How Elites Robbed YOU of the American Dream | Ep 278

Foreign. [Music] the American dream lives not only in the hearts and minds of our own countrymen. [Music] hearts and minds of millions of the world's people in both free and oppressed societies who look to us for leadership. As long as that dream lives. [Music] as long as we continue to defend it, America has a future, and all mankind has reason to hope. The American dream, it's an idea that is inspiring, one that is based entirely around individual freedom. Thousands of immigrants are pouring across our border every single day with the hope of attaining that famous American dream. [Music] So perhaps someone should tell them that the American dream is dying, thanks to the Biden administration. The cornerstone of American freedom, the idea that any man or any woman can find success here, just play by the rules, believe in the individual and the Bill of Rights, that has never been further away than it is now. Tonight, I'll show you all the ways the far left has taken a figurative knife and stabbed the American dream straight into the hearts of all. Tonight, how the elites robbed you of the American dream. Well, hello America. Before we get started, uh, because I've got some stats that you are not going to hear anyplace else. A look at our country that the mainstream media and pretty much everybody would like to make sure you never see. But before we get into this, I, um, I want you to know there's something happening in America. I don't know what it is yet, but something is happening, and it is good. Anheuser-Busch, uh, it's down almost 30 percent now. This week, it's getting worse and worse and worse for Anheuser-Busch. That's a win. Everyone said, "This, it'll just blow over." I don't think it will. I think some people have made a decision: enough is enough. We also heard today, um, that, uh, Target, who just last week said, "No, we're all in DEI and and all of this transgender stuff. We love it. It's good for business." Well, uh, on Monday, we all gathered and said, uh, "Did you see what's going on with Target?" They're now scrambling to move it all to the back. They have canceled some of their contracts. Well, they canceled the contract with the literal Satan worshiper that was designing Satan clothing for kids. Um, and they think it's going to blow over. If you are a woman, you're going to make all the difference on this, because that's who they target: women. And, uh, you, if you continue to stand up, we have a turning tide in America. This will make a huge difference. Adidas, I mean, sorry, Nike never paid for anything. Coca-Cola never paid anything. But hopefully, America has hit its limit. And if it hasn't happened yet, it's about to. Let me show you some things. You have probably seen images like these of migrants in El Paso and other places along the U.S.-Mexico border. Why are they clamoring to cross into the U.S.? I know, I know, President Biden's policies have created an extra urgency. Yeah, yeah, but I'm talking the ultimate reason they're trying to get in. It is because of some version of the American dream. Now, let me just say, a lot of people say they're coming in because it's too dangerous in their country. Oh, I want to get to the danger here in America. They want to get out of their country because it doesn't make sense, it's not working, not working for their family. They can't grow, they can't live their dreams. Unfortunately for the tens of thousands of, uh, migrants that are trying to get in, they're getting a bait and switch from this president. He may be propping up the door open for illegal immigration, but here's what Team Biden is not telling migrants. This administration is actively working to crush the American dream, and that's why he's opened the door. He's crushing it for everyone, citizens and non-citizens alike.

Let me take you back to 1964. This is the year that I was born. President Lyndon Johnson declared his war on poverty. This is what created food stamps, expanded Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. It increased housing assistance, a huge list of all kinds of other programs. That war, which was supposed to eradicate poverty, has cost the U.S. 23 trillion dollars. Now, even left-wing media now admits LBJ's war on poverty was a total failure. But are we cutting any of these things? Joe Biden doesn't see the failure in the socialism of LBJ and FDR. He sees instead a role model. More than anything, Biden wants to be listed next to his heroes as someone who saved America with his own massive government programs. Columbia professor John McWhorter once described the failure of the war on poverty like this. He said, "LBJ's Great Society sowed the seeds for a black identity based on being bad, treating it as enlightened to pull poor black women out of the job market and pay them to have children instead. Generations of young people grew up in fatherless communities in which full-time employment, I.E. conformity to a long-established American norm, was rare. LBJ's war on poverty destroyed upward mobility for multiple generations of black American community." Now, the Biden administration, along with other far-left leaders across the nation, are determined to have the same disastrous effect on America's giant middle class.

