What's Your Point? Overtime | Nov. 8, 2026

Welcome to What's Your Point Overtime, where we continue our discussion of national, local, state, international issues of import in a more freewheeling fashion. Thank you for your attention. Man, we've kind of built an audience here, huh, King? Looks like it. It's kind of crazy. All right, you know, dynamite panel today, and everything we talked about in the first hour of the show, we could have gone on. So let's let's just I just kind of want to go down the line. Where is our country right now? And, you know, what do you hope happens in the next two years, Bill King? You know, we talked about this before. George Friedman said that the 28 or the 32 election was going to be a reset for American politics in some way. And by the way, one of the things he says is he don't he does not think the two party system, as we currently know, it's going to survive that transition. And I kind of tend to agree with that. I mean, I think the failure of the two-party system is so open and obvious now. Gallup just announced that 45% of Americans identify as independents. Only 27% identify with the two parties. And it's equal, the 27% for both of them. Every single year for the last 30 years, that's gone up and those two have gone down. Um, and you look at the two parties, what's there to like about them? You know, I mean, what is there to like about them? I mean, all they do is represent the primary voters that vote in their primaries. And those people are nothing like regular Americans. And so I think there's going to be some kind of reset. I don't know what it's going to look like. I think it's impossible to predict. But, um... I think that people have finally gotten fed up with it. They're fed up with gerrymandering. They hate that. They're fed up with the fighting all the time, not getting along about anything. And so we'll see. The Democrats have a real opportunity here. Whether they seize it or whether they fall back to the pattern we've seen for the last three or four decades, we're going to find out pretty soon. Can I interject real fast? Sure. I'm a moderate, so I'm not a big fan of the two-party system either. But I will say this. I think what just happened... It was a sign that the system is working a little bit because we were off on the deep end of extremism on the MAGA right, and the moderates brought us back. I think they saved us, right? Now my fear is how long will that last? Because if you can envision 20 years from now, when let's just assume if Texas is blue for 20 years, we could just as easily be on the other end of that spectrum and be asking for the Democratic moderates to come save us, just like the Republican moderates just did. But the moderates also just elected Donald Trump two years ago. It took a while. I should probably go to Jordan here because even though he denies it. I know there are people trying to claw him back into government, probably, even working for your old boss, Letitia James. Look, if you're in a star chamber of Democrats, and you talk about the challenge that Bill just laid out, and what Schumer talked about, we got a chance here. What's your counsel to them? So... I'm thinking about this conversation in the context of 2024. So the New York Times puts out, you know, the arrow map, the directional arrow map they put out after every election. 2024, it's all to the right and red, the entire country. Last Tuesday, it's all to the left and blue. And to me, that tells me that... These independents that Bill talks about, really everybody, they are telling the political class, you need to focus on me now. I am sick and tired of, and they'll tell you, we will go from party to party. It doesn't matter. We will keep swinging until we find a politics that focuses on the working class. Yes. Affordability, I'm worried, is becoming a buzzword that could become meaningless in two years. And so we need to be focusing on what are the cost drivers of people's lives. It's what they're paying for housing. People are paying over 50% for housing. People are paying over $12,000 a year for daycare and childcare. care. Utility costs are soaring, and we don't have those in check yet because we politicized what type of energy we're going to use or who gets to do what. And so it is really, I wouldn't, I would argue it's not so much the two party system, but the American people are realigning on what their politics are. And I don't think it's this left right dynamic anymore. It really is this up down thing that they figured out. And I think Tallarico's closing message highlights that when he says the richest man on the earth. Is attacking me. If you've seen an attack ad, chances are it came from the richest man on earth. Why is he doing that? And I think that is in line with where people are at right now. Gina and Tallarico say, hey, look, you're a major employer. You have relocated hundreds of billions of dollars in resources, and it'll be a challenge to them. They don't want those jobs to go away. They want SpaceX to be an advantage. The RGV is blowing up down there between LNG ports and Spaceport. I mean, they see all of this as good stuff. Is there middle ground to be found? I mean, Holly, I would love to be at your editorial meeting as y'all talk about this at the Texan. I like being in all editorial meetings because that's where everybody speaks. It speaks to their mind. Thoughts here? Well, it's interesting to see, as you mentioned, Gina Hinojosa already, once she's been elected, has sort of softened that message about data centers, right? Because recognizing that they are essential, they're already data centers that are permitted and ready to go, she pretty much adopted what Greg Abbott was going to do and put these guardrails on any new data centers. And I think what a lot of people would like for them to look at, too, is no longer It's not giving data centers or any other big group necessarily humongous tax breaks while raising the taxes on not just, you know... You said affordability