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7 New Laws To Watch Out For, Episode 191

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court-justice-scales-gavel-jpg--1-Hosts Bill Heid and Brian Brawdy look at seven of the most significant new laws this year and explain how they could impact you.

Did you hear about the Connecticut law that forced gun owners to stand in line for hours in late December to register their guns – out of fear of arrest on Jan. 1?

What about the California law that will impact parental rights and the minds of young children by allowing boys to use girls’ restrooms, and vice versa?

Then there’s the one out of New York City that could do away with horse-drawn carriages – yes, the very same kind that George Washington rode in, on his way to his New York inauguration in 1789.

But that’s just scratching the surface. Find out about others on this week’s episode of Off The Grid Radio.

Off The Grid Radio
Ep190
Released: January 3, 2014

Brian:               Welcome to Off the Grid News, the radio version of offthegridnews.com. And our first show of 2014. 2014. I’m Brian Brawdy, here as always with Mr. Bill Heid. Bill, good morning and Happy New Year.

Bill:                  Happy New Year Brian. It’s great to be with you today. It’s always a pleasure and looking forward to 2014. Always looking forward, a lot to do. Lot to take in. There’s a lot happening, so we wanted to talk a little bit about just what’s going on with respect to some of the new laws. Some of the ridiculous, some of them absurd. Some of them are kind of (inaudible 1:06), as it were, sort of the end of your civilization type laws. So I don’t think we’ll have, you know, time to cover all 40,000. Brian, do you want to camp out and do that? We’d be here like for weeks and weeks and weeks.

Brian:               We could do one of the David Blaine things where he’s suspended in an ice block or under water or any of the other things.

Bill:                  Well, I am suspended in an ice block this morning. Speaking of that, you’ve got people trying to continue to legislate global warming. Legislation in the midst of what arguably is the coldest that it’s ever been. Did you get this story about these guys in, you know, this boat? Up north. That has to be one of the most interesting … now the regular media doesn’t say that they’re there to sort of talk about, to prove, that the ice is thinner than ever. So they just pause it as some kind of thing where,  “These guys are up there and they got caught in the ice,” but if you know what’s going on behind the scenes, I guess they’re there – the scientists at least on board – were attempting to prove just how much ice we’ve been losing. Only to find, Brian, more ice than ever.

Brian:               Only to find.

Bill:                  It’s always back to more ice. It’s always back to the ice block, isn’t it?

Brian:               We say all the time, you just couldn’t write this stuff.

Bill:                  You can’t make this up!

Brian:               You can’t make it up. No one would believe you.

Bill:                  They just fall into these traps, don’t they? They just keep walking into it. It’s like a comedy setup. I don’t know, I guess there’s some kind of great orchestration going on from the heavens or whatever with respect to this comedy shtick, but it’s pretty funny. Pretty funny.

Brian:               Well, you watch, the big push now will be on just to say climate change. Right? Because they’re not going to be able to do it in terms of global warming. They’re going to say, “Let’s call it climate change so we can hedge our bet either way.” Right? Kind of like you win if you win, and you lose if you lose. Let’s just call it climate change.

Bill:                  No matter what happens, it means that we should take some of your freedom away. Right? No matter what happens to the climate, that gives us the right to take away freedom from people. The right to legislate. The right to tax. The right to create burdens. That’s the perfect thing for people. Now, they ought to have that kind of climate change for every situation in the world, where no matter what happens, if there’s less gun crime, that’s a reason. It just means more guns are underground, right, and there’s more criminals. If there’s more gun crime, that just means there’s more guns. No matter how you look at something, it’s this pre – you’re looking at it through a worldview of preconceived notions so that no matter what happens, the end result has to be big government, lording over the little guy.

Brian:               Well, here’s the thing. And you and I spoke about this last week over the holidays. I’m beginning to believe – and everyone talks about big government – but big government doesn’t exist anywhere but in the minds of people. Right? Because as you know, I’ve recently relocated and because of it I’m subject now to the tyrannical musings of a housing co-op, is that what they’re called? You know, where people in your area get to vote on whether you can have a tool shed.

Bill:                  How many pumpkins you can have on your porch.

Brian:               Oh, you ready for this? I have 12 hours from the time the garbage is collected to retrieve the garbage cans from the curb or I’m subject to a fine, if they stay out there overnight. So, I think, Bill, big government is everywhere. It’s not just in D.C. It’s not in your state capitals. It comes from people that think they’re smarter than you are. It comes from people that think they know how to live life better than you do and therefore, they do everything they can to subjugate you to their will. Do you know I can’t fly, I can’t put a flagpole up in this new spacious front yard of mine? Think about that. So big government, as you say, I’m beginning to agree with you – it’s not located in marble halls and state capitals and you know wherever Congress happens to be at the time. It’s in the minds of people that just can’t keep their nose out of other people’s business.

