Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, cheers.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: Cheers. Cheers to 1500.
[00:00:04] Speaker A: 1500. What was 1500?
[00:00:06] Speaker B: We have over 1500 followers.
[00:00:08] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: That's what this is for. But he. Daniel, happened to bring good scotch on the same day that I was gonna celebrate.
[00:00:16] Speaker A: Oh, wow. Thank you. Yes. The good scotch is heaven. Do you think they are following us by accident?
Wait, what do you mean? Well, I mean. Oh, do they really care what we have to say?
[00:00:27] Speaker B: They're like leftist haters, but they're like news.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: Welcome to another episode of.
What is this show called again? The Parish Circuit. That's it. I haven't even had a sip of whiskey yet. Just for the. For the listeners benefit.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: It's a great name. I really like the name.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: Oh, thank you. So the. The motif is, you know, parishes are representative of our counties, as we call counties in Louisiana parishes. It lends itself to the church title. There was the circuit writer of old who rode between towns as he served churches in the area because it didn't have money, didn't have enough money to hire one pastor in a local town. And he was bring the word and he would also bring the news.
And so here we are. We're the Parish Circuit.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I love it.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: So it's also a little bit of a nod to St. Landry Parish and its history with horses.
There's a ton of horse farms, actually.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Never thought of that.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:24] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: So, yeah, it's a good thing.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: Cool. I just work here.
Why?
[00:01:30] Speaker A: My wife helped me come up with that name.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: That's right. That's right.
Why might you have whiskey?
[00:01:36] Speaker A: Because we have 1500 followers.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: 15. Over 1500 followers over 15 as of a couple of days ago.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: Yeah. That's awesome. I think it was yesterday, actually.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:01:43] Speaker A: Wasn't it yesterday that we crossed.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: We don't know exactly, but I think we checked. Yesterday it was over 1500.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: And it was 1500. Man, I can't believe it. Look at that. The Lord's doing something cool here. I'm excited. I'm excited to see what the future looks like. I'm excited to see how things continue to grow. People actually read the website, they listen to the podcast, they at least glance at the headlines sometimes on Facebook before they rage, comment like, there's cool things that are going on in the world right now.
[00:02:07] Speaker B: But yeah, I was looking at some comments related to some of the things related to SpaceX in Lafayette, the potential Beltway, and stuff like that. There's some also. I was just going to say there's also some good conversation going on. Yeah, it's not. You get, you know, you get the, the rage comments, too. Occasionally.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: Sure.
But there's some folks who are, like, genuinely engaged.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: They're, they're thinking about the issues. They're trying to bring it through. That's part of what we're doing. We're trying to bring important issues to the forefront. I think that's great.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: Speaking of, did you hear that the chief of police, who we've done on episode.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: On several episodes.
[00:02:47] Speaker B: Have we done. Oh, we've done a couple.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:49] Speaker B: Yeah, we've done a couple.
[00:02:50] Speaker A: More than one.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: So it just recently came through that he will not be tried until after the election.
[00:02:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Now I'm just, I'm a little nervous about this.
[00:03:00] Speaker B: I'm just thinking about this. This is really weird for a couple reasons.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: Okay, go. One reason number one.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: One, it obviously smells funny.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: It definitely smells funny.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: Smells weird. So, like.
All right, you, you have three outstanding charges. Right.
No conviction, but three outstanding charges that we've talked through on a previous episode.
[00:03:21] Speaker A: Right.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: And they have now publicly said. And I guess they mean being the D.A.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: the Attorney General's office for the state of Louisiana.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:29] Speaker A: Liz.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: Attorney general has come out and said we are pushing his, his trial back beyond the election in November.
The second thing that's funny about, like, so that smells weird.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: That smells weird, but that definitely smells weird.
[00:03:43] Speaker B: What I just thought of that makes this weirder is that no one knew about any trial date.
Like, they haven't set a trial date. So by them, like, coming out and saying this is like a weird voluntary way to make this seem off.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: So I think there was a date. It's just that no one knew it.
[00:04:04] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: But there, there was, whenever I was doing some deep diving, there was a date that was going to happen in, I think it was September, actually. I think it was this month where they were, they were going to do something about this case.
And then as the date approached, they just kicked it back farther.
Exactly. Why, I'm not totally sure. It sounds a lot like, you know, the situation that happened with Donald Trump where they kicked his stuff back past the election, the things that he was charged with, and then eventually it went away.
