FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Biden steped down - Johnny Hatcher - Mobile Mornings - Monday 7-22-24
(upbeat music) - News, sports, weather from Dr. Bill Williams, traffic info from Kane, and one of the Gulf Coast most familiar voices. It's Mobile Mornings with Dan Brennan and Dalton R. Wig. (upbeat music) Good morning from Dan and Dalton. If I'm talking 106.5, text line is here for you. 2513430106, let us know what's going on with you or you can speculate if you like what do the Democrats do from here? How well things lining up for Donald Trump at this point? Let us know, what you think? 2513430106, we know this much. It's not gonna be a normal election. That all changed yesterday. First things that I saw was that the chairs of the Democratic chairs of states across the US, see there are all of them or most of them, wrote a letter and had it published to Joe Biden. It's all saying, we're here for you. And then, suddenly, if you like you said, if you jumped on Biden's bandwagon in the early hours, yesterday morning, that was as bad as poor timing as you could have come up with. - All of these political animals who never make a decision based on what they truly want. - Sure. - But what they think people want to hear, those who finally got on board with Biden running for 2024, there were people yesterday morning saying, well, he's the guy, I guess I'll come out now, and publicly endorse and back his next run. - This will be the right time to do that. - It's finally time and then the news comes down. And it really was, I guess, if you'll believe the news reports, breaking news to a lot of the people that surround Biden, a lot of his staff. - It's just like Saban retiring. - Big shocker. - It's when you're watching a sports team and they said, they get traded or something, they said, hey, I didn't know, I got traded until I saw it in the news. That might have even been the case for Biden yesterday. As it's just so strange, and I know he has COVID, so they're not putting him in the public eye, but for him to make that announcement via a single press release on a tweet, it's just strange. You couldn't put together a little video. And then the reports last week, when they were saying that Biden would step down, the first reports, which I think came from the Obamacare, said that Biden would not be endorsing Kamala Harris and that he would want them to have an open primary here three and a half months out from the election, heading into the convention, they wanted it to be open and allow a number of people to run, which still appears to be the case. Jen Psaki was on the air yesterday when this news broke. Of course, she's Biden's former White House press secretary. Now she has a cushy role on MSNBC. I think she sounded pretty shocked when this news came down. - News here, President Biden. We have breaking news here. President Biden has announced he will stand down from the race. I'm gonna read the statement here on my phone. We also have Tim Miller, who's gonna be joining us shortly. Basically, this is a significant breaking news development with the president announcing he is stepping back from the race, there was very little indication from people close to him and many people in the campaign that this was what was about to happen, as much as there were reports of Democrats calling on him to do that. - And we'll get into what happens now with the money that's been raised by the Biden-Harris campaign and the ballots that he isn't on or is on, what happens to all of those. Trump is gonna be, he's been interviewed by Jesse Waters. It'll air tonight on Waters World on Fox News. And I played a bit earlier, we were talking about Secret Service. Here, he's actually talking about the Biden sickness and he basically called the attempt to remove Biden from office a coup. - You'd investigate the people that hid Joe Biden's condition? - Well, I think somebody has to look at it. Look, you had people that lied to the American public and I'll tell you what, you ought to take a look at his doctors because his doctors keep giving him this wonderful report. I'm not a doctor, but I saw him the other day was unable to get up the children's stairs going into Air Force One. - Is it a coup against Joe Biden? - Sort of, yeah. - I think it is. I mean, look, there's a constitutional process, the 25th Amendment. If Joe Biden can't run for president, he can't serve as president. And if they want to take him down because he's mentally incapable of serving, invoke the 25th Amendment. You don't get to sort of do this in the most politically beneficial way for Democrats. If it's an actual problem, they should take care of it the appropriate way. - As JD Vance, by the way, sitting beside Trump in that interview. - Yeah, so I went to MSNBC to, as soon as I saw the news, to kind of look at the reaction with the cast of news analysts, they would have on MSNBC. First thing I had to do was find MSNBC. I didn't know where in the world it was. And you know, you got like, I