Parish President Says Public Housing "Isn't Permanent Housing" — And the Town Wanted His Head

[00:00:00] Speaker A: What's up, guys? Welcome to a special episode of the Parish Circuit. I'm Stuart Amidon and with me, as always, is David Reithle. We're here to talk about public housing. That whistle was my chair. I moved my chair. We're here to talk about public housing. All right, so here's the gist. Jesse Ballard, parish president, put some stank on it. He threw some statements out in the public space and it caused a little bit of a. A kerfuffle, so to speak. And all he said, all he said was public housing isn't permanent housing. That was it. [00:00:44] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Shouldn't it be? [00:00:47] Speaker A: Shouldn't be. Yeah, that's the. Are you quoting it? You're looking at it right now in front of you, aren't you? [00:00:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I just. Out of curiosity, I was like, I know. Already saw it on Facebook. It says public housing is not supposed to be permanent housing. That's the. That's the quote. [00:00:58] Speaker A: He. [00:00:59] Speaker B: And it's gotten almost 400 comments. [00:01:02] Speaker A: Wow. [00:01:03] Speaker B: And 220 shares. [00:01:05] Speaker A: They're excited about it. Those commenters are in full support. Right. Because nobody would want. I mean, I've been to the projects before. Nobody wants to live there forever. Right. Like, you go through the projects and you're like, wow, this is not great. Right. I mean, don't we want people to move up and be free and have a better life? Don't we want them to graduate and become independent, resourced, employed contributors to society? Is that right? [00:01:37] Speaker B: How dare you? [00:01:43] Speaker A: No, that was not. I know. This is shocking. That was not the reception that Jesse Ballard received. Actually. He got protesters. He got protested. [00:01:53] Speaker B: Were they calling for, like, his resignation? [00:01:55] Speaker A: Resignation, yes, that's right. It was in the news. It was in the news because of his comments on public housing. Jesse Bellard, people are now, realistically, this is a good old fashioned Saint Landry two o' clock protest. And so who shows up to those people who are not employed? [00:02:15] Speaker B: How dare you? [00:02:18] Speaker A: I'm sorry, that was too easy. That was too easy. [00:02:20] Speaker B: You know, hey, look, it is summer now, so maybe there's some people. Maybe they were off of school. [00:02:25] Speaker A: Yeah, maybe they were off of school. Yeah, that's true. Fair point. [00:02:27] Speaker B: Fair point. Fair point. [00:02:28] Speaker A: You never do. That's fair. So. But the gist of the matter. What's the gist of the matter? He said this should not be a permanent solution and people said you should resign. How dare you? How dare you? [00:02:40] Speaker B: Yep. [00:02:40] Speaker A: And I think what we want to do is try to connect the dots between those two points. Okay. Like what happens so in a person where. When you say you should not live in a government project forever, you should move on to something else, you should graduate into something better. When you say that people demand your resignation from public office, what's happening? Why is that? [00:03:16] Speaker B: Well, they immediately interpret it as an attack. Okay, that's one thing that's going on. [00:03:22] Speaker A: I think that's a great point. [00:03:23] Speaker B: And you see that in the comments. [00:03:26] Speaker A: For example, how dare you? I live in public. Public housing. How dare you? [00:03:29] Speaker B: Yeah, how dare. Or the. It's kind of the, I don't know, the white knight syndrome of people. [00:03:36] Speaker A: I have friends in public day housing. How dare you? [00:03:39] Speaker B: Right, right, exactly. [00:03:39] Speaker A: What about the poor kids thinking that [00:03:41] Speaker B: they're taking up the standard of someone else by saying, how dare you? [00:03:45] Speaker A: I'm going to fix this. [00:03:46] Speaker B: How dare you? [00:03:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm going to make this better. I'm going to help them. [00:03:50] Speaker B: Yep, yep. But, yeah, again, he's kind of. He's kind of just saying a very general truth statement. And I say a truth statement in that this would be not controversial for most of history in the West. [00:04:10] Speaker A: Most of history in the west didn't even have this. [00:04:12] Speaker B: Exactly. We're in a place where this has become very normal and very enslaving, actually. But throughout history, there's been a lot of people who have. Most people have understood that if you simply are given what you need to survive by someone else, and that just continues in perpetuity, it's actually bad for you. [00:04:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Communism