becoming a little bit of a buzzword. It's, you know, the broader economic picture. And it's not just people who are low, low income. You're talking about middle class being absolutely crushed by prices and a troubled job market. As a mother of two young men, recent college graduates, the job market is brutal right now for these guys. And, you know, I mean, there's just so much concern there. You know, Hinojosa and and Tallarico with those those victory speeches, conciliatory sounding, you know, sounding a little more positive towards, you know, some of these business developments and things like that, that we need, that we need to keep the economy going. And I think it was 1994. I was still a reporter in Austin at State Capitol. We got some census numbers back, which showed that for the first time, Texas was. Minority, majority state. And I said, like, wow, how can the Republicans hold on? It's just a matter of time. Well, here we go. I think the question is... You know, when I was talking to someone that used to work in the federal government, he said, I said, when does this nightmare end? Not only on economics, but immigration enforcement policy, the fear, the terror, the hate culture, the anti-everything culture, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrants, anti-whatever. So, you know, you know, he said the normalcy and decency will come back into politics once Trump is out, because when he was elected, it just happened. Cascaded downwards chaos and that is what's going to happen but I think the bigger picture is the working class. I'm all in favor of economic development, public safety, supporting law enforcement but also we have to look at The billions of dollars that are spent that influence the election, those Citizens United, when you get those mailers, the millions of dollars to pay for ads on TV, and there's... We're not stopping those. No, no. We're not stopping those. That's your job. All of that, how that influences and shapes people's minds and persuasions, that needs to stop. That is what the messaging is. Yes, in Tallarico, One of the best speeches I've ever heard. Like I mentioned, he's the young Bobby Kennedy, the young Barack Obama, their breath of fresh air. He has presidential aspirations. Mark my words, in four years, he's going to be running for president, just like Barack Obama one term. JFK one term as senators, and they ran for president and were very successful. But the focus is on the working class. I don't think he'll be old enough in four years. He's got to be 36. But the focus is on the working class. That is the whole focus. Not on the rich and not on the way down here, far left or far right. In the middle. And you'll have a better country, a better society, and a better political party. Okay. Okay, I... I frequently repeat this, because it's true, from Mr. King, he says, the best thing the Republicans have going for them is how god-awful the Democrats are, and vice versa. So we all have to understand that this incredible pendulum swing we've seen of authoritarianism when it comes to an overreach, when it comes to ICE, is a result in part of letting the 12 million people, 10 million people walk in under the Biden administration. And everybody on this panel recognizes that that was a terrible policy. I would push back on that a little bit. I think that- That is not me. That was a good policy? It was a good policy? No, what I'm saying is that the just absolute violent overreaction that we've seen from ICE I think is, is a result of the people that have been put in place to execute that plan. Right. Right. So it's not so much that, Hey, we had open borders and now we have to have this, uh, authoritarian crackdown now, right? That was people that were chosen to do that. Uh, Stephen Miller is an ideologue. Uh, he's been, he's been caught sending materials from white nationalist websites. Um, this is, this is the man who's now the. He got promoted. The second most powerful person in the country, right? He got promoted, right? Those ideas just got promoted. So yeah, I'm a little worried. I'm optimistic given the results of last night, but you don't place Stephen Miller in that position unless you're planning on doubling down. So here's my hope, which is that Republicans and Democrats, they're sophisticated politicians. They know where the votes are. And for the past 10 years, the votes have been in MAGA's corner. So every single good Republican is lined up behind MAGA like good politicians do, right? For the first time ever, those votes aren't there anymore. And the question is, will the Republican politicians see it the way that all of us see it and decide that there needs to be another way? And that will get decided, I think, in the next six months, right? Remember after J6, there were a few brave souls who said something bad about Trump, and then they quickly retreated. We'll see if they're going to have the guts to do it for real this time. The problem, Andrew, is they're still in the primaries. That's the problem. You know, if you're going to run through a Republican primary, MAGA's still going to have a lot to say, as we just saw with Ken Paxton winning the runoff. You know, I think that Let me tell you two reasons I'm hopeful about this. And certainly what Jordan says about picking the people and Stephen Miller was the worst possible choice he could have done. That's just going to be a disaster. But, you know, I try to look at these bigger trends that go on within society and within the nation. And there's a couple of things I would point out. Number one is we've always had a love-hate relationship with immigration throughout our entire history. When the foreign-born population gets up to somewhere around 15% to 18%, We get one of these backlashes to it, and it takes us 10 or 15 years to get over it. We're in about halfway through that right now, so I think that's going to get better over time. And it gets better as the immigrant population comes in and assimilates. And look at Letitia Plummer, you