don't know, I've probably got 200 channels of like, where was it at? - Like true TV during March Madness. - Yeah. - Where is that channel? - And that was not one that I had. - Right. I find it, there was a African American Congresswoman on, and she jumps right on it. She talks about Harris, in her former life as a prosecutor. And she just framed it as, you're gonna have somebody who's all about the law. She's all about the law. Is she all about the law of the border? Is she the law and order candidate? That's what she was saying, conveniently. And of course, getting no pushback from anybody there. The law and order candidate versus convicted felon. So going forward, that may be the way it's gonna be framed in ads or any kind of commentary. Also, a couple of things. I don't wanna see what you think about it. Did, was this a misstep or a, was it in a way an active, a final act of defiance that he would endorse Kamala Harris? Well, maybe that really wasn't in the script for Democrats. First of all, what do you think about that? Well, I mean, just the only thing that said he wouldn't were initial reports early last week, that I'm pretty sure we're coming from Team Obama, that they said Biden would step out, and that he would not endorse Kamala, and that it'd be an open primary. So I guess maybe it's a, some people are calling it a final middle finger from Biden here, including a big time Democrat donor who said that he is not going to donate to the Kamala Harris campaign. He called it, and if I can find the actual book here, he basically called it Biden's final blank U. So- That's what it seems like to me, not everyone's on board with Kamala, and you mentioned that earlier. Obama? Obama has not come on. Akim Jeffries. And of course, grill master Chuck Schumer, grill master, and Pelosi also, hasn't endorsed Kamala. They haven't said anything one way or the other, correct? That's right. And no one's jumped into the race to face Kamala, but reports are that Senator Joe Manchin, who is now an independent, I guess, that he will switch the I back to a D so that he can jump into this race. CNN sources close to Manchin's office say that he's weighing whether to return to the Democratic Party to make a run for the White House. What's the attraction of Whitmer, by the way? I see her name floating around this all the time, and how popular is she? She had, I don't know, I mean. All the polls and, you know, every poll comes at it with their own angle, but pretty much all of them had Biden doing better against Trump than any of these other candidates, any of these other names they floated out there. And then I was looking at some initial polls yesterday, and I don't think these were polls post Biden announcement because that just happened yesterday. But most of those had Trump with 10-point leads in battleground states. So just massive, massive leads over Kamala Harris, and at least one Democrat congresswoman does not think that Kamala Harris is necessarily who the Democrats will go with here. Jasmine Crockett, who has certainly made some headlines during her time in Congress, notoriously her battle with Marjorie Taylor Greene. Yeah, she's the one with the eyelash. She's right from Texas. I think so. She was on MSNBC, and this is what she had to say. I am not confident at all because as it was laid out earlier, I do know that behind closed doors, while I won't name names, that there were people that were absolutely like it can't be the vice president. So in one breath they were saying, the president needs to be out in the next breath. They were also saying it can't be her. So now the next question is, well, what happens? Wall Street Journal kind of laying things out for us here. The delegates who had pledged to vote for Biden in advance of the Democratic National Convention now become uncommitted. So these delegates can vote for whomever they choose. Think of all the people that have already gone out and voted in primaries for Biden. Biden, what's that? Try this all over again, right? Yeah, the party of saving democracy, right? Biden has endorsed Harris, of course, but there's no rule binding those delegates to support Harris. The Biden delegates slated to support him in August were approved by the campaign, meaning they are likely loyal to the president. That's according to the Wall Street Journal. The Democratic National Convention begins August 19th. Democrats could pick their nominee at the convention or virtually beforehand. I'm hearing the better chances that it's virtually ahead of the convention and get it all sorted out and put away before they've got to get together in Chicago. And remember they were trying to confirm Biden before August when all this started going down. After that, adjusted their timeline, they had been aiming to wrap up Biden's formal nomination by August 7th, so that's just two weeks out. We'll see if they have their nominee by then. Also, they say in this Wall Street Journal article, Harris doesn't automatically become the nominee just