There have been different iterations of the American dream over the years. There is no single definition of the idea. Before FDR, the American dream was to come here, live your life, make your decisions, reap the rewards or pay for the mistakes. That was the American dream: to be free. But FDR changed that. He wanted to make it about owning your own stuff. Generally, the American dream is understood to be the freedom to strive, to improve your situation in life. One of the prerequisites of the American dream is having safe communities to live in. But we don't have that anymore, do we? Since the George Floyd incident, three years ago, Democrats have been systematically allowing crime to thrive all across the nation, all over the U.S., but especially in blue states that promote the "defund the police" nonsense. Police officers are leaving and retiring in huge numbers. Los Angeles has lost 700 police officers, and it had five years ago. They are now offering rental subsidies to try to recruit new cops. Baltimore lost almost 300 cops last year. Staffing for the Washington D.C. police force is at historic lows. Nationwide, there were 42 percent more resignations and 23 percent more retirements in the year after George Floyd to compare to the year before it. All of this means, of course, that a tidal wave of crime is slamming the nation. Chicago's murder rate is at a 25-year high. They weren't good to start. Portland's homicide rate is up 207 percent since 2019. In Washington D.C.'s, just in the last 12 months, robberies are up 12 percent, homicides 15 percent, sexual abuse cases up 48 percent. Last year, U.S. postal workers were robbed 496 times, often at gunpoint. That is a 78 percent increase over the previous year. I will tell you, just last, just this morning, I was reading a story from my old hometown of the Seattle area. There's a very Bill Gates lives on Lake Washington, right here at the end of Lake Washington. He's living up the street, maybe three miles. It's so dangerous that the postal service will no longer deliver mail to that zip code. It's, they're destroying everything. Outside of Los Angeles, last week, a homeless man got his hand chopped off by some other guy wielding a sword. The insanity is real, and it is growing. San Francisco, long been the gold standard for the hellhole you get when progressive policies are allowed to fester. 20 major retailers have closed shop and fled downtown San Francisco since 2020. Whole Foods closed its downtown store after just one year in operation. During that year, their employees placed 568 emergency calls to report everything from people bringing in weapons to people taking a crap on the floor. Last year's National Retail Federation security survey found Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland with the most retail thefts in the nation. So many businesses are uprooting in San Francisco that the city now has 18.4 million square feet of empty office space. Yet, in the face of so much crime and devastation, what, what about the solutions for progressive leaders? What do they offer? Well, things like LA's Department of Transportation is now proposing that unarmed civilians take over traffic enforcement duties instead of cops. Good luck with that one. Last year, the U.S. homeless population reached its highest number on record. California has over half of the nation's unsheltered homeless population, half. And the highest poverty rate of any state in the U.S. In California, Democratic solutions, they usually involve, uh, tossing, you know, stacks of cash onto a dumpster fire. And that strategy strangely continues to fail. LA just passed a mansion tax last November. It was supposed to be a tax of between four and six percent on all housing sales over five million dollars, and that was going to go into a fund to help subsidize housing for the poor and homeless. But guess what? LA's red wealthy residents, they rushed to complete their house sale before the tax started last month. So how many homes have been sold? Well, they sold two, uh, and, uh, that that raised 528 thousand dollars, you know, for the affordable housing fund. It's funny how progressive elites vote for plans that they would avoid having to participate in. California is marketed as a progressive paradise. It's a hellhole. It has a 32 billion dollar deficit this year, and its reparations committee, which is commissioned by Governor Gavin Newsom, recommends giving as much as 360 thousand dollars to every qualified black resident. That would cost the state 800 billion dollars, which is well over two times the state's total annual budget. Adding crime and homeless surge is the drug crisis. The latest official data shows over 105,000 Americans died from drug overdoses just last year. New drug called Tranq puts people into a zombie-like stage. See him? It's a veterinary tranquilizer. It's often cut with cocaine, heroin, and fentanyl. It leaves people dazed and hunched over, often with rotting skin. And the cops in LA say they can't do anything about it because technically it's legal. Progressives have gone insane. I have a question for America: Are you done yet? I mean, look at just what I've presented. Oh, and there's so much more. Look at what I just presented. That should be enough for any rational person, that's not playing politics, just to look at the stats and go, "That's not working. Got to stop doing that." How about this? They think that decriminalizing things like drug possession will somehow curtail the drug crisis and magically make criminals behave. Two weeks ago, Senator Corey Booker blocked a Republican