Bill:                  Well, that’s not something new, too, Brian. That’s what people, maybe the listeners, really need to … there’s nothing new under the sun. This kind of thing has been going on for a long time. And I think, really, one of the first guys to write this stuff up and sort of encapsulate it all and create a philosophy out of it was Plato. Plato’s Republic, if anyone’s read Plato’s Republic, is a book about the elite controlling the lives of stupid people. So he, in his world, there were two different kinds of people – those controllers, and those who were to be controlled. And a lot of people considered Plato a hero, but if you read Plato’s Republic, it’s like the tyranny handbook about how to create a bureaucracy, how to make sure the people that are considered, you know, you’re talking about they always consider the folks underneath them to be incapable of making good decisions. A lot of the laws we want to talk about today, we’ve got not 40,000 but we thought we’d look at a handful, they’re just instantiations of the very thing that Plato was talking about. So here we are, again, Yogi Berra, right? It’s just, it’s just, things don’t go away, probably in the Bible, there is this idea, there arose a generation or arose a Pharaoh, there arose a bunch of people, but no Joseph. We have to redo this all the time and it’s sad, because you and I both remember what it was like in the Soviet Union. We were old enough to remember the lessons learned from not only the (inaudible 7:20), not only the concentration camp in (inaudible 7:23) and others that told us so much about, but just the life of being ground down by this never ending bureaucratic legislation that wants to control everything. Everything that you do! So that’s the introduction. Here’s where we’re at. That’s the world that we find ourselves in. It’s not a strange new world. It’s an old world. It’s Plato’s world, but here we go.

Brian:               And it doesn’t seem to want to end. Now, this isn’t, this isn’t anything you’re going to hear on John Stossel. These aren’t 40,000 new laws that were passed by the Federal Government. These are laws that your local state legislators, these are laws a little bit closer to home, right? So don’t look for the, you know, the bureaucratic behemoth or the legislative (inaudible 8:15). Don’t look for those in some far away capital. These are what your own people – the people that you elected to office – this, these are a list of some of the 40,000 laws that your neighboring Representative enacted in your own state. So Bill, you want to start?

Bill:                  You know Brian, that’s a good one, because I think – this isn’t, we’re not really talking about Congress here. We’re talking, there are some national laws that are going into effect that have that whole tyrannical motif to it, but the ones we’ve chosen today are state laws that end up being templates for other states. So one of the reasons we wanted to talk about them is, once you get legislation enacted, and just how it plays out, other states like from the other, other advocacy groups and other legislatures from the left, they will look and see, “How did this play out in Connecticut, for example?” We talk about the Connecticut gun law that came in. It’s a perfect example of a law being ruled. On the way in, folks, I was talking to Brian about this concept of, if you want to know what the god of an society is, you can go trace the source of law in that society, and that’s how you know who the true god is and who the true, what’s the source of authority and power in that society? And so you look at what’s going on in Connecticut. Connecticut reacted to something – the Sandy Hook shootings – and so you’ve got an amazing … you just want to make a comment about that, Brian? You have a pretty interesting assault rifle legislation that just came into effect as a result of emotion.

Brian:               Not only that, but what fascinates me about this new statute where they want to have their assault rifles – the people that own assault rifles in the state of Connecticut – they want them registered by December 31. But what has always puzzled me is, who gets to define the term assault rifle? And I’m fascinated by this, because as you know, you can’t possess, you know, you can’t possess an automatic weapon, so that can’t be it. Is it if it’s used on the expendables? If it’s used on any of these other things, these other places, can that be a cause for, you know what I mean, for that to be deemed an assault weapon? Because it looks big and mean. It looks like something out of a movie? Who defines that?

Bill:                  That is problematic, and I think a lot of times, those folks doing the defining don’t really know what the issues are. Gun owners will tell you that their legislators, especially again in the left, people that don’t hunt and have a sort of vague idea of what things are, they tend to legislate things, not only like Obama Care where there’s all kinds of unintended consequences. What you’ve got there, though, let’s look at this from just the perspective of, how do we do legislation and what’s the effect? What you do is you create felony situations for those that own these guns. Most of them honest, law-abiding citizens. And you create a situation by which they find themselves now as law breakers because the folks that didn’t get their – what do you do if you don’t get your paperwork in? Maybe you’re undecided about what to do. Maybe you just didn’t fill the paperwork out in time. If you’re a day late, you’re a felon? And you’ve been a law-abiding citizen your whole life and now you’re a felon because of this life? And the point that we always make about guns, who is going to register their guns? Law abiding citizens. Who’s not going to register their guns? Crazy people. Mental patients.

Brian:               Or people looking for a minimum one-year prison term.

Bill:                  People looking … I’m sure there’s some of those.

Brian:               Everyone’s going to laugh, Bill, right, but I can tell you as an ex-cop, it didn’t happen everyday, but there were plenty of cases where people said, “Look, it’s warm, I get three meals, I get a shower. I get to fall asleep with a roof over my head. I’ll take jail. Beats living on the street!”

Bill:                  And then Brian, you can’t, one thing you absolutely cannot control – this is something out of a movie – you cannot control mental illness. You cannot control someone who, a son of someone, who has a legal weapon, taking that weapon and turning that on his fellow man. That’s something we’ve never been able to control. But what Americans have always said is, “Look, we understand that’s a bad thing, when one person chooses to kill another person. But we’re willing to live with the risks associated with the freedom involved.” So if you look at, you know, the Second Amendment, I think we all realize that there are risks associated with guns. Guns are not risk-free. Like everything in life, just like taking a medicine. There’s always potential side effects from something, and so guns are no … but the point is, this is not going to do anything other than get the names of people that have assault weapons, that have automatic weapons, get their name on a list. So that like Hitler – Hitler did the same thing. He wanted to make sure that the people that had guns were on a list so that his, his, his brown shirts could go put them in prison or kill them when the time came that he wanted to assume control. So, that’s just, again, this isn’t anything new. Nothing new, we’re back to the same old, you know, that Tom Petty song, It’s Christmas All Over Again. It’s Hitler all over again. That’s what it is. And there’s nothing short of that, because it won’t save anybody lives.