because she's vice president. Delegates have already been selected, so she's on the same footing as any other person, but they are saying that she is the front runner. The Democratic Party, if you're looking at anyone else, already mentioned Joe Manchin, possibly jumping in here, but the usual cast of characters, the same people we've been talking about for, you know, four years now, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Buttigieg, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, or Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. They said if those people start to publicly back Harris, it will ease her path to the nomination. Now the campaign funds, that was a massive question over the last few months. And the Wall Street Journal says the Biden-Harris campaign has raised a considerable amount of money, but, and campaign finance experts say that cash can't simply be transferred to another candidate, just because Biden dropped out unless the nominee is Harris. Where Harris to assume the top of the ticket, funds donated toward the Biden-Harris campaign would be at her disposal since she and Biden were running together. And they said she would if she is the nominee, maintain access to all the funds in the committee and could use them to advance her presidential candidacy. Now, if Biden is replaced by someone other than Harris, campaign finance lawyer said he could direct his campaign to transfer money to the Democratic National Committee. See, I told you they knew that there was a workaround to this. - Yeah. - Some suggested that his campaign would have to settle debts and might be required to offer refunds for donations that were designated for the general election if they do go that route. And then as far as super PACs are concerned, and you already heard, LinkedIn co-founder Reed. - Hoffman? - Hoffman, yes. - He's already jumped on Team Harris. So his money will be flowing through, but super PACs can accept unlimited amount of money from donors who can give millions at a time, unlike for a campaign, which faces individual donor limits, election law prohibits direct coordination between super PACs and campaigns. So these super PACs are basically not affected at all by Biden ending his campaign. They said there are several super PACs that were supporting Biden's reelection bid, mostly a group named Future Forward, as well as others such as Unite the Country. So they will just shift their attention to their preferred nominee. - What have you read and do you believe that Rupert Murdoch had a Fox News, very frustrated with Trump's choice of JD Vance as his running mate? - That's what it appears. That appears to be the case. Did you see the photo of him sitting at Lindsey Graham in one of those boxes in Milwaukee at the Pfizer forum as Trump gave his speech, or maybe that was during the Vance speech that they looked so disillusioned down and out. - So you wonder then, with that being said, if that's true, now he's gonna be on Jesse Waters tonight. He and Vance-- - Vance together, right? - But would that change some of the enthusiasm you might generally expect from Fox News on the Republican side? - Yeah, I don't know how that will shift their coverage, but I think you can already see, you know, channels like CNN kind of changing their tune because there is a Trump administration if there is to prepare for in January. Some of these networks are on the exact wrong side of Donald Trump and maybe trying to cozy up. I don't know if Fox News will do the same. - 820, Dan and Dalton, FM Talk 106.5. Good morning, the show is Mobile Morning's. Dan and Dalton, FM Talk 106.5, no breaking news here, but just to set us up here, former President Donald Trump. Nearly assassinated a week ago as he spoke at the campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, although one poll showed one in three Democrats. I think it was a hoax, something like that. It's irrational people. Yeah, they either think that there's a shot, an actual shot, but the whole intent was to just hit his ear, just wing him right from 130 yards away, and then others think he wouldn't hit it all and did like the razor blade trick like you've seen in wrestling over the years. - Yeah, that's like a very deft left-handed picture. It can pull that stuff off on the mound, you know, marking up the ball so it cuts on a dime or whatever. I don't, I did not notice it to Donald Trump did that in the midst of all that chaos in Butler, P.N. - No, but there are a lot of questions, of course. - You know, in the chaos, the chaos is what we saw on TV. The chaos has also got to do with everything that happened before the shots rang out. - Yeah, and how early did the Secret Service have a bead on this shooter, the 20 year old? And why didn't they keep Trump from going onto the stage? If there was anything to worry about. And there's been so many different leaks that have come out from different news organizations investigating this and different people, you know, anonymous sources talking