know, is half Persian. I don't think she's really observant Muslim, but at least by heritage she is. And nobody gave a damn about that in this election. And I think I sent a bunch y'all a picture of my grandsons. All his buddies that went to the prom together, and there were two white kids, of which he was one of the two. There was a black kid. There were two Indian kids, a Hispanic kid, and they're all just throwing, I mean, they're having a great time partying. They could care less about all this bullshit, you know, and that's the generation that's going to be in control here in the next, you know, 20 years or so, and they're going to have a different outlook on it. And look, I will say... I want to give all of us credit for raising kids like that. I think it's a little dangerous, if I could just comment real quick, to treat demographics as destiny, because they're not. There's a guy out there named Nick Fuentes, who is a young person who is leading a movement called America First. And on Wednesday, the day after the election, I saw the vice president of the United States, who's the frontrunner to be the next nominee for the Republican Party, I think what he's saying, among his four reasons why he thinks they lost is because America first. And I saw a lot of cable news start programming these two words, America first. So there is a younger contingent that matriculated under MAGA. They became ultra right-wing conservatives. And now they are dominating online spaces. And so I wouldn't just treat demographics as destiny. We do have to do the hard work of creating a politics that is better. I'm guessing that Holly and her newsroom will be watching the Texas Republican Party. There will be a movement to return to quote unquote Reagan republicanism, and then there will be a contingent that wants to double down on MAGA and continue forward, which I think is the arithmetic of subtraction. But, I mean, is that going to happen, you think, or is that beginning to happen? I think it is beginning to happen. It actually had started, I think, before this election. We were hearing from more and more Republicans, and right now the woman's name escapes me. There's a great new book out called Fusionism. It talked about the history of the conservative movement in the United States and the focus on freedoms, such as freedom of speech and so forth, and also free enterprise, the freedom to conduct a business, to raise an income so you can raise your family and so forth. kind of roots, you know, policy ideas and away from the Trump years where you had an aligning of the party behind a person, almost a cult of personality, if you will. And for a lot of Republicans I'm hearing from, they feel freed by what has happened is, you know, they don't like losing the state houses across the country and worried about what kind of policies will be They're hoping to return to some of the historically Solid policies that brought prosperity to a broad swath of society instead of what we've been doing for the past decade. So, Gina, I want to ask Santiago this. Gina Hinojosa's father was chairman of the Democratic Party here in Texas. And, you know, my question becomes what I will be watching. Is whether she can rule as a centrist, which is which is her indication, or is she going to be the Gina Hinojosa who gave fiery. Highly progressive speeches on the floor of the Texas House and drew my attention as one of those folks who was eager and frequently did so. I think she should. I mean, I think she should move a little bit more in the center to get things done at the state capitol. You still have the Senate firewall there, so you have to be able to work together, get some things accomplished. But back to your point, Holly, on the issue of. The Republicans, I have a few Republican friends, I only have like one, but anyway, but they were against a lot of the things that the Republican Party was projecting out there in the media, but they didn't say it vocally and publicly. That's the problem. If they were to stand in solidarity against some of these... Issues like immigration, affordability, and standing in solidarity together because it affects the whole community, not just one segment of the community. They would have had a stronger team and a stronger message, but they refused. They spoke in silence, and they acquiesced as to what was happening. That was their problem. But if they come out publicly and you're a Republican and I say, hey, let's work on this, I condone this action, not the party. I condone this action. That sends a whole different message. It signals that we care about the families. We care about people being terrorized. We care about affordable affordability. We care about, you know, buying groceries this weekend at the, you know, those who live paycheck to paycheck like you and I do. So, you know, so that's the real issue that the Republicans did not speak publicly on the things that they did not agree with. You want a quick Punching the teeth verbally from Bill King? Call him a Republican. Look at this. It was hypothetical. Bill had a point he was going to make. What were you going to say, Bill? So I want to say that I think going back to Reagan Republicanism or MAGA is a mistake on both sides. Because Reagan Republicanism was a moment in time that doesn't exist anymore. Exactly. Look. And I'm going to get back and argue with Jordan for a second. Good. Demographics is destiny. And I'll give you some examples. This country is going to be much older in 20 years from now than it is today. And, you know, we on average and that means that our medical costs are going to go up astronomically because guess what? Old people are the ones that require all the medical care. So how do we do that? At the same time, we have a generation of young people that we have screwed over royally. And one of the things that just aggravates the hell out of me is what college costs. Now, I've told the story before. You know, I worked my way through the University of Houston. My dad was a