And there’s another one, I guess in D.C., as long as we’re talking about automatic weapons, the D.C. one is another story that’s an interesting story because people have already registered. Now, what happens?

Brian:               Well, interestingly enough, before we run away from the, you know, you and I are always talking about people being able to predict future crimes. As you know, Bill, this statute in Connecticut also deals with anyone that may come into the state, after today. Right? So it’s just not laws for people that already live there. They want to reach out and touch you even if you’re thinking about moving one day, to Connecticut. Right? They have the ability to go in and say, “Okay, great. This law is still in effect.” So that’s, that’s an interesting one, or a little tenant of that law where I go now, “Wow, we’re able to almost look at predicting future crime,” so to me that’s another, it just makes me smile.

Bill:                  It’s, they’re becoming more self conscious, and the breadth of the laws and the scope of the laws tend to cover more and more things. Which again, is a lot like the Soviet Union. It’s a lot like Nazi Germany, because you start thinking, “People are, even the bureaucrats, are trying to get it.” Well, what could possibly happen? How can we control everything? And that’s just another good example. But there’s more where that came from.

Brian:               Oh, absolutely. Look over ahead. The second one we wanted to focus on today from the L.A. Times, the Business and Money section, incandescent light bulbs can no longer be manufactured. What do you think of that one?

Bill:                  Well, here’s something that I think is pretty important when it comes to this law, especially. It’s a law, what are we trying to protect here? What is it we’re trying to protect? We’re trying to protect the consumer from himself. We’re trying to save the planet. What is the motif behind the law? I’m saying it’s a control thing. And I think Brian, we could win. We sell LED bulbs and we’ve got a brand-new type of LED bulb that we’re going to release here very shortly. But I think that this is one of those things where the socialist side, the left side, doesn’t want to compete in the marketplace of ideas. They want to use a heavy hand and iron fist to get their way. So I think you and I, both as kind of free market, pro-market guys, would say, “I’ll be we can beat incandescent lights in the marketplace of ideas.” Because we’re going to convince people they’re going to save a lot of money on their light bill. But we don’t need to point a gun at their head. We don’t need to point a gun at the head of a retailer. We don’t need to limit what choices are available on the market. It’s just another one of those (inaudible 16:47), it’s not the end of the world, but instead of being eaten by alligators, this is one of those being nibbled to death by ducks kind of laws where total control. Even to your light, what kind of light you receive, gets handled by the government. Our God.

Brian:               Isn’t that amazing?

Bill:                  And I think, again, to bring – you know I’m always trying to sneak Hegel into this – but this is because we’ve come up with this concept of Hegelianism and Hegel, Friedrich Hegel, was someone that said, “The state is God walking, traveling, journeying, on earth.” So to Hegel, the state is God. And people need to know their history, and they need to know what Hegel said and how these closet Hegelians are operating in today’s world. That is the world that we find ourselves in, Brian. A, a very, very, very upfront and close view of what it’s like to live in Hegel’s world.

Brian:               Well, speaking of living in Hegel’s world, here’s one from my old hometown, my old home state. The new, incoming mayor has decided to ban horse-drawn carriages and he’s doing so based on an animal rights group, suggesting that horses don’t belong in congested, urban settings. So now here’s a mayor of our largest city, head, or will pick the chief of police of the largest police force in our country, and his main concern is – this is his quote – “We are going to get rid of those horse-drawn carriages, period.” So that seems like, that seems like a big deal for the mayor of the largest city in the country to be focusing on his first day in office.

Bill:                  He’s really picked a hot button issue there, and I think he’s going to have a lot of the pro-horse community rise up. That’s the problem with legislation like this, and it’s by, identified by folks like Jean Francois Revel and others years ago. You know, where’s the lobby for the ordinary guy? So you can, this is the problem with sort of a republic democracy, whatever, and I realize there are differences, but in a free society, what you can do is, you can form a lobbying group to make something illegal, but who represents just the average person that says, “I think that having a horse-drawn carriage is a perfectly fine thing, and if a couple wants to go on a romantic carriage ride, then they sure should be able to.” It just seems ridiculous to me that someone would have to control that, but there you go again, Brian.

Brian:               And it’s one group deciding that these horses have an inhumane life. Now, I know nothing about this bill in terms of the way the horses are treated, but I would imagine that if you’re an owner of a business and you, you want to be successful in your business, your horses have to be healthy. I mean, kids don’t want to come up and pet a scrawny horse, right? I wouldn’t think. I don’t think you want your picture taken with a horse that’s been maltreated. So I’m a little, a little concerned about that, that both sides of the story weren’t heard, or maybe both sides were and the mayor just said, “Hey, period, we’re going to do away with them.” It just seemed to me that there had to have been bigger fish to fry. Like in our next story, here’s one. New California law goes into effect allowing boys to use girl’s restrooms and vice versa, in public schools.