bill that would have reduced the amount of fentanyl that a dealer has to possess to possess to get a minimum five-year prison sentence. Why? Because according to Booker, we already, quote, "incarcerate more people than any country on planet Earth." Who cares? Who cares? Despite Chicago being known as the murder capital of the U.S., a George Soros-backed group is still lobbying Chicago's mayor to further defund the police and eliminate a thousand vacant police positions. Now, sure, just because, you know, there were 697 homicides last year, you know, that doesn't scream, "We need lots more cops." No, I hear, "We need fewer cops." What are you insane? At least one veteran prosecutor in Chicago has seen enough of the madness. He's moving his family out of state. In his resignation letter, he torched the state's policies. He said, and I quote, "The simple fact is this state and county have set themselves on a course to disaster. And the worst part is that the agency for whom I work has backed literally every policy change that has the predictable and predicted outcome of more crime and more people getting hurt. I've been through enough stupid States Attorney policies before, but this office's complete failure to even think for a moment before rushing into one popular political agenda after another has put my family directly in harm's way." Have you had enough yet? The unavoidable consequences that we are witnessing in real time requires a populist to stand up. It is an increase in crime of all kinds, businesses and families piling up stakes, the bodies piling up, the, the whole, the whole time with the state's attorney who insists that there's nothing to see here. Look, it's getting better and better. Must be somebody else's fault. Whose fault? A lot of Americans are fleeing Democrat-controlled cities for safer communities. How long is it before those communities, which are being overrun by people in these blue states that voted for all of this crap, how long before their cities start to go down? Their state starts to go and fall the same way? That they say, "Get the hell out." And don't think that hasn't happened before. During the Great Depression, that's exactly what happened. California didn't want all the riffraff moving in. So California put armed guards on the border to turn the Okies around. "Go back, Mr. Farmer. We have no place for you." Okay. So the American dream, crime is making it so you can't have the American dream. But there's other parts of the American dream. Let's check their health when we come back.

Foreign. Okay, so you work hard for the money you earn, and you know, if you're like me, you have to spend that money, and you, you prefer to spend it on places that you know are American, they're hiring Americans, they're not, they hate, you know, the destruction of their country. This is, it's not nationalism, that's healthy patriotism. And also, it's a quality thing. Traditionally, things that are made here in America last longer, work better, and set the standard for the rest of the world. That's one of the reasons why I love partnering with companies like Grip6. With Grip6, you're getting true American experience, products that you can count on. They make all kinds of products, but just take their socks, for instance. You're supporting the American ranchers who raise the specially bred sheep that produce the modern wool. The American manufacturers who wash the wool, process it, weave it into socks that'll keep your feet warm in the winter, cool in the summer. The American business owners who have accepted the risk that comes along with using only American-made products and American labor. Let's reward them when we can. Grip6.com, Beck. Grip6.com. I'm going to show you the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. What it has for an entry for the American dream. There is so much to take apart on this. Listen to this: "American Dream: A happy way of living." Are you happy? Are you happy? "A happy way of living that is thought of by many Americans as something that can be achieved by anyone in the U.S., especially by working hard and becoming successful." Notice it uses the word successful. Working hard, not so you are rich, not so you're famous, but so you're successful. And working hard is a good part of that definition too. Most people with a healthy understanding of the American dream get it. Hard work is a major part of the equation because work with our hands, work on something meaningful, makes a difference to us as a human being. But Democrats, led by the Biden administration, are attacking the idea of work. It is clear to any honest observer that Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty programs created an entitlement structure for America's poor that has had an especially devastating effect on black Americans. However, President Biden is leading the charge now to extend that entitlement structure to the middle class. After taking office, one of the first major bills he got passed with Democrat-controlled Congress was his American Family's Plan, and it is a plan to destroy America's families. It provided federal unemployment insurance bonus of three hundred dollars per month for many workers. That amount gave them more in government benefits than they made at their job. So why would I go to work? It is the state chipping away at the incentive or the need to work. Even FDR understood this. You had to have work, fair, or it destroys a man. We have shattered people all over the country, and nobody seems to notice. What Democrats don't want you to know is that in 2019, just before the