pipe fitter. The only, you know... College assistance I got was I got to work as a pipefitters apprentice in the summer. But I was able to work as a pipers apprentice in the summer, earn enough money to go to U of H all year long, then go back the next summer and work and pay for it. And I got out without any student loan debt. The reason for that is when I was in law school, my tuition was $175 per semester, not per semester hour, per semester. And then my books were another $300 or so. You know, if you go through law school today, and you don't have anybody to help you, you're going to end up with probably $100,000 of student loan debt. Now, you end up with that much student loan debt. How in the hell do you start a family? How in the hell do you afford to buy a house? I mean, this is just what we've done is not right. And look. I get it that, you know, people are tired of paying taxes and they're tired of subsidizing, but if we don't do something to create opportunity for these young people that are coming along so that they can figure out a place in the world, and then they've got the challenges of what's AI going to mean, what is that going to do to the workforce? So I think we're going to be talking about some really radical ideas in the future. Let me put a finer point on my point on demographics. Racial demographics is not destiny. So often after these elections, we talk about whole swaths of people as if, well, now they're in this column. No, I agree with you. I remember in 2008 watching watching the elections and saying, OK, well, now there's a coalition of people of color who are going to forever elect Democrats. No one saw Donald Trump coming. Right. We do this every single election cycle. And the way we talk about Latinos, OK, Latinos are now over here. Now they're over there. Latinos are going to be the swing block. I mean, it's crazy the divisions that we put on people and on ourselves. So racial demographics are not destiny. I started off by saying there's a man named Nick Fuentes who is putting forward white nationalist ideology on the Internet. Right? That's such a tiny fringe, Jordan. Yeah, what percent? I want to take an opportunity. These were fringe guys on 4chan, and they run the White House now. Yeah. So as A rookie reporter, I had the privilege of throwing your dad a question. I think I stumbled it out, but he was gracious and answered it. And I'd be curious, you know, because we've got it. And you were a kid, too, when your dad was in the governor's mansion. But you were at the benefit of many conversations as a young man. Oh, man. You know, what do you think he would say having watched what unfolded? Yeah, you know, I think the observation I could hear him tell me right now is, The Democrats didn't win. The Republicans lost. And at least the Democrats kept from losing it themselves, right? There was no, we're going to take your gun away comment from anybody. There were less of those comments. And so, I mean, we have to be careful, right? Right? We did great. We had a great moderate take. James was one of the best candidates we've ever seen. He'd never made a mistake. I mean, all the way through. And then Gina did great by following exactly when James' message of corruption. Affordability and those sorts of things so they didn't mess up. No, no unforced errors, but the Republicans Ethically failed this was such an own goal on them. It's their bed. They get to sleep in it now, right? But you just can't don't assume that you want even though the other side lost By the way, there's pretty ethical challenges on both sides. I'll show you some in Harris County. Some public corruption cases that we need to look at. We sit here with our friend Gary Polland, who is a former Harris County Republican chair. And he's been ostracized. Excommunicated. Excommunicated. And one of Gary's quotes that I like to say is, Gary, I've said, yeah, if I can agree with somebody on 80% of things, I figure I have an ally. But that wasn't the case with this Republican Party. Yeah, that was really frustrating. And, you know, it's interesting because there was this echo chamber amongst this subset within the Republican Party, and they didn't seem to be aware that they were losing the moderate and the middle that they needed to win elections. We talked about it repeatedly on this show over the past years. You've got to persuade those middle-of-the-road voters. That's where you win or lose an election. And they weren't able to really hear hear that, you know, as a reporter who shares a lot of just factual information, you know, we shared some of the early turnout numbers, you know, you could see that trend. I had people accusing me of being a liar and, you know, a Democrat and all kinds of things, you know, it's always fun when you get it from both sides, right? Is that an insult, being a Democrat? Hi. I don't want to, you know, have a label on either side, but, you know, it's just, They need to understand, you know, that... Again, we're looking at the middle. And one thing I worry about, and I love your optimism, you know, there's a new day and all of that. And I think a lot of people are optimistic. The devil's always in the details. What are the policies? We've talked about affordability. We've talked about people not being able to afford groceries and the cost of things. What specifically are you going to do to address those issues? And, you know, is it government, more government programs? Is it guaranteed basic income? I don't think that's going to answer the question. You're going to have a very small minority of people who are getting these checks. And then you've got, you know, middle class people who are making, you know, barely a median income with four kids having to pay extra taxes to pay for that. You know you can't And like I said earlier, eventually you're going to run out of other people's money. And we already have a debt problem. We have a financial problem here in Harris County that we're facing. It's only getting worse nationally. Look