Bill:                  Not only that, Brian, but this new law, if you’re a boy and you want to play on the girl’s basketball team, you can say, “I kind of feel like I’m a girl,” and the girls could do the same thing, although I think when it comes to basketball, the boys playing on the girl’s team, who thinks he’s a girl, probably there will be some advantages to that. And I know that’s politically, sort of, incorrect to say that boys are better basketball players, but I think all you have to do is watch the March Madness tournament and you kind of get the picture, or the NBA. Boys are better athletes, generally, than girls are. Not that girls aren’t good athletes in their own category, but this is one of those. This is legislature we talked about early at the beginning of the show, this is legislature that is the end of the world type of legislation, meaning if it’s come to this, the world is ridiculous. The world has no meaning. The world has no compass, no value. And there’s nowhere to go in this insanity. I don’t think that there’s anywhere you can go from this now. It’s in California, but I think if there are groups in every single state that will take a good look at this legislation and try and make sure that it’s the law of the land in every state in the union. It’s only a matter of time before they try. Now, you know, as you work your way toward the Midwest, it will probably be harder in Iowa to get that, get that passed or Alabama or some place like that than it would be in Illinois or California or New York, but still the idea that you should be able to – and schools just are in financial crisis already. Why, the hot button issue, and the schools are barely able to survive. They’re putting on a terrible product, so the idea of, “What do we do now?” is make transgender bathrooms a hot button issue?

Brian:               Well, here’s what I love about your opinion on that, Bill. And when you say, “It may not play in Alabama,” here’s where you and I may differ a little bit, and I’m sure we’re going to end up differing with some of our listeners, God love them. If you like the idea of your son or daughter being subject to a transgender bathroom, then move to the state of California. That’s what this test tube of democracy was supposed to be, right? You voted with your feet. If you think that’s important to you, the move to California. If it’s not important to you, then stay where you are. If you have all these different state legislatures – and I’m tired of people slamming state legislators, because you know who it is, Bill? It’s not the state legislators. It’s the people living down on the street. It’s the people at the intersection with the four-way stop sign. It’s the people that you bump into at the grocery store. It’s the people on the road with you. It’s the people sitting next to you at the football or the basketball game. Everyone wants to make politicians out to be this great evil, and I do all the time. But when you elect the politician, you get what you pay for. And vote with your feet. If you don’t like it, leave California. And move to a state that has a set of laws that you do like. That’s the beauty of a democracy, as crazy as these laws are – talk about crazy laws – now if you live in D.C., forget that you had registered your gun before, Bill. You need to go and reregister it again. And if you don’t, they can confiscate your gun and arrest you. So for people that don’t like that idea, don’t move to D.C. What do you think?

Bill:                  Well, I think you’re right in a sense – I would disagree with the idea of democracy. I think the founders hated democracy. But I think the idea of being able to go someplace, that’s a legitimate conceptual framework that the founders created. And if you don’t like – what they had in mind, initially – was the religious aspect of it. In other words, a state like Maryland could be Catholic and Rhode Island could be the Baptist or whatever, and so if you didn’t like this religious – because they had, each state had established religions – and so the idea would be you can go to whatever state and of course that led into other things. Taxation. It was what they had in mind, principally. In other words, I thought the states could compete each other and that’s the point you’re getting at, where the states would be competing for each other. The problem is this, when it comes to state legislators. All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing, and the problem is, when you elect somebody, they are unable to withstand what we discussed earlier, and that is the assault by information-rich intermediaries – lobbyists, if you will – that come to town with a story and a plan and money and make their way, shake their money thing, and they end up creating these same laws. These laws become templates in every state. At the end of the day – you can do this for a while – it’s kind of like juggling a little bit or the boy that put his finger in the dam to keep the leaks. Eventually, you’re going to run out of states to go to, because if you looked at the world today and you said, “Where’s the world today compared to …”

Let me go back. If Patrick Henry were alive today, he wouldn’t even go to North Dakota and say, “This is a,” I wouldn’t use the word socialist, but he’d say, “This is tyranny, epitomized. So, so, Patrick Henry would go to the state, probably, where there’s the least amount of legislation. The least amount of tyranny. He would look at the amount of tyranny in that state and say, “My gosh. What have we done? What has become of this country?” So, I think there’s a little bit of that frog in the water, Brian, where we don’t really realize that every state over time has bureaucracy and has this platonic idea that they want to control everything. Because – the point you hit at – it’s really in the mind of the people. Because you’re electing these representatives. So it’s in their mind. And we have to start thinking – we call this Off the Grid News, the radio version – we have to start thinking outside of the grid. The grid wants you to stay on it, to worship it, to kneel before it, to love these immoral legislations, and you have to be able to say, “What are some other ideas?” The problem is the conservatives really don’t have any ideas. Conservatives generally say, “I’d like a little less of that than what the socialists want. The out right leftists who are a little more honest in what they’re trying to achieve.” The conservatives are kind of, “Yeah, I want to go off that cliff, but I’d like to go off that cliff driving 55 miles an hour, because I never drive 75. Look at these leftists over here. All they do is want to drive 85 miles an hour in 75 miles and hour,” and there you go. I just think we’re going off the cliff, because of how we’re thinking, is the great (inaudible 27:28) in our country, is one that wants to succumb. We want to lick the boots of the big monster, the big Leviathan, as you said.