pandemic hit, the American dream was working for more Americans than at any other time in history. Median household income grew 6.8 percent in 2019, which was actually the largest annual increase on record. In fact, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and foreign-born workers held higher increases in median household than whites did. Poverty fell to 10.5 percent, the lowest level since 1959. Then 2020 happened and reset everything. The left was able to get all of this wild economic activity and gave people the incentive, you know, to work. It got that back under control. California is always the progressive incubator where terrible ideas are developed before they're spread elsewhere. So now California has passed a bill that would give unemployment benefits of 300 per week to illegal immigrants who have been laid off. I have to tell you, if I were living in California and I knew they were taking three hundred dollars out of my tax money and giving it to people who are here illegally, I think I'd blow a gasket. I would leave. Now, they're calling this the "Safety Net for All Workers Act." I call it the biggest marketing campaign ever for illegal immigration. It is the new socialist American dream: Come here illegally, where you'll be given a place to stay, and you'll get paid not to work, and you don't ever have to become a citizen in their debt. Ceiling plan, House Republicans, including, included work requirements for federal benefits. Okay, that's too crazy. I don't think it is. It's actually just reinstating pre-pandemic work requirements for able-bodied people to qualify for things like food stamps and federal housing assistance. We stopped it because of the pandemic, and now they want to make it permanent. But predictably, Democrats and their media partners are distorting this provision, like NBC framing the policy as making it "harder for older residents to qualify for food assistance." It is the same tired "Republicans are trying to kill Grandma" argument. Why wouldn't Democrats be pro-work? Because people might become self-sufficient and might not need the government as much anymore. And that is a nightmare for somebody who wants to grow the government and keep getting elected over and over and over again. And their attack, their attack on work has wider implications, like, for instance, labor shortage. Last month, a small business optimism index fell to its lowest level in a decade. Small business owners listed the labor market as their top concern, with 45 percent reporting job openings that they cannot fill. In America, the, the quintessential thing was people in the depression selling pencils or apples or anything they could. Here we have businesses begging for workers, and Americans? Are you kidding me? I'm getting off this, uh, I mean, Uncle Sam has a nice teeth. I'm gonna suck on that thing all day long. Inflation and interest rates are also beating down small businesses. Short-term loan interest rates are 8.5 percent. That's the highest since 2007. High interest rates have helped cause what the Wall Street Journal calls a month-long cascade of white-collar layoffs. We're not even talking about the banks yet. After more than a year of the Federal Reserve raising interest rates at the fastest clip in 40 years, U.S. job openings are now at their lowest level in two years. But that's by design. To be able to control inflation, you have to suck some of the money back in and stop people from spending money. So they're collapsing the economy to slow it down so you don't have money to buy things, you don't have money to spend on things. So they're hurting you. And at the same time, they're spending money in Washington like it's going out of style. Buying a house has been one of the main components of the American dream. Why? Because it's the one thing that you can do, you can buy, hold it, and you can end up with a lot of money after 25, 30 years. And the house you grew up in is worth a lot more today than it was. But Team Biden's wild spending, inflation, and the highest mortgage rate since 2002 have put that part of the dream out of the reach of most Americans. The current rate of over seven percent is twice as high as it was at the beginning of last year. At the end of last month, sales of existing homes were down over 23 percent from this time last year. Americans are already under massive amounts of household debt. The total just passed 17 trillion dollars for the very first time. The new Census Bureau numbers last week show 38.5 percent of U.S. adults having trouble just to pay their bills, almost 50 percent an increase from two years ago. Yet, rather than using government to remove obstacles so you can do what you need to do for the American dream, the Biden administration keeps adding new obstacles. Just a few weeks ago, a new Federal Housing Finance Agency rule went into effect that charges higher fees to mortgage borrowers with higher credit scores and it lowers the fees for those with the worst credit scores. They're making it more expensive for the people who play by the rules and work hard and struggle to make sure they're paying every debt back. You have good credit to buy a house? Well, it's going to be more expensive. All in the name of equity, of course. Now, I seem to remember that passing out home loans like candy with people with poor credit was basically what caused the 2008 financial meltdown. Are these people just supposed to be the party of progress or insanity? After a quick break, some more ways Team Biden is waging war on the American dream, but it's all for your own good, of course.

