In this episode, Ron talks about the government not being shut down, the deal to keep the government open, and how to deal with the snow and ice in Texas. He also talks about how the government was able to avoid a government shutdown.
00:19:08.440And I just want to make sure that never leaves your mind when you're looking at who to vote for come this spring in primaries or this November.
00:19:18.040So let's just make sure we remember that.
00:19:20.340Now, let's talk a little bit about the next subject and immigration.
00:19:24.760We can't, we can't let that go far because it's something that's on the news every day.
00:19:28.480It's something we're thinking about every day.
00:19:29.760It's something, it's probably the biggest thing that President Trump ran on was cleaning up, first of all, shutting down our border, which he's done a great job of that.
00:19:38.020Uh, and there even been Democrat senators that have talked about that and also to get rid of primarily initially, anyway, I should say initially, not primarily initially the criminal element that of the illegals that are here.
00:19:54.880And these are people that not only broke the law by crossing into our country illegally.
00:20:00.780They also broke the law by committing an additional crime or either they're wanted for a crime back in their home country.
00:20:09.780And, uh, so the president, as you know, uh, week or two ago sent border czar Tom Homan in to Minnesota.
00:20:17.800Tom been in this business for 40 years.
00:20:23.340He's actually worked under five presidents.
00:20:25.720In fact, President Obama gave him a medal for his work in, uh, securing our border and, and, and, uh, making sure that we got, that we deported illegal aliens.
00:20:39.040And we've talked about this before, but President Obama deported more illegal aliens than any president in history.
00:20:45.780Now, Trump's probably going to surpass that, but 3.2 million.
00:20:51.060And I never heard one word of complaint about that from the Democrat elected officials or the media.
00:21:00.500I mean, that's just tells you how sick our media has gotten, uh, especially the mainstream media, how sick they have gotten on unwilling to be fair in their reporting.
00:21:15.640And they can be where they want on those, but in your everyday reporting, it is just, it's not even worth paying any attention to.
00:21:23.800And that's why you listen to podcasts like this.
00:21:25.760That's why you look at other information to try to sort through the facts and it's hard to do it.
00:21:30.580But, uh, but anyway, so Homan has, has gone there and he is in Minnesota kind of making sure we get things on the right track.
00:21:41.280Cause nobody likes the fact that two people have passed away because of this and ICE officers have been hurt and they've been ridiculed and what have you.
00:21:50.040But once some of the media has said that, uh, this means it's that Trump is surrendering to all the protests and the riots, but let's see what Mr. Homan has to say.
00:26:49.500And those can be easily taken by ICE with just a little cooperation.
00:26:55.600And Tom Holman believes that we're moving towards that.
00:26:59.000He says that Attorney General Ellison has agreed to notify ICE of release dates for criminal public safety risks, allowing ICE to take custody of those safely for everyone involved.
00:27:14.720So if you don't want ICE in your community, then encourage your elected officials and your police force to cooperate with them.
00:27:21.760This past weekend, 650 criminal aliens were picked up by ICE in other states, and you didn't hear anything about it from the media.
00:27:33.380That's because they were done in the manner I talked about a minute ago, that there was a detainer.
00:27:39.320ICE went to the jail, picked them up, took them back to their detention centers, or they deported them, whatever it is that they do at that particular time.
00:27:47.720That's the way it should go, and I'm hopeful that people around the country, if they want violence to go down, that they will pay attention to that.
00:27:55.680So, again, this immigration thing is going to go on for a while now.
00:28:01.100Biden let in 14 million people, didn't vet hardly any of them.
00:28:05.360And so you're going to see this immigration enforcement going on until the problem is eradicated.
00:28:11.860And, again, I'll call on Congress, Senate, and the House, get together, get some better immigration laws that allow good people to get here easier and bad people to never get here.
00:29:05.900But essentially what he's saying is that we are going to guard federal property, but it's up to you, the states, to guard your own property and protect your own citizens.
00:29:17.140And we were happy to come in there, but you've got to ask us.
00:29:20.960And he also puts in there, you've got to say please, which is just the way Trump is, which is kind of funny.
00:29:25.920I don't really think that he means that, but I do think that he says, look, we're not going to put our people in harm's way when you're not even going to support us.
00:29:33.140So if you ask us, Democrat states and mayors, we'll help you, but we're not doing it.
00:29:38.980In fact, he told Kristi Noem not to do it unless they come to us and ask us.
00:29:44.160He also said there will be no spitting in the faces of our officers.
00:29:47.760There will be no punching or kicking the headlights of our cars.
00:29:50.800There will be no rock or brick throwing at our vehicles or at our patriot warriors.
00:29:54.900If, if it is, those people will suffer an equal or more consequence.
00:30:01.240I mean, that's pretty straightforward, I would say, right?
00:30:04.540You just, no way you're going to do it.
00:30:06.580And they're also going to protect federal property.
00:30:08.800Just in Oregon, just this past few days, there was a federal building that they went in there and vandalized and what have you.