But now very different situations. Because his charges were largely
[00:04:40] Speaker B: trumped up.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: Yes.
Yeah. They were largely, you know, made up, but these are actual, you know, like real ones. So it's an interesting situation. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know why they would do this. It seems like it's going to be worse now. You're Elected for another four year term. Psych. You're going to trial. Psych. You're guilty now. You're out of here. I don't, I don't understand.
[00:05:06] Speaker B: By the way, we're not declaring the guilty verdict, but.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: Well, I'm saying, I'm speculating.
[00:05:10] Speaker B: You're saying that could happen?
[00:05:11] Speaker A: I'm speculating. That's right.
[00:05:12] Speaker B: That's really weird.
[00:05:13] Speaker A: Yeah, that would be really weird. Now we have to have another election.
Now we have to, now we have to spend all this money again. Like that's going to cost the city like $100,000. I think it was like $180,000 the last time we tried to run a special election.
It's a lot of money.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Wow.
[00:05:29] Speaker A: So this is not something that we're excited about.
[00:05:33] Speaker B: No.
[00:05:34] Speaker A: Hopefully the fix isn't in. I've reached out to all the contacts that I have and trying to push this thing and see what anybody can find out about it. The most insightful thing was they were just like. Yeah, it looks like they're just pushing it back to the other side of the election.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: Wow. Okay. Okay. Well, we, we have another topic on the. The docket.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: Yeah, that was just a light update.
[00:05:54] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Speaking of Trump, the Donald Trump later.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Guys, did you know that the government can just give you money?
Money, money, money, money, money. More money for days, more problems. Okay, so here's the deal. So J.D. vince, you know, he's gone viral times 10,000, talking about the reallocation of funds from daycares to families who have at least one parent staying home. So in this scenario, there's money that's already allocated to pay for daycare for
[00:06:29] Speaker B: at least one parent staying home. Are you talking about Mormonism here?
[00:06:33] Speaker A: Excuse me, Excuse me.
Mormons on the brain.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: That's a joke.
But there is a requirement that at least one.
[00:06:42] Speaker A: That at least one parent. You just said it.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: That one parent.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: That one parent is staying. One parent's working.
One parent is working at least 35 hours a week and the other parent is staying home. Okay. That's with children. With. Well, yeah. Parent implies children. Hopefully. Hopefully we haven't lost our lines, our minds that much. Yeah. So anyway, so J.D. vance gets up, he proposes this idea, he says, hey, here we go. We're going to take this money and just reallocate it. In other words, these families were being funded by the state to have their children in daycare. These are low income families.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Average. And the average number was $9,000 a year per kid.
[00:07:20] Speaker A: Is it per Kid or family? No, it's per kid.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: That's crazy.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: $9,000 a year per kid. So they're saying. And it's the same thing as the ESAs, the Education Savings Accounts.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:07:31] Speaker A: That a lot of states are implementing now that.
Work as instead of the money going to state schools, they go to homeschool families or they travel with the kid to whatever school the kid wants to go to school. Yeah, okay, that's right. And I think that allocation's higher. I think that allocation's more like $14,000 a year. And say Louisiana, it's less, but that's a different. It's the same general idea. Okay, so the government's writing this check. Here's the logic. Okay, the government's writing this check. Might as well just give it to somebody. Might as well give it to families that are trying to raise their kids themselves instead of only funding government education.
Now, on the surface, I don't hate that.
Give it to somebody. Might as well just give it to the families instead of giving it to the daycares.
On the surface, I don't hate that. Here's the problem, though.
Did you have something you want to say before I start?
[00:08:28] Speaker B: No. No. Finish your point. Yeah.
[00:08:30] Speaker A: Okay. So here's the problem.
The problem is that if you take the king's coin, you are the king's man.
And just like the state giving you money to homeschool your kids, eventually strings get attached to that money always. Go look at the private schools who signed up for Core 4. Go look at the private schools who signed up for state accreditation.
Eventually that money started coming with strings.
They did that to be able to have certain eligibility offerings, to be able to eligible for certain funds eventually.
Now you have to do things, and those things that you have to do wander, depending on who's in office, depending on who makes up the Bessie board.