Foreign. I don't know if you saw Franklin Graham's speech. He gave. I read about it. I read it on the air today. It's so good. He's talking about evil being unleashed in this nation. We have to stand up and stand with God and stand for the good things in life. Amen. Amen. I want to talk to you about people who have been doing this before when it was still very, very unpopular. Pre-born is doing the work of God as they save babies and love moms. This is something that Tony and I got involved in, and I am so proud to have them on our program and to be personally involved with them. They, they are a network of clinics that has rescued over 200,000 babies by introducing their moms to their babies through ultrasounds. They don't receive any government funding. They're completely dependent on you and me. And together, we are building an army of life to stand against the principalities of darkness. There is one way to gain favor, and that is turn our face back to God. But God is looking at the slaughter we're doing to all of his children. How can he help us if we're not on his side? Preborn.com, Glenn. Preborn.com, Glenn. Or dial pound 250 and say the keyword baby and make a donation. This is exciting. Excited that we're going to be able to, um, have joint, a joint office referring to our ability to help local communities roll out electric vehicles. It makes sense, right? I mean, the, uh, is the future of driving? And that part of transportation is electric, then you can't separate transportation, complete energy. Tell me about your experience of driving this electric vehicle. It is, uh, pretty zippy, actually. And I noticed as we're driving, people are glancing longingly. We're turning some heads. Yes. This president wanting to make sure that we as a country have decided that we want this industry in the United States. And I may, I could, I, hmm, wait a minute. As a country, we have decided that we want this industry in the United States. Did you decide that? Because I didn't. I wasn't even asked. I wasn't asked. Did we vote on this, that we're going to go all electric? Because I thought electricity was dirty. Well, it is. So how are we going to? Because I think we would have had a debate. I would have noticed. With all of the current economic pressures Americans are dealing with right now, I think most people, they just really want a super reliable vehicle that doesn't cost as much as a house. I'm just saying, I don't care if the car runs on cow patties, as long as cow patties are plentiful and cheap and convenient to refuel. But electric vehicles don't offer any of that at the moment. Yet the White House is absolutely obsessed with forcing electric vehicles onto the nation. It's another way that they're tearing down the American dream, targeting the car you rely on every day. And it's not like they have the plan all laid out. It's just like, you just have to walk through the doors. They don't, they don't. The U.S. Postal Service has started to convert its fleet of vehicles to EVs. In March, it ordered over 9,000 EVs and 14,000 charging stations. And you thought the mail was slow before. This is all part of Biden's executive order that all federal vehicles must be zero emission by 2035. Well, the good news is, ain't going to be getting visited by those IRS agents now, because Kamala needed something to do. Biden sent her out to promote the administration's plan to spend five billion dollars over five years to purchase all new electric school buses, which no one is asking for. No, not even on the far left. Nobody is. I love electric school buses. I just love them for so many reasons. Maybe because I went to school on a school bus. Raise your hand if you went to school on a school bus. Right, right. You raise your hand if you're a complete, if that doesn't make you fall in love with electric school buses, I just can't help you. Now, I just mentioned in the previous segment how 40 percent of Americans are struggling to make ends meet every single month. But this administration wants you to stop killing the planet with your reliable gas car and replace it with an electric vehicle that costs an average of sixty-four thousand dollars. Yeah. And, uh, that's about 33 percent more than a gas vehicle. But they say, "Oh, there's going to be all kinds of deals from the government." That's in, but we're paying for that. The average American cannot deal with a car payment of 850 to 950 a month. Auto loan rates are already at their highest point in 15 years. The average car payment in America is 730 dollars a month, which is the highest on record. Auto loan delinquencies of over 60 days also hit an all-time high during the first quarter of this year. Do you think that maybe that's saying we want more expensive cars, or maybe we can't afford