00:30:17.440And he's just not going to allow that.
00:30:19.620And you remember back in 2020 when they went into that federal building in Oregon or it's a courthouse or something.
00:30:26.140And, you know, basically, you know, set up shop in there, set fires.
00:31:12.640Hopefully you're on the way to getting rid of as many of those.
00:31:16.280Maybe you keep one just for emergency purposes.
00:31:18.480But if you're on the way to getting rid of those, like Dave Ramsey talks about and other financial people talk about, I certainly agree with that.
00:31:25.560I talk about that in my book, Life Lessons from the Little Red Wagon.
00:31:29.140But what he says is that he wants the federal government to cap, which they could do, interest rates on credit cards to 10%.
00:31:37.040You know, most credit card interest rates are 17, 18, 19, even 20-something percent.
00:31:50.980And I just want to make sure you understand this, is that the reason credit card interest rates are at 20-something percent is because the consumer laws very much, relating to credit cards, very much favor the consumer.
00:32:05.800Meaning that you see all these programs where, hey, I'll help you reduce your credit card balance, or I'll make it to where you're not paying interest on it and all that.
00:32:16.900Well, all of those things reduces how much credit card companies actually collect, and then people just don't pay.
00:32:26.660They file bankruptcy or whatever and just don't pay their credit cards off.
00:32:30.140So in order for credit cards to make what they consider to be a reasonable profit, they're not making 20% off of all their credit card charges, okay?
00:32:41.220Because remember, some people pay them off at the end of every month, okay?
00:32:45.200Any credit card I've had, that's what I've always done, so there's no interest on it.
00:32:49.940Some people don't pay at all, file bankruptcy, or some people get these reduced scenarios where they don't have to pay back as much as they owed.
00:32:57.760When all that's said and done, the actual profit they make is quite a bit less than that, all right?
00:33:04.120But it allows people that don't even have great credit scores to obtain credit and to compensate for the fact that the credit card companies know that some of them are not going to pay.
00:33:17.640They charge a higher interest rate on all of it so that they can get down to what they think is a reasonable amount.
00:33:25.560And you and I could agree or disagree with them on whether their profit margin is reasonable or not.
00:33:29.520So if you cap it at 10%, which I'm totally fine with because, you know, I don't use the credit cards for interest.
00:33:39.000I don't take interest on my cards or whatever.
00:33:41.000But the problem, if you cap it at 10%, for a lot of the nation is it will reduce the number of people that can get credit because the credit card companies will have to only give credit cards to the people whose credit scores, whose capability of repaying are much higher than they are today.
00:34:01.200And long-term, that's probably a good thing for the country, but short-term, there would be a lot of people that could not get credit, and that would have a negative impact on them and on the economy.
00:34:15.420So when you read those things, just make sure you look at the whole picture.
00:34:19.260I'm not saying we should or shouldn't do that.
00:34:21.480I'm just saying you need to understand what the effects of that are and make sure that if you want to opine on that to your congressperson or whatever,
00:34:29.840that you understand that, that you may be in a position to where if they take it down to 10%, that you can't even get a credit card because right now your credit worthiness isn't good enough for that credit card company to take a risk on you.
00:34:45.960And so just to understand that's the way things work.
00:36:03.920The first one, when did you know that Allie was going to be such an inspiration to many?
00:36:08.280Well, you know, I would not be telling you the truth if I said, oh, I knew that early on.
00:36:13.860Now, I did know early on that she was going to share her opinion with Minnie because she's always been one to share her opinion, even as a little girl.
00:36:24.680How that was going to end up growing and maturing, I really didn't know.
00:36:30.360I felt like when she, and I've talked about this story before, when she spoke at her college's graduation, I could just see it in her eyes that it was like a light bulb moment that, okay, this is what I'm supposed to be doing.
00:36:47.700And so I guess from that point, I had a feeling that this was something she was going to pursue.
00:36:52.460Uh, I don't think any of us knew that it would grow to what it's grown and what I think it will continue to grow to over the next several years.
00:37:01.140Um, but I, and I think part of that, honestly, I will give a little bit of credit to her mom and myself is that we, with all of our kids, we never told them things they could not do.
00:37:57.760That's the way things they, that's the way things should work.
00:37:59.800It's also important though, moms and dads, that you live a life of integrity and character so that when you go to someone and saying, Hey, my daughter's interested in this, uh, I know that you're involved in that business.
00:39:02.400What are your parenting tips for raising strong adults who don't walk away from their faith?
00:39:06.760I think the only thing that you can do is that, um, when your kids are young, that you expose them to your faith and that you teach them the basic values of your faith and the tenants of your faith.
00:39:19.940And then as they become older and, and, uh, they become, you know, adults, you've got the foundation in them.
00:39:42.840And, um, but the foundation was set that it brought me back to him later in my teen years that, you know, when Lisa and I were dating and what have you.
00:39:54.560So, um, I think you have to build the foundation and then it'll be up to their own free will, whether they leave that or whether they never leave it or whether they leave it and come back between them and God, it will be through them.