at the national debt. When's the last time we had a conversation about the national debt? Can we talk about universal basic income for a second? Because I think this is a very interesting topic. I think we're going to be talking a lot more about it in the next few years. I would like to point out that the first person that proposed it was Milton Friedman. So this is not like some new progressive idea, but what Milton Friedman proposed was a universal basic income. He actually called it a tax credit or something. We didn't use that term, but it was something else. Basically, he said we're going to provide everybody A guaranteed amount of money. Everybody, I don't care what you make. A million dollars, you don't make any money. Everybody's going to get this much money. And then, but his thought was, then we eliminate all the welfare programs. That was his basically proposal. I think when you look at what's happening right now, so if you think about this as an economist for a second. The two things that create wealth are labor and capital, and those things have constantly been in a balancing act for all of human history, whether one was going to dominate over the other. But right now, what we're seeing is capital dominating over labor pretty dramatically, and the reason for that is that capital represents the technology breakthrough that we've had in the last 30 or 40 years, which is only accelerating. Cat labor increasingly has become less valuable because we don't need it for things. And I tell you what, I see it every single day when I bring up ChatGPT and have it do something for me that I would have somebody else do for me at a different time in my life. So I think it is going to require some rebalancing. But where the money is going to come from is not other people. It's going to come from. This incredible store of value that we're creating in this capital base. That, to me, is going to be the long-term solution. Now, you can call that liberal or conservative, whatever the hell you want to call it. But I think that's the demographic and economic reality that we're facing going forward. We've spent a lot of time. I love it that everybody wants to talk because that means – go ahead. A couple of things. So – We'll talk about what are the policies going to be. It was clear, if you watched Tina Hossa's campaign, education was a centerpiece. That is a uniting issue across all Texas House Democrats, a number of House Republicans as well. And how does that fit into affordability? I remember being at the city of Houston when Sylvester Turner was trying to attract some industries to come here. And they said, man... Love almost everything you've got going on here except your HISD school system. I cannot bring my workers from someplace else when this is the school system they're going to be coming into. And he also said, don't love your transportation either. So fixing the education system is going to be economic development. Is it going to be an economic development opportunity? Everyone has agreed they don't like this voucher plan, at least on the Texas House side. We had a problem before. One half of one percent. Right, before you even enacted this very focused, very small plan, what could you have done with HISD where you had some schools where, you know, third graders were not learning basic reading and writing? I was on the board at that moment, what you're talking about and what you're talking about, but I'll talk about it in a minute from the inside, not the outside. But I mean, you have to get... It's a specific policy, right? So what is it? Well, the larger issue is if we throw more money at it, are we going to get value for the money we throw at it? Yeah, let's just back up on a couple of issues. Hold on. Hold on. Let Jordan finish and then you're guaranteed. Okay, okay, okay. I'm between these two economists here. But anyway, go ahead. Yeah, I mean... What are the details? Look, we're going to have a whole legislative session to get that out. I don't know. I don't want to speak for the entire caucus here, but I'm saying it's a unifying issue. Expect education to be a theme. A priority. Highly focused on the legislative session. Yeah, everybody cares about education. I've already mentioned child care. I've already mentioned housing. And I think that you're going to see that at the national level as well. Elizabeth Warren put forth a very detailed housing plan that was vetoed. And to Andrew's point earlier, we're going to see a lot of... I think 60-40 issues are about to be on the agenda. It's coming up a specific legislation that they're going to force the president to veto. We'll see what happens there. And I think here at home in Texas, it's unfortunate saying this as a Democrat. Texas Senate Republicans have an outsized influence on what is going to be possible in this next session. So I think there's a there's a broad swath of agreement where Texas House Democrats are. But now there are maybe half a dozen state Republican senators in Texas who are going to control the agenda in a way that. And they're mostly rural, and so there could be some good give and takes there, because there are some major rural issues around water, and on land rights, and some other issues that they really want to play ball. Right. I can actually... I really want to hear some details about education. What I'm hearing, there's some democracy happening. The only thing I've heard so far is we're going to get rid of the star tests, and we're going to get rid of the school choice program. So I would really love to hear what the other details are. How are you going to teach them? How do you improve an urban school district that had exceptional magnet schools? Some of the best in the country. They still do. But go ahead. And then, but 50%, and that's kind of folks who were over decades reading under grade level. And in the words of one chief of staff to a superintendent, we're functionally, we are graduating functionally illiterate. People. And how do we fix