Brian:               Well, think about this legislation Leviathan in our state of Illinois. Now, City of Chicago – for a long time, as far back as I can remember – has had a ban on driving holding a cell phone to your ear. So now that ban, as of a couple of days ago, as of January 1, is going statewide. If you’re caught holding a phone to your ear, driving down the road, you’re going to get a ticket. I think they said the first offense was $75. But here’s what jumped out to me in the story, Bill. And I’m just going to read you a quote from whatever news site this is, I think it’s ABC. “The temptation for many is the habit to pull up to a lit intersection, where there’s a light. The light goes red and you make a call or take a call or check your emails. You can legally do that now.” Here’s the good thing, Bill. You ready? “But only if you put your car in neutral or park.” So now, here’s a law that says …

Bill:                  So I always put my car in neutral when I stop at a stop sign.

Brian:               Yeah. Isn’t that amazing? Doesn’t everybody? You wait until a light turns green and someone doesn’t put their car in drive and gets rear ended, and kills the family in the minivan. Wait until someone says, “Oh, I forgot my car was in neutral and I coasted into the intersection.” This gives you an idea of the mentality of the people writing these laws. So now you’re allowed to put your car in park in a major intersection, or leave your car in neutral. And something else that fascinates me about this law – good for those people that want to apply mascara. Good for those people that still want to eat Big Macs while you’re driving. You can still drive with your knees. You can still do all these other things. So this law, Bill, isn’t about distracted driving. Right? If it were about distracted driving, you wouldn’t be able to put makeup on. You wouldn’t be able to eat and drive.

Bill:                  What if you’re listening to a provocative audiobook or something where you’re just the murder, the murderer is going to be revealed and your mind is drifting because of whatever it is that you’re listening to. So, I mean, do we want to control that? I like where you’re going with this. The other side would say – let’s argue this both ways – the other side is going to say, “Do we want people to drink and drive?” So premise A, is it the prerogative of the state to control the safety of people on the highways? They’re going to of course say yes, as we said earlier, there’s this idea of risk involved in everything we do. But they’re going to start with the alcohol thing and say, “Brian, do you want people driving drunk?” And what’s your response to that going to be?

Brian:               Well, clearly people – politicians included as long as they put themselves in the law – you don’t want someone who is clearly inebriated operating a motor vehicle because they’re a threat to themselves and more importantly, they’re a threat to other people on the road.

Bill:                  But let me make an exception. Let me interrupt you just a second, because this is important. I know people that can drive better drunk than other people that I know – like even within my own little world – who are better drivers after 10 beers than other people are who are just driving down the road with no alcohol. And I really believe, I’m not just saying that. I really believe that. And I’m not making the case that you should drink and drive. I’m just stating some facts that I think are true. So, why can I not drink and drive if I’m safe. Let’s press the argument to its logical conclusion – if I’m okay and I can drive, why should you punish me because of what other people do? Because once you open that door – and this is where I think you’re going – once you open the door, “Yeah, this happens when this person goes to this level. This individual can’t text and drive at the same time.” So therefore we have to wipe everything off the books. So do we wipe off the mascara thing? Do we wipe off the, I know people that read magazines while they drive.

Brian:               Absolutely.

Bill:                  And so well, and then, then the obvious thing is, where’s the brakes? Where’s the brakes on the other side? If you say, “We’re going to make the road safer,” where do you stop that? Because certainly a lot of senior citizens – now forgive me for saying this – but a lot of senior citizens probably shouldn’t be driving. Because around here, they think a little slower and they react a little slower. I know my reactions at 55 years old aren’t what they were when I was 30. So my reactions are even a little different. That gets, as you get older and older and older. So where do you stop that? Is only someone 33 years old with a certain IQ driving 100 years from now? Is that the state of Illinois, where we’re all headed?

Brian:               Well, for me, what’s equally interesting is that then make the law to be distracted driving, and have a clear set of rituals that constitute, because, right, these are police officers. These are deputies. These are troopers, making the arrests. You’ve got to set the guidelines up so they know what’s going on. This law says they have discretion, but I found it interesting that a spokesperson for the Illinois State Police says, “We want 100 percent compliance right away.”

Bill:                  Well, what they want is – listen. As someone, we’re both from Illinois, people what they want is revenue from writing tickets. That’s what they want, because they all have to maintain their jobs. And our state is broke. So part of this is revenue enhancement, wouldn’t you agree?

Brian:               Absolutely. And I can tell you, leftover from my days again as a cop in New York that even the DUI arrests, Bill, the people, the police officers making those DUI arrests were compensated with overtime in a lot of cases, were compensated with overtime, and that overtime payment came – that bank of money – came from the fines of the people arrested for DUI.

Bill:                  And this is something nationwide too, Brian. Whether it’s trying to raise chickens on your property, having a vegetable garden in your front yard, speeding, whatever it might be. As revenues decrease, as tax revenues decrease, the government needs other ways to raise revenue. So what they’re going to always look at is, “What can we make you pay for?” You have to register your gun and pay this much money to do that. You have to register your cell phone. What they should do is say you can talk on your cell phone. Here’s – this would be a typical government thing – you can talk on your cell phone, but it costs $500 a year. And if you’ve got a little mark on your driver’s license, that’s got a little smiley face by the cell phone, you can drive and Illinois could probably pay for a lot of its deficits by virtue of how they regulate and tax that.

Brian:               What a great idea!

Bill:                  But anywhere, where does it end?

Brian:               And it makes me think, Bill, now, pretty soon they’re saying that they’re going to let us on airplanes and you can talk on your cell phones, so for all those years we were told if you checked a text message in mid air you’re going to cause the plane to crash.