doesn't work. Socialism doesn't work. And we as Americans actually experience this. We learned this lesson very early on in our founding, when the Pilgrims came over and planted the colonies at New Plymouth. They planted them actually in a socialistic economy where everyone in the colony worked the land together, the farm together, and they shared all the resources with one another. And what do you know, they had famines like every winter. [00:05:07] Speaker B: They had a little experiment in communism that went terribly wrong. Funny how that keeps happening. [00:05:13] Speaker A: What's up with that? And then the year, the year that they say, nope, we're going to do it different now. Every man is responsible for providing for his own family. And then that winter, they had an abundance. They had so much that people had leftovers to share with one another. Right. Because they had to take responsibility. Now, I think that some people will hear us saying these kinds of things, like public housing should not be a permanent solution. We agree. Way to go, Jesse. To say that, I would actually go a step farther and say public housing should not be a solution at all, ever. And some people, I think whenever they hear me say that will come with the inevitable oh, you hate poor people commentary. [00:06:06] Speaker B: Right. Right. [00:06:07] Speaker A: I think that that'll be the natural progression. But what I'm saying is, actually, I want something better for them. I want them to be free. I don't want them to be slaves. Because what happens whenever you are dependent upon the state for your livelihood, when you are dependent upon them for your housing, for your medical care, for your transportation, for your food, for your education, now what have we created that's not a free person, that's a slave. [00:06:41] Speaker B: Yep. [00:06:42] Speaker A: They can't leave. [00:06:44] Speaker B: Right. And we're all. And we're all tempted to think that, like, that would never happen to me or, like, you know, it wouldn't have this dehumanizing effect on me if I take these things from the government. But it does. It absolutely does. And over time, it grows, you know, and that's where this concept of, like, us referring to it very bluntly as slavery. [00:07:10] Speaker A: It is a slavery comes from. Yeah. This is. So as a pastor who has worked with poor people and who has been a poor person for a season of life and who has worked with poor people, folks in the lower class, for the last, oh, my goodness, I don't know, 22 years, for a long time. Okay. Though the. The way that this plays is it actually incentivizes those that are trapped within the system to stay there. It pays more money for you to live in dependence upon the government. So, in other words, there's been many opportunities where we've been able to come alongside families and try to help shepherd them in the direction of freedom in Jesus and freedom from the tyranny of the government. And one of the consistent roadblocks that we hit that many actually managed to overcome with some counseling, but one of the consistent roadblocks that we hit is that, hey, we can't get married, because as soon as we get married, we're going to lose half of our income. Now, what they mean when they say that is that their welfare benefits are going to be significantly reduced if they start filing as one household. [00:08:23] Speaker B: Right. [00:08:24] Speaker A: That's what they mean when they say that. And it incentivizes them to actually not get married. But statistically speaking, a married couple with kids that stays married over time makes considerably more money later in life. Considerably more. [00:08:43] Speaker B: Right. [00:08:44] Speaker A: They grow in assets and value and in income over the course of years just by initially taking the responsibility. [00:08:54] Speaker B: Yeah. So, like, when they compare us just like a single guy who works for an entire career. And a married man who works a career, the married man always makes more. [00:09:06] Speaker A: Always makes more. [00:09:06] Speaker B: Not always, I'm saying, but the averages go, you know, level out. [00:09:09] Speaker A: And you're saying, I might say always, [00:09:11] Speaker B: but you know, they're always going to be more fruitful. [00:09:15] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:09:16] Speaker B: Amen. But even just financially, the data would say that they do better. They make more. [00:09:23] Speaker A: They do better 100% of the time. Because responsibility does something to you. Okay. When you are. And this is why, going back to the illustration from the very beginning about the new Plymouth colonies, when you are responsible, when the buck stops with you, you know, oh, oh, I have to get to work. I have to do this. And if I don't, it's real obvious who's screwing this up. That's a good godly level of