that? And that's a big question. That's a big question. First of all, HISD is the largest school district in the state of Texas, seventh in the nation. And when I was going to school in my neighborhood traditional school, there were no charter schools. There were very few magnet schools. There was no homeschooling, none of that. When you have a traditional school that was exemplary, Garcia's Elementary and then traditional low-income area, Kids were performing well and then the year 1974 when privatization by the two wealthy billionaires, I forgot their names, who wanted to start the movement to privatize public education and they started the accreditation of charter school. The next thing you know, you have a charter school next to this school and another charter school and so the students follow the new school, the money goes there and then you have the magnet school, the top kids that have parental support and all of that. Parent choice took them to the magnet schools What you have left is the bottom tier of students that are performing at the low level. However, you continue to test them with the same matrix that you're testing the kids at the magnet schools, the magnet school, the private schools and the charter school. And you go, look, they keep failing. They suck. You know, the whole system down. But this was a deliberate attempt to privatize public education. Now and now. What we need to do is come back and reinvest into public education and revitalize it by having experienced teachers, resources, and... uh literally having a moratorium on charter schools because that is where a lot of the students have left. I know kids that have done a tremendous well in elementary but then they go to a magnet school in middle school and I said there's a it's a very complex problem but this did not happen overnight. This is another issue about the constantly saying that third graders are performing at this level. It's not only HISD. Have you gone to Aldine, Alief, All the surrounding urban schools that have high number of minority students are performing exactly the same. However, this is a systemic problem that we need to address. And I think Gina Hossa is a strong proponent of public ed and she's going to bring back that message. You were on the board. Yes. And we saw the state-appointed superintendent go head-to-head, not just him, the previous board-supported superintendents recruited and appointed by elected school boards go head-to-head with the school district, I mean, with the teachers' unions. I'm concerned that the teachers' unions will have outsized... influence on this governor. She has been a close, close, close ally. Are they going to have a, when I say outsize? Too large a seat at the table here. I'm not sure. You know, there's policy that regulates. There's no seat at the table. That's not true, Jordan. There is a policy that's called, I forgot the name of it. So you think that school districts should be run by teachers unions? No, I think that we've used the teachers union, and I'm sorry for the collective we that I say, but people have used them as pinatas, as a boogeyman, right? I think give them a chance. This is the first time that Texas Democrats have had control, I won't say control, but influence over a $2.7 trillion economy. I know some people heard that and they're terrified of it. Others of us heard that and said, this is an opportunity. Let's see what a different coalition looks like, how they work together. It's not going to be the teachers union. Dictating education policy, there are a number of experts who have been in the Texas House working on this issue for decades, and to Holly's point, there's going to be some consensus that happens. Everybody has a different thought on where they want to take education in the state of Texas. The Teachers Union, yes, is one interest group that does have... A thought I think they are going to have a role to play, but they're not going to run it. There's no there's too many other interest groups that want a piece or a stake in this. Let me give you an example. When Miles came in, they actually had a policy where one a union member representative was at the table as like an advisory member. The advisory, the H.I.D. school district advisory board was dismantled by Miles. And this one is said it called consultation. I believe that's what it's called. Union can go and represent and share their needs or their concerns, just like a traditional advisory board with different stakeholders. You had business folks, foundation folks, a union member, but they did not dominate. They didn't have control of the majority of that table. At least now they're back on the table. So I was on the HISD Foundation Board for, I think, 25 years. And so I've been to almost every HISD school there is at one point in time or another. And tremendous unevenness in the quality of the schools. They reflect the neighborhood in which they are located. And that's just the stark reality of it. The more economically viable the neighborhood is, the more economically viable the school is. And that's just, you know, not fair. It's the reality. But I want to say that this is something that, you know, again, we're completely missing. 