Bill:                  None of that was true. It was all lies.

Brian:               None of it was true. “Well, it’s federal law now. You’ll interfere with the pilot’s communication.” So have they rewired the 100 million airplanes that fly all over the world now? Have they rewired those airplanes to bolster them from the deadly effects of telephone conversations? Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m praying that they don’t allow people to talk. I mean, you just sit on the tarmac sometimes and listen to the inane conversations. We talk all the time about secondhand cigarette smoke. I think it’s just as deadly to be subject to secondhand telephone conversations. I don’t want to hear your banking number. I don’t want to hear what your kids did wrong. I don’t want to hear what you’re trying for at work. I don’t want to hear any of that!

Bill:                  Secondhand telephone conversations. That’s almost …

Brian:               Telephone conversations. They’re as bad as cigarette smoke.

Bill:                  What’s the mind, the thing about the mind – a mind is a terrible thing to waste?

Brian:               Hey, speaking of that, let’s look at another one here. We’re talking about a California bill, allowing illegal immigrants to obtain a driver’s license. And that will go into effect sometime this year, although it’s not in effect yet, it has the ability to go into effect I’m assuming now and at anytime, according to Mercury News and their Politics and Government section. What do you think?

Bill:                  Well, I think that’s just another way to, to me, this legislation is, I’m for immigration. I think we need, that’s a vibrant part of our national intellect, the way we work. I think immigrants tend to be better workers in general. My grandparents signed a bunch of forms when they came to this country and did it the legal way, and I don’t understand why other people get away with not doing the same thing that my grandparents had to do. So I’m for immigration. So let’s get the antithesis of this argument correct – you can be for immigration, but not for illegal immigration. If you’re here illegally, you should go home. That’s my perspective. And fill the paperwork out and come back, God bless you. We need you. We want good workers. We want good ideas. We want all the things that that dynamic part of, I mean, look at. We’re a nation of mutants, right Brian? Look at us. We’re, we’re a mixture of everything, and that’s our power, that we’re so diverse with respect to ethnicity, I feel. And because it brings in different ideas and it brings in all kinds of wonderful things.

But when it comes to just, here’s a guy, Jerry Brown, making, taking the law into his own hands, making illegal immigrants legal immigrants. All this is is a first step towards doing that, and it gives them privileges. The same privileges that a taxpayer would have, and it’s just plain suicidal. There’s nothing else. Now, what it might do is guarantee the next democratic governor, if there was any doubt, that that’s not a socialist state, it will probably guarantee. You’re bringing in all the immigrants and everyone goes there. You’ve got the reverse of what you said. So all the immigrants in Texas – here’s what the founding fathers wanted, right, only this was the founding fathers, it’s like … you know what it’s like? It’s like watching a hanging, although you’re watching someone being hung and they’re dying and choking and they’re almost dead, but then you realize that you’re looking in the mirror and it’s you. It’s your world and your country and that’s what’s happening there. All the, so illegal immigrants, go to a different state. Do what we were talking about earlier. Go to the state that treats you best. So all the illegal immigrants will go to California, get their driver’s license, and have all the privileges of people that have lived here, signed up. And I think it’s actually an affront to the, especially the Hispanics that have just done it the right way, right? It’s instant gratification. It’s existentialism. It’s, “I want my rights, now.”

Brian:               Well, I think you give Governor Brown a lot of credit when you talk about, “Oh, well, this is the reason for this or that.” Governor Brown signs a law because Governor Brown knows it’ll get him votes. Right? Truth be told, you want to go, you know we’re always looking to get to the heart of an argument. Well, let’s blow this argument up. Let’s look at the big umbrella. Let’s look at the five-mile, you know the thousand-meter view. The thousand-meter view is he once was against this law. Remember the old line, “Well, I once voted against it, before I voted for it.”

Bill:                  Yeah, he probably didn’t read it, either. He’s probably Nancy Pelosi’s neighbor and, you know, they probably live on, “I don’t read that legislation lane.” That’s the road they live on and they’re just emotionally trying to micromanage everyone’s lives and they don’t care. They don’t read the legislation. They just, as you say, they want votes. They want guaranteed return. Because what do they want, ultimately? It’s not, they’re not for the immigrants. They want the power that comes from being elected. They are power brokers. This is what I was talking about at the beginning of the conversation, Brian. This is Plato’s Republic. And it’s nothing more than elitists like Jerry Brown, trying to retain as much power as possible.

Brian:               Absolutely. Absolutely. And so when people say, “Oh, well, what do you think of this one?” I think as a politician, who was it I saw yesterday said now he’s running for the other side of the aisle and he said, “No, I made the mistake. I was wrong. I shouldn’t have voted against this,” but now that he’s switched from being a Republican to a Democrat, I don’t think the name matters to me in this case, with everything else we’ve been discussing, but yet another politician switches parties because he can get elected, or stands a better chance of getting elected, if he switches parties. And now everything he believes to be true is switched, just to (inaudible 41:06) to the party line. But again, my New Year’s resolution is I’m done picking on politicians. I’m going to start picking on my neighbors. I’m going to start picking on the people that put them in power. Right? Because ultimately, if you’re pro-human, if you’re pro-believing in the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, if you believe in what God created, then you’ve got to trust human beings to make some, you know, some good, commonsense decisions for themselves, and laws take some of that away. Now, having said that Bill, you remind me all the time, if it weren’t for laws, you’d have people out there hunting ducks with hand grenades. Right? So you and I aren’t anarchists. We’re not saying that all the laws are wrong. I’m just saying, if you’re going to support a law, then don’t blame the politicians. Stand up and let people know that you’re the one that put them in office, and this is what you think. Right? This is what you think. So let it (inaudible 42:06).