out, but we still haven't received a true briefing from the FBI or from Secret Service about where they stand in their investigation. Also strangely, the ATF Bureau Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms are involved in this, which isn't traditionally their kind of, you know, channel, I guess. Senator Ron Johnson, he was on yesterday, Fox News with Maria Bartiromo. And today, Secret Service Director, Kimberly Cheetell, will be before the House Oversight Committee. So James Comer and crew will be asking her some tough questions today. I think the Senate will get their chance before long, but here's Senator Ron Johnson from Wisconsin kind of laying some of this out yesterday. - The oddity starts with the fact that local law enforcement were just tasked with securing the perimeter, told to go cover that AGR building. Not really told where it is set up. So they set up on the second floor. They went to that AGR building at 10.30 in the morning. So they were stationed there well in advance. You know, they noticed this suspicious character at 5.10. They took a photo of him at 5.14. The president was shot at 6.11. You know, so again, an hour is passed. You know, again, they don't have communication, same channels with their law enforcement patrol officers. They weren't in communication with the Secret Service other than going through the Butler County communication center. So again, it's everything you would assume about Secret Service protection of a former president was not true. It didn't happen. It's just baffling to me. - It is baffling to say the least. Trump in that interview with Jesse Waters said, they didn't tell him a thing before he went on the stage, even though apparently they knew that there was a suspicious person out there. He said, I would have waited 15 minutes, 30 minutes, five minutes, whatever they asked me to do. But he said, why was that roof left unguarded? And I think that is the number one question among many that people have. - So they had the scope, they saw him with the scope at three o'clock in the afternoon. First of all, the first sighting of him was inside the grounds, correct? - Right, with the, I believe he was using the golf range finder, but some type of range finder, which is a weird thing to bring out to a rally for three hours, however early it was before the actual rally. Also some of the news this weekend, Washington Post said secret service officials repeatedly rejected Trump's request for additional security for two years before last weekend's assassination attempt. Trump reportedly asked for more agents and also magnetometers at large public events, as well as extra snipers for outdoor venues. Each request was shot down by senior officials who claimed the agency lacked the resources Trump was asking for that same day. First lady for now, Joe Biden had a small event like an Italian American event fundraiser thing in Pittsburgh. And if I read correctly, she had 12 secret service handlers there or agents, she had about threefold as many as Trump did for his large outdoor rally in Butler. She had, I think three times as many secret service agents on hand at this small get together in Pittsburgh. A secret service had lied about turning down Trump's request for more agents twice. They initially denied the claims, calling it absolutely false. And then on Monday, director Cheetold doubled down on the denials while meeting with Trump campaign leadership in Wisconsin. Finally this weekend, the agency changed its tune. Anthony Julie Emi, the spokesman said the agency had denied Trump's request for additional security, but claimed he had only learned about the new information in the wake of the tragedy. So that's partially where we stand now in the investigation. We really still don't know. I've seen three different things. They hauled a van off afterwards. Remember they said the van had explosives in it. There's pictures of this van being hauled off. Then they said actually he was in a Hyundai Sonata that was nearby. Now they're saying that he was actually on a bicycle. I guess sort of he took the bike out of the Sonata. - I don't know. Bicycles leaned up against the tree and now that was their focus of his, you know, did he intercepted a transit bus like in the movie Speed or whatever, how many modes of transportation? By the way, Gardner on the text line says, how do we even know Joe Biden actually decided not to run? No one has seen him. That was what you were saying. - Yeah, he hasn't been seen publicly saying, I'm not running for office, I endorse Kamala Harris. It's all coming from his close team there that this report came out. - Here comes school, Johnny Hatcher with the school board is gonna talk about what's on his mind as we head toward August that's on the way. (upbeat music) - 834 FM Talk 1065 and Mobile Morning's on a Monday. Right now it's time to head to McConnell Automotive or we talk with Louis Arrata, hey Louis. - Hey, good morning guys, how are you? - Hey, we are great and good fishing