25, 20 years from now, there will be less school-aged children in the state of Texas than there are today. Every year from now on, there are going to be less children. We have 50 schools that need to be closed in HISD right now because you go in and there's like half the kids or half the seats are empty. That is an uneconomical model. It's not fair to the kids. Now, is people going to like that? Hell no, they're not going to like it. Everybody wants to have their local school, but it's just not viable when you've got this few children. I'll tell you Say something else that's going to shock you. Five to seven years from now, there will be a housing surplus in the United States. We're going to have a housing glut in the United States. Right now, in the Houston metropolitan area, there are 100,000 vacant apartments today. You can go rent a one-bedroom apartment right now in the Houston region for about $500 or $600 a month. Now, that's not needing more housing. Now, we still have a bunch of people that can't afford a $500 or $600, and this is, and so the problem is not the supply, and everything I hear is about the supply side of it, which basically turns into be a big corrupt program almost every time we do it. The problem is not the supply. The problem is we have a whole group of people whose income is so low, they can't afford housing at any price. So you want to talk about what's going to be on the agenda? That's the problem. Raising the minimum wage, it's $7.25. Jordan, how many people, how many actually get paid in Texas, get paid the minimum wage right now? 190,000 people. You're right. It's not a huge amount of people. Out of 30 million people. If we're talking about the people that we're trying to... It will make no difference. If we're talking about the people that we're trying to get to afford a $500 apartment, they can't do it with $15,000 a year. But none of those people are working for the minimum wage. What they mostly are is old people who are widowed, who only get one Social Security check. That's the big demographic of people that are in. In that Rice study of 25%, they're over 50% of their income going to housing. When you look at the crosstabs, it's mostly retired people getting one Social Security check. Hold on, hold on. Go ahead, Andy. I'll throw one more thing in there, Jordan, because to your point about education, and money doesn't solve all problems, but it helps, right? And so finding more budget is going to be critical for this legislature. With Dan Patrick gone, casino gambling is... It's coming. It's coming. That's right. There's online gambling also, senators that may block it. I don't know. Yeah, but we have got to figure out a way to make etha t It's coming. It's coming. W It's coming. It's coming. win for Texas, not just for the casino companies. It It's coming. It's coming. I think I read something. Miss Miss T is in support. Ic It's coming. Can I share one phenomenon before we leave? It's coming. It's coming. Has that worked in Louisiana? It's coming. We've still got about 10 minutes. It's coming. It's coming. It's coming. Bill brought up Louisiana. It's coming. I didn't solve the problem anyplace else. Im It's coming. It's coming. It's coming. I'm okay. As a libertarian, I'm okay. Look, when I go, I like... So I don't think... I'm tired of the, you know, Dan Patrick wagging his finger, I said, no, you can't take THC, you can't make online bets. And you're blasphemous. Yeah, all of that, you know, but the problem is we have that all over the country. We haven't solved any of these problems. That's right. It just created more addiction. Okay. Something we brought up on a show recently. And it's a concern of yours, which is providing healthy homestead exemptions for people my age who have already accumulated some wealth. Instead of homestead exemptions for people who are 24. Homestead exemption for first-time homebuyers is something, if I was a Democrat, I'd absolutely put that on the agenda. First thing. You know, an opportunity. I have colleagues who are much younger than I am, and they have given up on trying to save $40,000 cash to get into a house, especially when... You know, their local property taxes get raised and that increases their mortgage and makes them less apt to get a mortgage. I'm telling you, this problem is going to take care of itself in a very short period of time. Because right in this last appraisal roll... House values in Harris County did not go up at all. But you said the other day that state sales tax revenue was going up. It's up 3%, which is about inflation. I'm just telling you, this is what, you know, I know I keep preaching this over and over, that people do not understand. We're living in a different moment than we have for the last three centuries, and certainly what we've seen in Texas for the last 40 or 50 years. It's just going to be different. Now, that doesn't mean it's going to... I'm not saying it's going to be terrible or catastrophic, but it's going to be different. And if we keep making the same stupid mistakes we've been making, and, of course, Jordan and I argue about transit all the time, but I'll pick a non-transit. To build another toll road out the Hempstead Highway right now would be the dumbest amount of money we could possibly spend because we're never going to need it in the future. And we've got to start thinking about this. We're in a new moment in history, and we've got to start thinking about it differently. Exactly. Someone said that economists are like weather reporters. They always get it wrong. But anyway... Yeah, things continue to change. There's always elements of unpredictability, but let me talk about the demographics. There's something that a phenomenon happens. You're right. Demographics is not destiny, but demographics have to be highly monitored for economic reasons to see where the growing markets are, political reasons, social, economic reasons. But a phenomenon that did happen in a small subgroup is the young Latino voters from zero to 29. That tripled and quadrupled and the early voting results really clearly show that 400,000 new voters in the state of Texas, one half were Latino, but more strikingly, the one half, two thirds were under the age of zero to 29. That is a phenomenon. That's never been there before, and that is going to continue to grow. So it's important to look at that number and to make sure that you do not take that group for granted. They are the future. Holly, that's I made the point on Battleground this week that there were inflection points for this particular Trump administration, one of which was the two killings in Minnesota. Yeah. Instead of saying, wow. We overdid it. We undertrained. That shouldn't have happened. We're pulling back. They doubled down. And then Lorenzo Salgado gets killed here. It cost