Bill:                  But let me tell you something else. Let me throw another ball out there, another mini rant. And that’s this – we are educating our kids to say yes to the Leviathan. We are educating our kids in terms of this. So parents, if your kids go to a – and listen, there’s not much difference in public school and private school sometimes, because the textbooks are the same thing – so parents, if your kids are going to school, your kids are learning. You’re responsible for them. It’s not the nanny state. It’s not the schools’ responsibility to teach your kids. That’s true for Christians. It’s true for people who are more nominal in their beliefs. You are responsible for your child – their development, their intellectual development. So tell them the truth. Tell them what socialism is. Tell them the difference between free markets and socialism. Educate them in the truth, because the teachers belong to the teachers unions. They’re going to always educate their kids in terms of the Hegelian dialectic. They’re always going to say something about emotion. “President Obama is a good man. He’s interesting. He wants health care for all these people.” That’s not true! And you have to tell them that that’s not true. He wants power, the same way Brown wants power.

So you have to – parents, please. Your kids are sitting ducks. Because I talk to your kids, and your kids don’t know anything about the founding of our country. Your kids don’t know anything about what makes law, why a law should be good, what’s the standard by which you could measure a law? They’re educated totally in terms of the textbooks, created by the federal government, and they’re all statist with the God being the Hegelian god walking on earth power broker system. That’s the world they want to live in. That’s the world they’re educated in terms of. So you’re creating citizens – Brian, this is the thing – you’re creating these little citizens that come out of the school factory and they’re all ready to go when it comes to say yes to socialism, right?

Brian:               Well, let me just – and it’ll take me just about 60 seconds to get this out – but I’m not going to tell everyone where I live, but you know where I live. And so on this particular street that I live on, 10 houses on either side of me. Both sides of the street decide they want to hang Christmas lights. Right So they’re going to take red lights, wrap them around the trunk of their tree and then they’re going to put white lights up in the branches, so when you look down this block in Stepfordville, you will see all the houses are the same. So you know, we’re just in the process of moving in and it takes a little bit of time and you’ve go to relocate the studio and the library. You’re doing all these other things, right? So my daughter comes back one day and says, “Dad, can you put up the lights on the tree out front?” My son is like, “No, no, don’t do it! Don’t do it! Be an individual!” You know what I mean? He’s 13 years old, so he’s into that. Being an individual thing. But do you know, the kids at school were giving my daughter a hard time because we were the only house on the block that hadn’t put up their Christmas lights yet? So what happened to schools – Bill, to your point – what happened to schools teaching kids to stand for what they believe in? What happened to schools teaching kids to be unique? To be an individual? To use the mind, the brain that God gave you? To take risks? Now, my daughter’s confronted at school and go, “Well, you better put up your Christmas lights so you can be, your house can be like everyone else’s.” I think you’re absolutely right. That’s the product that we’re turning out by not having kids think for themselves.

Bill:                  That’s the great socialist product, and that’s, look, anybody that’s listening and has ever raised chickens realizes what happens when one of the chickens is a little different than the other chickens? One will come and – one of the stronger chickens – will come and peck on that bird and then that bird will have a little cut. And then all the other chickens will come over and finish him off. Now, that’s, that is the naturalistic world that we’re doing legislation by. So people say, you know, that’s natural law, working right there. So if you want to know how we do government, that’s the metaphor. It’s we eliminate the individual – unless the individual is transgender and then we put out a red carpet and build new restrooms or allow the use of any restroom that a transgender wants – so there’s no neutrality in the world, Brian. There’s always a direction that we’re heading. We are heading the wrong direction.

What are we trying to tell people for the new year, for 2014? Please, you’ve got to stand up for what you believe in. You’ve got to take a stand. You’ve got to – we’re working on William Wallace now for our new project for our audio thing – there comes a point in everyone’s life where you say, “No more. I can’t do this.” And Edmond Burke, at the time of the French Revolution, his famous thing should be our parting thought – “All that is good for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” And that’s what good men are doing. People no more, I’m a football fan, ladies and gentlemen. I’m a Packer fan, I can’t wait for the game on Sunday, but you know what? There’s more in life than sports. There’s more in life than following politics, in and out, everyday. And the way this news cycle, we’ve got to know what happened in history. We’ve got to be able to quote Daniel Webster. We’ve got to be able to sort of breathe some fresh ideas into this stale argument between these wimpy republicans and these goofy leftists. There has to be a better way. So why not make 2014, why don’t we try to figure out what those things are? Start local. That’s really, the left is right with respect to that. Start to take your property taxes, work on your property taxes. Start to challenge your school – are they teaching socialism? How are you ever going to win on a local level if all the kids come out socialists? It’s impossible. There’s no way to ever beat a referendum. That’s my parting thought, Brian. I know I’m a little ranty today, but I think that’s kind of how I’m feeling.