the car you're trying to get rid of, let alone the one that's a third more expensive? But it's going to cost you less to fill it up. You, you can afford to buy an EV, okay? Because it's going to save you all kinds of money. That's the promise. Uh, you're not gonna have to buy expensive gas anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, sir, unfortunately, researchers found at the end of last year, have you heard this from anyone? At the end of last year, because of the rising cost of electricity, it was actually cheaper to fuel a gas car than charge an EV. EVs also come with additional costs, like, you know, installing a charging station near home. Don't worry, that's 2,700 bucks. You got that laying around? You won't even miss it. If you need to replace your EV's battery, battery, which is going to start to happen here soon, it is basically replacing the entire base of your car, which only costs between five thousand and twenty-two thousand dollars. Hell, at that, buy a Ferrari, man. All of this adds up to the fact that an EV is not a practical solution for most Americans. But the left refuses to acknowledge that most Americans just can't afford to prioritize climate change over putting food on the table. I wish they'd eat bugs. Cheap and plentiful energy has always been the key factor in pursuing the American dream. But the Biden administration is crippling us on that front as well. Just a few weeks ago, the EPA rolled out yet another set of new regulations that are clearly intended to shut down coal and gas-fired power plants, which together produce 60 percent of the nation's electricity. You think electricity is expensive now? Wait until they reduce what we're making by 60 percent. Under the new rules, plants must reduce their carbon emissions by 90 percent between 2035 and 2040 or be shut down. Now, how are they supposed to do that? What kind of good carbon capture? You know, that tech nut really is basically where you build a giant butterfly net and scoop up all the carbon, uh, particles billowing out of your plant, and then you bury it underground where, I guess, I don't know, in a million years it turns into diamonds or something like that. But guess what? Carbon capture is unproven technology. It is expensive to build, and most of all, currently not one single power plant in the U.S. has it. So guess who's gonna bear the brunt of that cost to capture all of that carbon? You, in the form of even higher electricity prices. But if we all leave maps for our great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren, they'll know where to find those diamonds someday. One recent report finds that electricity produced by a plant outfitted with carbon capture will be one and a half to two times as expensive. So, if you're keeping score here, the White House is phasing out gasoline cars, the only kind of car that Americans can afford. Instead, they want everybody to have an EV plugged into an electricity grid that they just crippled with insane new EPA rules. Oh, and if the power is still on in your neighborhood in 10 years, it'll cost you double what you pay now. One analyst calculated the batteries needed to back up America's reliable wind and solar power generation, it would cost at least the equivalent of America's GDP, 23 trillion dollars. Give you some perspective. Let me go back to the beginning of this. How much was that doggie in the window? For President Johnson, 23 trillion dollars since 1964 to today. Wow. We're having a hard time funding that. Where are we going to get the new 23 trillion dollars? Even if they're off by several trillion, this Net Zero path that Team Biden has the nation on is unsustainable. Unsustainable. And if these policies aren't crippling enough, well, we got, you know what? Take the gun, shoot America in the house, and take the cannoli. The American dream has a new long list of new regulations on your household as well. The Department of Energy has created new efficiency rules for 16 products so far this year: dishwashers, microwaves, refrigerators, washers, dryers, ovens, and of course, the gas stove ban, which is definitely a conspiracy theory. Oh, no, it's not. Here's New York becoming the first state to ban gas stoves in new homes and buildings. And just a few weeks ago, Attorneys General from D.C. and nine other states petitioned the Consumer Product Safety Commission to continue its crackdown on gas stoves. The cut, did you vote for that? The cost of this never-ending stream of rules will be passed on to you. How are average people, let alone America's poor, supposed to be able to afford to reduce their household's carbon footprint to appease the green gods on the left? They can't. Because these gods are never satisfied. Back in a minute with the irony of equity.