And the same thing will be implied here in the same sense. Like if you have a Christian school and you're like, hey, this Christian school is not going to teach evolution. We're not going to do it. And then one day you say, ooh, but that student voucher program that we have in Louisiana, we can jump in on that student voucher program and we can get some kids to come to this school, and then the state will pay their tuition for us. We can get enrollment numbers higher and. And get a little bit more money in the bank. Let's do it. Sounds like a great idea. And initially, there's no requirements for you to change the curriculum. And then one day after you have 75 of these kids in your school, they walk up and they say, oh, by the way, you have to teach evolution now through this biology curriculum.
[00:09:56] Speaker B: Right. In order to receive those.
[00:09:57] Speaker A: In order to receive the money. That's right. And the problem is now your budget is dependent on these kids being present in the school. You've hired people, you've bought buildings, you've funded programs according to this money.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: And your argument is the same thing will happen to the family. I would agree that while it might be on a smaller scale, I think if anything the dependence will happen even quicker for a family.
For sure.
[00:10:24] Speaker A: I agree.
Because most families have far less insulation financially than an institution does. Most institutions can take a hit for a little while before they have to figure something else out. Most families can't.
Sorry. Yep.
[00:10:39] Speaker B: No. And so getting to this program that would give money to a stay at home parent.
We're talking about a similar situation and there's maybe some other problems too that we could talk about.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: Let's do it.
[00:10:54] Speaker B: One that came up is it's identifying parents and that could be a mother or a father. So they mostly cite women staying at home, which I appreciate.
And they, they, they had a statistic that something like 54% of women who work and the end have children.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: Oh, I saw this. Would, would prefer to stay.
[00:11:14] Speaker B: To stay home with their kids.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: It's almost like they were made for that.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: Right, right. There's, there's, there's like something crazy designed with.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: Who would have thought that?
[00:11:23] Speaker B: Yeah. Wild.
And so, so the one, one thing that we could critique about this as well in the implementation is that this could also be a working mother who's going out to the work in the cubicle for 35 plus hours a week and the father is actually getting paid
[00:11:42] Speaker A: to stay at home.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: Stay at home. Which we would from our biblical position say is not.
That's not the ideal.
[00:11:50] Speaker A: That's a problem. That's a problem.
[00:11:51] Speaker B: That's a problem.
Warning also, let's take that a step further.
[00:11:57] Speaker A: David, how dare you not fully nuance that statement that you just made.
[00:12:00] Speaker B: This would not.
[00:12:01] Speaker A: I can't believe it.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: Just wait.
This would also not exclude same sex partners.
[00:12:08] Speaker A: I was going to say it if you weren't going to say it. Thank you. Yes.
[00:12:11] Speaker B: Yeah. So this would, if a.
Obviously same sex partnerships can't have children of their own, but there are relationships out there.
[00:12:23] Speaker A: They can rent wombs that have adopted children.
[00:12:27] Speaker B: So this would apply to them as well. And that this would be giving funding
[00:12:31] Speaker A: to those because our Government recognizes that as marriage. Now the Bible doesn't. It's not marriage, it's not real marriage.
[00:12:37] Speaker B: It's not the same thing.
I was purposely avoiding calling it marriage mirage. Yes.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: In the words of John Piper, gay mirage.
[00:12:44] Speaker B: Yes, we call it mirage.
So, yeah, so there's some, there's some issues here.
It is being celebrated very, very loudly
[00:12:52] Speaker A: by the conservatives right now, which is fascinating to me. What, what, what's happening? What's happening?
It's such an interesting world that we live in, but this is something that we've been talking about on the show for a while, is that the new conservative movement is not actually conservative.
It's a different type of progressive. We were talking about this a few episodes ago when we were talking about how the contemporary Donald Trump is not that far away from the 2008 Barack Obama.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: No, no. If anything, more, probably more liberal in many ways.
[00:13:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:24] Speaker B: So there's a, you know, I think it's kind of a.
In, in the early 2000s, we would have called them neoconservatives, maybe. And now that movement has just pushed further and further left.
[00:13:35] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:13:36] Speaker B: No, left, Stewart.
Sorry.
[00:13:39] Speaker A: 100%. Oh, excuse me.
Correct, correct. I appreciate that.
[00:13:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
But yeah, so here we are. Instead of maybe a true, more right wing biblical response to this would be stop the taxing.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: Yeah. This is not the path to human flourishing. This is not the path that promotes personal responsibility.
This is not the path. This is in fact, the path that the Bible would warn us against by saying that if you don't provide for your own family, you're worse than an unbeliever. You don't show up and say, ah, yes, state, please pay me. Ah, thank you. Now I can pay my bills.