Brian:               No, and I think that’s great advice. And look, even if you fall on the opposite side of a debate between us, even if you have an opinion that’s contrary to ours, just make it your opinion. Do the research. You know, I hear people say, “Well, Bill, it’s just the way it is.” And which is almost as infuriating to me as when people say, “Well, that’s what they said. You know, I went on the internet and they said.” And you ask them, who’s the “they?” Who is this “they?” Do your research. Use the mind that God gave you. And Bill, here’s what I love about the internet. Here’s what I love about Google. There isn’t a topic you can’t be at least versed on, given a half an hour and access to the internet. In this day and age. You can learn about anything. So at least, cultivate an opinion that’s your own, and then stand by it. Don’t let someone else parrot. And let that noise become your opinion. Think for yourself.

Bill:                  Yeah, because you know what? If you go, if you go to a café, a truck stop or something, and you sit out here and listen to people talk, that getting those conversations third-hand, as you say, what you hear is people re-vomiting the pitch-points that were given to the news executives that morning. So, Orwell, when he wrote 1984, he really had this in mind in some sense, that the only thing we know is what we’re being streamed, what we’re being fed. We’re not independent thinkers because we don’t read books. We don’t go look at what, what, what did (inaudible 49:59) say? Come on. What did he say? So you’ve got to be able to participate in this a little bit if you want to be able to have a conversation. Not, what did Shepard Smith say last night? That’s a ridiculous premise to bring to the table, what did Shepard Smith say? That doesn’t make everything that Shep says wrong. I’m just saying, you’ve got to be able to think independently, Brian. We have to, we have to challenge our readers, our listeners, to get off the grid and start thinking for themselves. Because it affects everything. How you raise your kids, how you eat, how you cloth yourself, how you do your job, how you do everything. How you maintain freedom. We’re going to lose our freedoms, ladies and gentlemen, if we don’t stand up and start thinking for ourselves.

Brian:               And we have every tool now, Bill, to be able to do that. There’s no excuse with the internet and your ability. I mean, I was online over the weekend. You can law periodicals. You can get any book ever written. You can go to the Library of Congress. I mean, it’s amazing the information you can get out there, if you’re not following what Kim Kardashian is doing or Justin (inaudible 50:59).

Bill:                  But can I talk a little bit about our friend Gerald (inaudible 51:02)? We’ve had Gerald on from time to time, and I like Gerald a lot. One of Gerald’s predictions – and everyone should get his trends letter and read it because it’s always thought provoking and interesting. You don’t have to agree with Gerald, but one thing that I totally disagree on, Gerald says this is going to be the world of digital learning and digital education. You know what? I’m going to say as many things as, there’s a supply and demand effect. And that’s the more scarce something is, the more we want it. The more readily available it is the more we say, “I don’t want that.” And it’s true in almost every area of life. I think it’s one of those things, the Austrian economics professors early on really identified well – supply and demand. So, there’s almost so much out there that people are no longer interested in delving into it, and there has to be a reason why. Why is it that you want to defend our way of life, or the former way of life that we used to have in this country, that the founders envisioned? What’s your purpose of that? When civilizations lack purpose, that happens. That happened to Rome, right?

At some point, they just didn’t care anymore, and the civilization they had built wasn’t worth defending, and so there’s this classic thing that happened in (inaudible 52:13) France. I’ve mentioned it to you before, Brian, but here I’ll just bring it up again. You could hear the cries of the people at the sports stadium, and they were intermingled with the cries of people being murdered and raped, as the barbarians came through the town. So, here’s, and, and (inaudible 52:34) wrote this piece on what was happening in (inaudible 52:39) France and he said, “It’s interesting that the cries of the people being killed and the cries of people yelling, ‘Go Auburn’ or whatever, were intermingled.” So people were so busy watching the game that in an outer part of the city, their city was being attacked and there was murder and rape going on, and no one cared. No one ran to the front to say, “We have something worth defending.” Because the only thing they were interested in was play. I’m saying, that’s the situation we find ourselves in now. If somebody invaded us, would we try to fight them? Yeah. Yes, we would, but we have something more insidious invading us, and that’s this, just this lethargy, this intellectual and moral lethargy that we have. That’s a disease that we have and that’s a disease that’s killing us. So we’re in a stage where we’re heading down the, down the road to tyranny because we’re making the bed for ourselves. We’re paving the way. We’re raising ignorant kids that can’t defend themselves intellectually, they can’t defend freedom intellectually, and we’re creating the conditions that were ripe for the French Revolution, were ripe for the fall of Rome, were ripe for Nazi Germany for someone like Hitler to come involve, and it’s just a matter of when, not if, unless we take a stand and start thinking and talking more independently, as you say.

Brian:               And Bill, I think that’s probably the perfect way to end our show, as a challenge to our listeners in 2014, to just think for yourself. Even if you disagree – Bill and I disagree on a lot of things. But we’re always fans of each other because we become, we become the debate. We come prepared, and that would be our wish to you in 2014. Be informed, be active, and you’ll create a better community, a better country, and a better cosmos all the way around. Ladies and gentlemen, please remember to reach out to us on Facebook, on Twitter. Golly, Bill, I think our Facebook fans have doubled just in the last couple of months, so we really do listen to the comments. We take show ideas. We take topics of discussion form the things that are said about us and to us on Facebook and Twitter, so please keep the comments coming. On behalf of Mr. Bill Heid, everyone at our parent company Solutions from Science and the entire production team at Off the Grid News, we wish you and your family a very happy, healthy and let’s call it a curious 2014.

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