him 400,000 votes in Houston. Maybe, maybe more. Can I tell you what the fastest growing ethnic group is in the United States right now, demographically? You know what the fastest one is? Mixed. Mixed ethnic group. My family. And I can say, you know, my grandson's dating this gorgeous Indian woman, you know. I mean, it's just, these younger people don't care. They don't see it. They do not care. Until they start getting a job and paying taxes, they start caring. Well, he has two adult sons who are, you know, they're in a tough job market. Yeah, really. And if you ask them, say, like, when do you think you'll be able to buy a house? I have my oldest son says, I don't I don't see how I'm ever going to be able to buy a house the way, you know, things are going. And, you know, unless you're really super well connected and you get some high paying government job, I don't know, COVID contract or something. We're proud of you. I'm still chuckling at Ken Paxton's program, basically doubling every tax exemption that. Kamala Harris offered when she ran for president and bringing it back to the table. You know, and I think to your point, one of the huge mistakes Republicans made, you know, Trump, of course, you know, the inexplicable tariff war, Iranian war. We talked about on the show after the war in Iran started. And I said on this show, if this doesn't wrap up within a couple of months and these gas prices fall. It will be a bloodbath for Republicans. I said that. And, you know, but... Gosh, I lost my train of thought, right? But, you know, some of the Republicans had such an arrogant response to people's concerns. Hubris. Yeah, hubris is a great word. There was an ad, a Republican in another state, and people were asking her about the price of beef. And she said, well, there's other proteins. I mean, that turned into one of the most phenomenal ads of the campaign. That was the best ad. of the decade And I know a lot. A lot of Republicans who were struggling under this economy, and they heard some of the people in leadership making these kinds of comments, and they're, why should I go vote for these people? I think there was a rural undervote, but okay, Jordan's three-year-olds kept him up, and heavy is the crown. Miami lost. God bless you. Yeah, tough night last night, right? Yeah, all around. So, I want to give the floor to you. I mean, how... You've listened to innovative ideas about improving the atmosphere for young homebuyers. I mean, is that even, I mean, because like, look, we're all in the grandparent, you know, or potential grandparent area. What are the best ideas you have heard for home affordability for folks? Our friend Stephen David. Yeah. He stunned me. He said, yeah, when my wife and I bought our home, I was 21 and she was 20. And I'm going like, who did that? Other than kind of brainiac Stephen David. And they ate macaroni. That's out of range unless the great accumulation of wealth of people our age helps those kids, those young people with their first down payment. You know, What are the best ideas you've heard about improving? Affordability for housing. Or is that even a goal of young people now? I've stopped, well it's, as everyone said, it's not a realistic thing in the eyes of many people ages 20 whatever to 29, right? Personally, I've kind of stopped thinking about these as individual issues of like, housing, of child care, of all, like, this whole affordability umbrella connects back to people's wages, which have stagnated and been exacerbated in a K-shaped economy. It's a really good economy for people who are already doing really well, and everyone else is doing really poorly. Poorly. Cool. Coincidentally enough, when you look at polling, working people say they would rather see Washington, they would rather see their capital, We have a capital focus on getting Cost down as opposed to wage increases, which I think is interesting and counterintuitive. I don't know if that means people have... Have you ever lost their belief in politicians' ability to do something on their wages? Or if it's a reflection to Bill's point that most of this economy is dominated by folks like Nvidia, right? It's a data center economy. It's a tech-centric economy. There aren't a lot of just jobs traditionally that we think about that people can go to. And Bill, I want to touch on what you were talking about UBI. I don't think that it's going to be a UBI is the future. I think that... Public ownership of compute is how you're going to solve a lot of this stuff. You have to give the public a stake in where the economy is going. That's how people are going to be able to afford things like that. Somebody was talking about an AI tax. Who is that? Tallarico. We talked about that. A lot of folks have been talking about that. I think we're going to be going down that road. And we haven't even talked about health care. I mean, there's going to be a couple of immediate. They're going to extend the ACA tax credits. And there's going to be. But I can just tell you. Sitting on a big system board like I do, you see behind the curtains, this system is so screwed up, you just can't even imagine. There's so many economic disallocations going on here, and something that actually Bob Price talks about quite a bit. The way we handle mental health is insane, is incredibly expensive. How about this? Resolved. Reduce America's military budget by 20%. percent Yeah. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's how, let me, let me just say, I got it. I do got to say on the, on the wages, uh, minimum wage here and the prices keep going up. You have a minimum wage prices keep going up minimum wage. When I was on the board, I would toot my horn. I passed the largest minimum wage for HISD. I spearheaded that from $7 to $14. So I truly believe I have some pushback, but I truly believe that you, when you lift everyone up, We're all floored up. We could go another hour. That means come back next week and we'll do it. Thanks for joining us for Watch Your Point Overtime.