weekend with a lot of rain on the mainland but folks were able to get out there and catch some big old fish and they were heading back home, they had big old boats and needed big trucks to haul them and you have those big trucks. - That's right, we do. It looks like a great day right now. I mean, it's sunshine and we need to be out there fishing right now. - Yeah. - But yeah, we have some great deals on some trucks and cars, we got a lot of cars in stock now. I don't know where they're coming from but a lot of trading them in. Yup, check that stuff out online at mcconlautomotive.com. Got a lot of work trucks, work vans. We're going to be trying to be buying a few this week so if you need anything, give us a call, two, five, one, four, seven, six, 41, 41. Don't forget we'll buy your car instead of trading it in, we'll give you a top dollar for it. So come see us, mcconlautomotive, he's devised 65 on beautiful Midtown Mobile on Dolphin Street. - And folks, when Louis says they shop around, I mean, you really do, Louis, you and the team there, anything from a work truck that someone's looking forward to a sports car, a high-end sports car, you can find it. - That's right, we've got a high-end Corvette right now and we've got a regular cam work truck so we got a boat so come see us. - All right, thank you, Louis. - Thank you. - That's Louis Eradak, go see him at mcconlautomotive on Dolphin Street, just east of I-65 and the website mcconlautomotive.com. - Well, the school year, be here before you know it and I guess we just got out, what was the tax-free weekend this past week? - It was this weekend, yeah, we noticed. We went out to do some shopping. Fortunately, we had our school shopping done. I guess we could have saved some money, but a lot of folks were getting ready this weekend for the upcoming school year and then to talk with us about the upcoming school year is Mobile County School Board Commissioner Johnny Hatcher. Good morning, Johnny. - Good morning, long. - So, last we talked, I guess we were wrapping up last school year and you did something great. You and the MCPSS and I think you did of this over there at Alma Bryant, the old veteran, 98-year-old George Place. He told us, hey, he's gonna finally walk across that stage and get his diploma and his story was incredible. I know there was a documentary made about him and everything that he lied about his age like so many men did back then, so he could fight and never got his diploma, but you changed that earlier this year. - Man, that was a great feeling. You know, and what really warmed my heart and gave me chill bumps is when we brought him across that stage, the students of Alma Bryant initiated a standing ovation for that man. - All on their own. - On their own. It was, you know, not predetermined, it was 100% on their own spontaneous. - Johnny, was it at Alma Bryant or was it over at the Mitchell Center? - It was at the Mitchell Center, but the kids from Alma Bryant are the ones that initiated that. - That's great. - Yeah, that is fantastic. So, good on you guys for making that happen. - No, man, it was a pleasure. - A great man and a really, really cool short documentary if you wanna check that out. All right, let's talk about the future now. And really the present as lately, I guess the big story is about over at Theodore High School and the AC goes out, was that some point mid-year last year or earlier this year? Or has it been longer than that? - That one is rolling up to a year now. It's getting close to a year and we haven't even put it out for bit. - Yeah, so you have these two massive cooling towers, right? That have been providing the air, the cooling there for a couple of decades, I guess, maybe about 20 years. - Well, not quite. I think those are, those cooling towers, we should have got a lot more out of them. You can get, if you maintain them right, what I'm being told is you can get up to 40 to 50 years on some of them with the right maintenance. But these are probably, they're not quite two decades. So, I'm a little disheartened about that. We should be getting a little bit more bang for our buck for the product. - Is choosing the product? - That would be Mobile County Public School System. We ultimately vote on that, but I'm glad you brought that up. The product that we have there now, I went and got some pricing. The pricing was roughly $250,000 to replace both of them, for both of them, not to do the replacement, but for both the items, the cooling towers. Now, I also went and did some price checking myself. On the ones we have, they're 300 ton units. They have a five year warranty on the hull, which is the casing, and a three year warranty on the motor. Well, I went and I checked and I found one that had a, 'cause the problem here is, the hull is where we're having the problem, it's rotting around it. So, I said, you know, why don't we try and find something a little bit better? So, I found one that is a poly hull, and the poly hull has a 20 year warranty on it. We're