This is a problem and we're just normalizing it now.
[00:14:20] Speaker B: Now I can have children because only if the state.
[00:14:23] Speaker A: Only if the state pays me. Yeah, like, we have an issue here. This is not something that we need to be celebrating. We should be celebrating hard work. Like, let's recapture the markets. Let's innovate again. Let's build something great. Let's get to the grindstone and work hard and trust the Lord to provide for us.
Daniel said, no, I'm not going to eat the meat from the king's table because there's a problem over there, because I don't need that.
In fact, we're just going to eat vegetables and you come back and check us and see if we look sickly or anything. And praise God. The guard was like, let's test it. Let's test the theory. This is what I'm saying to all the listeners. Just test it. Just test the theory. Be faithful, go to church, tithe, keep the Lord's day and see what happens.
See what happens. He will provide and care for you. He will take care of you. He will do so for his name's sake and your good. He will provide and care for you. We don't need to stress out and worry about these things, man. It becomes such a weird dynamic where we keep intuitively looking to the state to save us. We don't have to do that.
[00:15:26] Speaker B: Stuart, I've got two minutes left. Can I ask the honest and hard question?
[00:15:29] Speaker A: Do it, please.
[00:15:30] Speaker B: People including myself might be have, you know, rattling around in our brain swing.
[00:15:34] Speaker A: Let's go.
[00:15:34] Speaker B: All right. So the biblical Christian who's striving to take care of their family is now given this opportunity to get more money back from the state.
And let's say they went as far as to, you know, allocate in their budget anything that they receive from this fund for a stay at home parent so as to if it ever went away, they weren't dependent on it.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:16:00] Speaker B: Would you still say don't do it?
[00:16:03] Speaker A: I would nuance this like crazy because the answer could be yes, it could be no.
I would want to know the person so pastorally like, I would want to know the person that I'm talking to. I would want to know their exact life situation.
I would want to know their tendencies, their proclivities, their trajectory in life before I really got down and answered that question.
But I can say as a hard generalism, do not take it.
I can say that pretty comfortably.
But there's, I mean, come on, man. I'm a pastor that pastors human beings. And so as a result of that, you have to be able to sit down and say, all right, let's.
Are we pillaging Egypt right now? There's possibilities that we could be, but there's also a much larger possibility that this is going to go sideways.
And so the nuance that I would provide is that would be something that I would need to know the person pretty well on before I could advise them as their pastor on an individual basis. But the generalism would be, heck no. Heck no, man. Stay away from that as far as you possibly can.
[00:17:08] Speaker B: Yep, got it. And by go sideways, it might not look like something drastic and immediate goes wrong, but it's the thing that our country has been doing now for a couple generations where we've just been becoming more and more reliant on the state. So much so that we don't even think about it anymore.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: And at the very least, more income in, more money in distribution translates to what, a weaker dollar.
And your children being more in debt.
Your children being forced to pay more taxes in order to recover more losses in the government.
[00:17:45] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:17:46] Speaker A: Stand up on your own two feet, work hard, build stuff, move forward.
Quit looking for daddy's state to solve your problems.
This is under my skin. Sorry. So I've got, I've got some hot takes.
[00:17:56] Speaker B: Well, it looks like this is from, from what I can tell, it looks like this is pretty certain. Like it looks like it's probably going to go through. As far as I can tell, possibly
[00:18:04] Speaker A: it won't affect us.
[00:18:07] Speaker B: Right, Right.
[00:18:08] Speaker A: For most people it's mostly lower income
[00:18:10] Speaker B: families and I think as, as early as 2027 it could, it could go into effect.
[00:18:16] Speaker A: So yeah, yeah, it's. Low income families are the ones who are going to fall victim to this.
Harder, faster for sure.
It's unfortunate.
So watch out, guys. Don't dive in on this. Don't jump on this train. It is the Trump train. That's true. Don't get on it. Thank you all so much for listening to another episode of the Parish Circuit. You go to the parish circuit.com to catch up on all of our other episodes that we have going on. All kinds of cool things are happening. We have a stateW correspondent now. We have 1500 followers. We have all kinds of cool new things. Beat reporters are happening, more interviews. We just did an interview with Jesse Bellard the other day. That episode should have already come up before this one went live. And there's all kinds of great opportunity happening for us as a result of this podcast. And we hope to continue to build this engine to be a news and media wing that helps you, the people of Acadiana. Thank you all so much for listening and we will see you next time.