I am the world's luckiest man. I really am. Not only do I have the world's best wife, who, you know, um, just is, she's a miracle worker, but she is also a wife that won't listen to me. Why? And I, I don't like that, but it's for my own good, especially when it comes to Relief Factor. I have pain in my hands from time to time, and it used to be constant, and I couldn't do this because it would hurt so badly. I got my life back with Relief Factor. It's 19.95, a three-week quick start. I, I got it back. I take it every day. Three-week quick start, 19.95 trial pack. It's not a drug. Developed by doctors. Hundreds of thousands of people have ordered Relief Factor. Seventy percent of them go on to order more. ReliefFactor.com. Call 800 for Relief. 800 for Relief. ReliefFactor.com. Feel the difference. Another one of the Biden administration's obsessions is forced equity. But ironically, these equity policies are actually making things less equitable. The Washington Examiner just laid out several ways that these policies are widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Number one, public safety. Earlier tonight, I covered the devastating effects of the left's war on police. Austin, Texas is another example of a city hurting in the wake of defunding the police. In 2020, they cut their police budget by a third. Three cadet classes gone, 150 officers gone, officer morale, bye-bye. Now they're still hemorrhaging cops. It's so bad that in February, street racers were literally setting other people on fire. One officer had to wait 22 minutes for backup to arrive. That's how understaffed they are. They say they're just, you know, he can't get to every call. Well, who does that hurt? That hurts the normal people who rely on the police for protection. But who does that really actually affect? Well, only the people who can't afford private security. That's, I mean, that's no big deal. Private security now outnumbers the police across the U.S. by 50 percent. Even high-profile members of Congress who advocate for defunding the police in their districts have hired private security. Representative Cory Bush of Missouri just spent half a million dollars on private security in the last two years. Another, so why aren't you doing that? Another area where the lack of equity is becoming more glaring than ever: car ownership. The average price of even a gas-powered vehicle is now 48,000 dollars. Getting a new car, which used to be the staple of the middle-class family, is becoming a rich man's game. And it is a game. Democrats continue using public funds to subsidize EV purchases by the wealthy. Joe Biden's so-called Inflation Reduction Act extended the federal government's 7,500 dollar tax credit for people buying EVs. But as it turns out, almost 78 percent of these EV tax credits go to households with adjusted income of a hundred thousand dollars or more. And guess which state has received by far the largest share of these tax credits? Bingo, California. They've used 10 times more than the state in second place, which is bingo, New York. Now, you would think that progressives who say they want all of us to be equal would be working to fix this car-buying gap. You know, if we keep this up, only the rich will be on the roads. Or wait a minute, that's the way it was in communist Russia. Then there is America's future energy crisis. How are wealthy Americans dealing with the Democrats' assault on the nation's power grid? They're stocking up on generators. You can't buy a generator now and get it within a year. Returning to that progressive paradise, California, where their residents are paying 80 percent more for electricity than the rest of the country, and they still have the threat of rolling blackouts over the whole state. In 2022, 24 percent of the country's blackouts happened in California. So do the rich just sit in the dark? No, no. They go out, they buy generators and have people install them. They use their wealth to avoid the consequences of the progressive policies that you feel. Not everyone can afford to stock up on generators. That's weird. Well, they do stay at the Waldorf, right? I mean, why aren't we putting the homeless there? Even the New York Times admits, "Blackouts will hurt more people as Americans buy electric heat pumps, battery-powered cars, replace furnaces and vehicles that burn fossil fuels." Private security, electric cars, generators. Who's being helped here? The wealthy. The thing is, equity is just socialism with a new hat. We both know socialism never works. The socialist revolution in Venezuela was supposed to be the end of the bourgeoisie, and yet the rich there are now 70 times richer than the poor. The guy who was a bus driver that went to run the country is now the richest guy in, in the southern hemisphere. I think half of the country lives in poverty. The inflation rate is still 234 percent. 20 percent of the economy comes from illegal business, you know, like smuggling food, gas, and people. But have you seen the new Ferrari dealership? Wow. Look at that. That's, I mean, that's equity. This is what equity looks like to socialists. It looks like one person eating a hundred-dollar brunch with their EV parked outside, and another clipping coupons on the bus to work. It's a celebrity driving through a crime-ridden city in an armored limousine while somebody a block away waits an hour for police to show up after somebody was in their house. That is what it looks like when a government tries to make us equal. No, thanks. America, are you done yet? We'll see you tomorrow on the radio. Good night.