not gonna have it, the issues we're having, that's not gonna rust to the ground on us. The motors that are in there have five year warranties on them, and it's roughly $100,000 cheaper than the others. - Okay. - 100,000 cheaper. So, that 600,000 price tag that was put on the two towers. - No idea where that come from. - It's just, that's a pretty high number. And, I mean, were there, did they do any shopping around, or how do we? - I don't know, I don't know where she'd come up with that number, I think they've asked her for documentation on that, Monday. I don't know if she's been able to provide it or not, she spoke on it, she should be able to provide it. And when I speak on things, I provide documentation. I don't just come out and arbitrarily say something that's just not true. One thing that they did, they kind of got wrong, was the portable chiller's that are there, when they went down, they said the cost would be 10,000 to 15,000 to fix. That's not true. When I told them that, I was referring to the ones that we own that are currently broken now. It would cost us $10,000 to $15,000 to fix the bearings and things that are broke right now, just to get them up and running. Which is still a far cry less than coming up on the $200,000 that we're gonna be spending for rental. - Well, did you intervene in time, or was it a done deal, or what's gonna happen from here on? - Well, we've already looked, I intervened five months ago. When it first happened, they went ahead and went through the process. Five months after that, I got involved in them, like guys, what's going on? Well, we're waiting on the architect. What do we need an architect for? Well, we're just replacing two stationary units. It's kind of like, you're outside condensing unit on your AC. Think of it like that, all right? You don't have to have an engineer to replace that. There's no structure or anything going on. It's a plug and play item. Now, besides that, it comes with pre-engineer drawings. Now, if you have another engineer that says, well, we wanna hire our own engineer, well, what's he gonna do? He can't rebuild it. - It's just to replace another. - That's right. - Now, it's massive. It's much bigger than me or Dalton's or whatever, right? - Yes, yes. - But it basically is a plug and play regardless of the size. - Exactly what it is. So, I'm hearing these things that's not adding up to me. So, I give 'em more time. So, now we're 10, 11 months into it coming from 11 months, and I haven't seen anything being done except for this rental fee swelling. It's growing and growing, and it's not gonna stop until somebody stands up and says enough's enough, and that's what I'm doing. - Yeah, so, we're nearing 200,000 on just the rental in there. - Just rental. - And so, that's about a third of the quoted price that the MCPSS gave for replacing both units, I believe. That's big money, and that's just the temporary. We should be able to go ahead with our people. We have a master electrician that works for us. There's no reason we need to be hiring out to bag being Russell for them to come out there and wire these things up. When we've got somebody on our payroll who is qualified to do this. If in fact, like I've been told he's a master electrician, we need to be utilizing him. That's number one. Number two, we can get our own little cherry picker and go out there, unhook it, pick it up, put the other one back in place, and have them hook it up. We have our own AC and chiller guys there. So, why wouldn't we? That's my question. So, when I tell you it's gonna be around 200,000, unless we go with the ones that are a replacement for who we're already using, which I think would be asinine, why would you keep doing the same thing over and over and expect a different result? - There's a word for that, right? - There you go. - And Johnny, we're talking with Johnny Hatcher, Commissioner with Mobile County Public School System. I think that's what so many of us find frustrating about bureaucracy, about government, whether it's at the very local level, like we're discussing here, or federal contracts that are getting out, is this isn't the way you would go about it, I hope, if you were trying to fix something at your house or your business, you would shop around, you would look for the better warranty, you would look for the better product, you'd find what fits for you rather than whatever it is that a government agency normally do. - Well, let me tell you, that's, look, I've taken a new job with West Ready Mix, they're my new employers. Let me tell you, they're very demanding, I don't have time to come see y'all like I used to, it just, it takes a lot. But when I go and I sell this product, well, when I sell, we stand behind, if we tell them this is a 4,500 psi, it better break in 4,500 psi. So, we make sure that we dot our eyes cross our T's, do all our testing before we put that product out there. And, you know, I expect the same thing from other people. Don't come out there and tell me, you're giving me this wonderful thing, but you got less of a warranty, it's not gonna work. I mean, you know, there's gonna be a problem. If only thing you're gonna warranty the whole four is five years, you suspect that in seven to eight, we're gonna have a problem. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Johnny, August 7th, I believe is the first day of school. And so, security-wise, so where are, what do you feel like the school district is with keeping these schools as secure and safe as they can be? - Well, I tell you, we have made some leaps and bounds there. A lot of people don't like the clear book bags. They, that's just one of their complaints. If that's the biggest complaint they got, hey, I'm good with that. I'll tell you this, with the security measures we're putting in place are just like when you go to Disney World, if you walk through that thing and it identifies things, and then it puts a camera, takes a picture, and it sends it to the people and we can track you and finds you then. And we'll find, if you have a gun, we're gonna find out. If you have a weapon of any type, we're gonna find out. It also can, you know, when it goes through, from my understanding, we should be able to pick up on vapes as well. So this is going to be a game changer. We're also putting halos in the bathrooms. That's gonna stop down on the vaping. And kids going in there fighting because when the rough noises and stuff like that triggers it, so we can go in and we can, it'll help us a lot with security. - And we're obviously the biggest school system in the state. - Sure. - Well, hang on, let me just tell you this. We may be the biggest system in the state. That doesn't mean we can't run efficiently. Let me tell you something, Amazon's pretty big. Walmart's pretty big and they run efficiently. The problem is, is the bureaucracy gets involved. I wanna run it like a business. I don't wanna run it like a bureaucracy. - That's great to hear. - Yeah, we can tell. - The situation in theater says that loudly and clearly. - And school safety standards have just changed so much over the last few years. You know, every time there's a new story out there. - So going into this school year, is there a, like a district-wide or do schools individually get up with the teachers and administrators beforehand and say, okay, here's the plan. These doors stay locked during the school day. If you need to enter, you'll have to come through here. We have these new magnetometers or whatever that actual name for these new machines are. Is there kind of a get-together for everybody or for individual schools before the school year? - Absolutely, absolutely. No, look, we take school security very seriously. And look, we've got a lot of good administrators, a lot of good teachers. And let me tell you something, our custodians, our lunch ladies, maintenance people, they all do a great job, our bus drivers. Let me tell you something. We were able to go ahead and give them another bonus. And you know what, it means something to a teacher to get 1500 hours, but when you're making 70, 80,000 dollars a year as an administrator in a school, and that's low, by the way, that's very low. So, but when you're making that kind of money, just to let you know, you don't feel it. Like you feel it when you're a bus driver, or when you're a custodian. Let me tell you something, that could make the difference in their entire year as a custodian to receive that kind of bonus. And that means something to me. That makes me feel good. To be able to do that is wonderful. And I hope we can continue to do these things. - And, you know, through COVID, we talked about the teachers so often, but that's definitely, those are some folks who kind of got left under the radar, bus drivers, and maintenance folks around these schools who, when it went virtual and you didn't have as many, you know, you didn't have the kids going to school. - It was tough on that. - I think it did some real number, did bad some damage to the numbers of bus drivers that we have around here. - Well, I'll tell you this, it did. But, and I keep hearing this. Well, that's a nationwide problem. Well, you know what, guys? I don't run a nationwide school. I run, I'm one of five that helped run Mobile County public school systems. And that's what I care about. I don't care about if it's a nationwide problem. What can we do here to fix it? - Well, exactly. If you look at it like a nationwide problem, if you look at it like it's a nationwide problem, like you're hearing on the news headlines, that doesn't matter to us, really. - I don't care. - It's our problem. What do we do about it here? - We have, let me tell you something. And this is another thing that I wanna do. You know, we were taking cell phones out of the schools. We're gonna pilot, one of the schools showed a 67% decrease in discipline. - Wow. - A 23% increase in academics. - Wow. - It's a no brainer. We're gonna do it. We're doing it. Sometimes you have to punch people in the mouth to