a few exceptions, but for the most part, some of the greatest people in the world in the business.

1:14:32 And the one thing I'll add to that, 'cause I really like that is there's also an element of you spend all of your money up front drilling a well and then you turn it on to see what you got. And just

1:14:45 the ability to do that, some sort of optimism means generally speaking you're a positive person. And I think positive people having to do deals with each other gives you the best people on the

1:14:59 planet 'cause I believe that too. And starting out in banking, The thing I learned, you know, banking the oil and gas businesses. you not only want to do the deal, you want the other guy to be

1:15:10 glad he or she did the deal with you because you want to do another deal with them. Absolutely. Right, and so you don't want to just squeeze every last bit of juice out of every single deal because

1:15:26 if you do, there won't be a second deal. Yeah. And I think a lot of people in the business understand that too So, you know, I mean, I work for some pretty tough people. You mentioned Barry

1:15:38 Galt, tough guy. You know, JP Bryant, tough guy. Doug Fosche, tough guy. Demanding, yeah. Very demanding guy. But,

1:15:47 you know, none of them wanted the other side of any trade to hate them. No, that's right. And I think that describes, that's, I think our, when I say our industry, I think the oil and gas

1:16:02 industry is different. I mean, in so many regards, we're like the farmers who after they plow the field in the morning, go to the feed store and talk about which fertilizer is working or whatever.

1:16:14 Because does it really hurt them to let the other guy know, hey, I tried this and it works, you know? The oil and gas business is a lot like that. No, I think that's right. And we could do a

1:16:25 whole podcast on this. The other thing I think too, that melds in with all this that creates the characters that you and I love and are talking about too is it's also incredibly home. We've all

1:16:37 been rich, we've all been poor. I always say, people say, Why is Houston so great? And I go, Cause the CEO of an oil and gas company'sbest friend is almost inevitably the janitor. And when

1:16:51 times are going, Well, the janitor's flyingaround on the private plane with the CEO, going to see a UFC event somewhere. And when times are bad, the CEO's sleeping on the janitor's couch and is

1:17:01 grateful the janitor took him in. the, uh, you got to stay humble. Exactly. The good lords in charge of this, not us, you know, we, we do the best we can and let the good Lord be in charge of

1:17:13 the outcomes. And I think there's a, there's a whole lot of truth in that and a whole lot of people in this business who look at it that way. Amen. Thanks for coming on Bob. Thank you Chuck.