00:40:08.680Now you can still have influence through all that period of time and they need to see you living a life, uh, that's committed to Christ.
00:40:15.900But I do believe the foundation early is the key point.
00:40:20.000If you haven't had the, didn't give the foundation early because you didn't come to Christ till later and your kids were already born, then there's no, no, no time like the present to get that started.
00:40:54.680I think the thing that you do is a lot of the same.
00:40:57.900Some of the things are the same is that you build a foundation of faith with them, making sure that they're in church regularly, making sure that you guys are talking about things that are related to your, to your faith and to your value system.
00:41:10.920And that you're living that you're not just talking about that, but also think you're, you're, and this is where you're not going to be popular, but you have to limit their exposure to the extent that you can to some of the outside world things, you know, social media.
00:41:26.600I think you have to really limit that.
00:41:28.240I'm proud of our oldest, his, uh, uh, our oldest son and his wife.
00:41:32.880I mean, they have a young teenage son and getting ready to be a second teenager in the house.
00:41:37.740And they, they have really, really been good about restricting their access to social media.
00:41:43.500Now they won't be able to do that forever, but the longer you restrict it, if during that time you're building into them, their own value system, they'll be better equipped to stand up for themselves when they are exposed to it.
00:41:56.300So you can't just restrict them during the time you're restricting them.
00:42:01.460Building into them, the, the value system that you believe in, that's based on your faith and, and may, and hopefully they'll have come to Christ by then that they'll have, they will have been saved and they'll be wanting to walk with the Lord.
00:42:16.960And so, uh, that's what you have to do.
00:42:19.400It can't just be a vacuum because if you don't, if you just restrict it and don't do anything, then they're just going to be hungry, more hungry for it, more hungry for it.
00:42:26.280And when it's exposed, it could get, uh, definitely out of hand.
00:42:31.760How is capitalism, has capitalism also been corrupted?
00:42:35.620It's the divide between the rich and the poor problem.
00:42:38.780You know, I think it's always been a problem that in, in, in, in the Bible says that, you know, Jesus said the poor will always be with you.
00:42:46.300And I think what, what happens, there's always going to be people depending on how you determine rich.
00:42:53.560And I think we're talking about financially here is there's always going to be people that have more and people that have less.
00:43:05.700In socialist and communist societies, it works the exact same way.
00:43:11.720If you don't believe me, go to places like Iran or places like Russia or places like Cuba or Venezuela, as it was, meaning that there are a few people at the top.
00:43:28.040The problem with those is that it's a much smaller group and it's all government controlled.
00:43:32.360There are a few people at the top that have unbelievable wealth.
00:43:36.080In fact, some people believe Vladimir Putin's the richest man in the world.
00:43:40.140Now he can't go anywhere to spend his money, but he's the richest man in the world.
00:43:43.720And then the rest of the people live on a very low substance level.
00:43:47.660There's no middle class in most of these places.
00:43:50.960And so therefore don't think that capitalism is the issue.
00:44:18.780However, it is the best form that we have because without that representative government, power just gets more powerful.
00:44:26.520As you can tell in these countries that have been taken over by what amounts to be dictators.
00:44:31.900So we should offer as much opportunity as we can for people to move up in their socioeconomic status.
00:44:40.520One of the challenges we've had here in the United States is we've tried to give handouts instead of hand ups.
00:44:49.260And all we've done is create a vicious cycle of people staying on government entitlement.
00:44:55.740And until we change those programs to incentivize people to get out as opposed to stay in, then we're going to have the continue to have the divide.
00:45:19.340I think because they have because their first answer is their political answer in their mind.
00:45:28.260And then they look at how can I form everything else around that?
00:45:32.780So if my political belief is abortion, you know, government handouts, whatever, no borders, then then I look to whatever else I'm viewing or learning with that prism.
00:47:40.680Well, of course, she probably never read Allie's book.
00:47:44.060And secondly, she totally misinterpreted it.
00:47:46.700And if you haven't listened to Allie's podcast episode response to that, you need to do that.
00:47:52.840But, you know, listen, if Hillary and Bill want to come sit on the couch over here, I'm sure Allie and I would have a good interview and debate with them.
00:48:00.820You know, just a couple of fellow Arkansans getting back together.
00:48:29.300Sometimes things that we are heavily involved in really aren't about us at all.
00:48:34.260Even though we might think they are, they're really not.
00:48:36.900A good example of that is when I started the legislature in 2013, one of the big issues for me was being able to give parents school choice, especially for those that have kids that have disabilities.
00:48:51.500Because I just saw in many, not all, so don't misquote me, many of our public school environments did not have the ability or maybe even the desire sometime to provide the services necessary for kids with disabilities to learn as much as they could and go as far as they can in the education system.
00:49:12.080And so I filed a bill, along with my good friend, Giovanni Capriglione, we filed a bill related to school choice in 2013.
00:49:23.820It didn't get out, didn't go anywhere.