help them. That's what we're gonna do. Because by taking these out, it helps these children. Now, another thing I'd like to do, I like the legislators to go ahead and push a bill forward that no child under the age of 16 is allowed to be on social media. It's harmful. You know, we've talked about our suicide rate, our adolescent suicide rate. It's through the roof. It's steadily climbs. When I hear one of my firemen, I'm also a chairman of the board of the Theodore Oz Fire District. When I have one of my firemen come to me and they're telling me this story about how this child's begging them. This 10 or 12 year old child begging them, don't help me. Please don't help me after he shot himself. That's gut wrenching. What could be so bad in his life that that would do that? And then you see this young girl over here that took her life in Mississippi. And then you got the judge over there that puts a guy going around the mother for talking about it. Can you say her name? Are you kidding me? What kind of sick person is that? - Yeah, that story for Mississippi, absolutely disgusting. And it's something we talk about so often, you know, when we were in school and I'll include myself in this, once you leave school, I mean, unless you see friends outside of school, that's it, you're not getting talked about, you're not talking about other people on social media. - You get a break, you get a break. We used to get a break, you don't get a break, it's relentless, it's on and on and on. And they just dig into you until these kids can't take it. So we've got to stand up and do something. And I beg our legislators to take it serious and do something. And look, well, the parents are going to let them do it. Well, I tell you what, let us find out they do it. We'll go ahead and charge them. - Yeah, this is, it's a massive, massive problem. Social media, the phones, the kids and all of this. And it's just, hasn't been tended to soon enough, I think, basically. So here we are, Johnny, thanks for dropping by today. - Hey, appreciate you guys, thank you all so much. - Your boss wants you back in the work. - Hey, let me tell you, they are very demanding. - Yeah, we'll hopefully check back then with you here in the next month or two, see how things are going in this new school year. And we'll have to talk about population growth and possibly new schools on the way. So look at that. - You got it, Johnny. - Thank you all so much, bye. (upbeat music) - Mortar from Dan and Dalton, thanks for trying to get you with the school board. Pop it in. Kicking around a few issues, 8.56. Jeff, full show on the way next. It is, looking forward to Jeff's show. Let's run through some text here. In the last couple minutes of our show, picture here says, yes, I think Biden totally intentionally screwed the Democrats for screwing him. I honestly might vote for mansion. I'm not, I'm really not a big Trump fan. Another texture, the honoring of Saban, he'll have a field named after him. The honor to Biden, he'll have a national park site named after him. They'll change the name Old Faithful to the Old Biden Geyser. It's been around a long time. Another texture, they're saying the shooter had three encrypted overseas accounts. Thank you, Barry. Yeah, and whether they'll be able to crack those or not, I guess that'll help point towards exactly what happened and what led to that shooting last Saturday. Honestly, I'm not, I don't have a whole lot of faith in us getting to the bottom of this. I think it might just kind of fade out of the news, but not if James Comer and the House and Republicans in the Senate have their way. Well, today, right? Today, you'll have Ms. Cheetel is gonna sit down with him. It seems like he even in just, I wouldn't say, these were casual conversations, but behind the scenes when they went in the gal with nothing on the record, according to Hawley from Missouri, she just came across as not being prepared to answer the questions. If I could just plead to the Republicans, it'll be asking questions here and the Democrats, although I know the Democrats won't listen. Can we not use this for grandstanding and soundbites so you'll get on Fox? Ask the damn questions. Ask the questions we wanna know and make them answer them. I don't want you to take your five minutes or however much they're gonna give you today to put a clip on the air. No, this is too important. It's way too important. I don't want this to turn into a grand standoff, but I imagine it will, just like every other one. Randy says the Democrat party's imploding. Russia's lifelong dream is coming true. - Russia's. - Russia's in bars. - Yeah, not Russia. - Russia, yeah. - Yeah. Martin says the Democrats will be doing the usual lies in theatrics. Wasn't it amazing how the networks were praising Biden's step down and how fabulous his career was. I ran out of time. I wanted to play Van Jones crying on CNN. I missed it. - There's always tomorrow. - There's always that's worth it. That's worth it. It's a 859 on FM Talk 1065.