responsibility that's put on your shoulders, and it should be on the shoulders of husbands, fathers, first and foremost. That's an important thing. In fact, there was a pastor one time, he said that a husband is like a flatbed trailer. He does best, he drives straight whenever he's under a heavy load. And man, that's true. Get to work. It's good. It's not something that you should be afraid of. It's a good gift from God. One of the things that's profound, again, been involved in poverty ministry for a long time. Okay. One of the things that's profound, very early on in our ministry, I remember hearing stories of people around Christmas time, folks would collect presents for Christmas and bring them to the, to the poor neighborhoods to like, go bring these gifts to kids that don't have gifts or whatever, okay? And one of the resounding stories that always happened that we heard again very, very early in our ministry was that whenever these gifts would be brought to these families, they would always be received with by the women. And so people began interpreting this as, oh, there are no fathers here, there are no husbands around. That's why things are so bad. But then they gave it a little bit of time and they kind of continued to keep this tradition for a few years. And as they went back, they realized, oh, no, they are here. They don't want to receive this because it's, it's shaming to them, right? And I would say, and that's good, that's good, because men feel a certain amount of burden in a good way to provide and care for their families. And when they don't have that, when they're not able to do that, when they don't do it, maybe it's just because of laziness, something's off. [00:12:06] Speaker B: Yep. [00:12:07] Speaker A: Amen. Amen. So change, Repent. Right? There's more to it than this. [00:12:15] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. And there's lots of situations in which that temptation is brought full force. When, let's say, man and woman, maybe they have kids, they're put in that situation that you described earlier, where if the man moves into the house suddenly or they get married, benefits go away. So I think a temptation then that presents men is, well, maybe laziness, but also just kind of throwing their hands up and not wanting to do the hard work. There's that temptation to just kind of throw in the towel and let the government do it. Let the government care. [00:12:54] Speaker A: And here I think it's important for us to sketch out the difference between freedom and slavery. Sure. So when we say public housing is a form of slavery, people will probably have a hard time with that and say, what do you mean? I would postulate that it is a mechanism of acquiring votes. It's a way that people say, you vote for me and I'll get you more stuff. And if you're present in opelousis for an election cycle, we're going through one right now. If your president appaloosas for an election cycle, you'll see it firsthand. Around election season, the money is flowing, the free stuff is flowing. And because it's seeds of a promise, they're saying, hey, vote for me and I'll make sure. I'll make sure that you get the stuff. Like people, all of a sudden, we're giving away meals from cars. All of a sudden, folks are giving boxes of groceries away to families out of the backs of trailers. It's bicycle donations go through the roof. It's this thing that happens around season every time because the two things are connected. Vote for me and you'll keep getting the free stuff. It's a type of bondage that they enter into by their own choice. That's true. In the exchange for votes. That's the slave. Okay. That's slavery. And freedom, I would say, is obviously the foil to that. But it does mean now you have to do stuff. Okay. To be free, to be truly free, means now you're responsible, it's on you. [00:14:32] Speaker B: Yep. And there could be not going to be easy. There could be dire consequences, hard times and failures involved and all those things. Yep. [00:14:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. And it'll make you really, really have a good prayer life. And the promise of the Bible is that if you're faithful with what The Lord has given you, if you're faithful with the little that he's given you, he will give you more. Right. And so to all those people out there who are saying, oh no, I can't do it, I can't do that. I'm here to say, but the Bible says that first off, you were made to do this, you were made to carry this load, you were made to be free in this way. And second, if you just obey, you will receive more, you will receive more provision. [00:15:23] Speaker B: And yeah, and it's a ultimate reminder that God is our provider. And I think we're always tempted to add up the numbers and just think, you know, no way, not going to work. You know, this isn't going to work. Whatever. [00:15:34] Speaker A: Gosh, I can't tell you how many times I've had the numbers conversations with people. Sorry, keep going. [00:15:38] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's a big, a big thing for, you know, if you're a believer. But this is something for everyone to recognize. God created all things. He's a provider. That's who our trust ultimately needs to be in. [00:15:51] Speaker A: Amen. Well, I've had that conversation with so many people who are like, we're gonna, we're thinking about getting married, man, but the numbers just don't work. And I'm like, what numbers? What numbers? You know, do you mean like you both can't drive new cars? Do you mean that you can't afford that fifteen hundred dollar a month health insurance payment? Well, neither can I. Like, what numbers are we talking about? What if I told you that you served a God who promises to provide for his people and he never ever fails in that promise, ever, ever. You can trust him now. Maybe every now and then you're going to screw something up and some sin creeps in and you receive a God spanking and he, well, you don't have enough money in the bank account this month because you ate 45 breakfast burritos last month. [00:16:52] Speaker B: Right. Or whatever, which are surprisingly expensive and surprisingly small. From McDonald's. [00:17:01] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. But if you're faithful, he will bless you with more. If you're faithful, if you're a good steward. That's what the parable of the talents is all about is he will generate if you're faithful. God will bless and care for you and give you more to be faithful over. I want 10 cities. So what does that mean for me? Well, that means I'm going to work on being hyper faithful with what he's given me. I want 10 cities. [00:17:25] Speaker B: And that's Referencing the parable. The parable of the talents of the cities. [00:17:28] Speaker A: That's right. Yeah. He's faithful with his 10 talents. Or rather he's faithful with his talents. He grows them to 10 talents. And his master is like, okay, well now I'm going to put you over 10 cities because you were faithful with these talents. I'm drawing a biblical parallel to real life. That's one of the expressions that we have at our work offices. We want 10 cities. And that's a motivator for us to say. So that means we're hyper focused on making sure that our email inbox gets dealt with correctly. [00:17:57] Speaker B: Yes, yes. So it could come across strange maybe to the average listener to say something like that, but it's not saying, I hope we win the lottery. Right. I hope by God's grace and our faithfulness that we will work hard and well with what he's given us right in front of us and then that will be rewarded over time. [00:18:23] Speaker A: Yeah. I would even summarize it pithier than that. And I would say, I believe God's promises. Yep, that's it. I believe that what God says is true. And what I'm saying to the entire community of Apelousis and Saint Legend parish and anybody else who is listening to this, this right now is that all of God's promises are true. You can be free. You can be absolutely, completely free. [00:18:47] Speaker B: Can I share a personal story here? [00:18:49] Speaker A: Please, Stuart, Please, please. [00:18:50] Speaker B: I was going back and forth. So we have four kids and for a couple of years we were on four boys. Four boys. For a couple of years we were on wic. You familiar with wic? [00:19:04] Speaker A: I am familiar. Yeah, I know wick. Yeah. I know exactly what WIC is. [00:19:07] Speaker B: So I'm not trying to bind anyone's conscience with this story, but I just want to tell you how I experienced this, what we're talking about to a degree. [00:19:16] Speaker A: Let's contextualize this a little bit. So WIC is you have a baby and the state will buy certain groceries for you. [00:19:23] Speaker B: Yes. It stands for women, infant and children, I believe. And if you're a pregnant mother or you have children under 2 or something like that, you qualify for certain things. [00:19:32] Speaker A: That's like milk, block of Velveeta cheese. Yeah, Cheese, pasta stuff. Yeah, yeah. [00:19:37] Speaker B: Breads, things like that. Yep. So we got on WIC for a couple years and it was just kind of like we didn't even really think about it. It was just like people were saying like, oh yeah, you need to get on wic. They give you free groceries. And we're like, okay, cool. And so we did that for a couple years, and it was actually somewhat recently, within the last few months. There are all sorts of hoops you have to jump through. You always have, you know, we have like, Walmart plus, and, you know, you can order groceries, but you can't order groceries if you have wic. You have to go in. In person. You have to go. [00:20:06] Speaker A: The cashier actually has to verify the line items as you check out. [00:20:09] Speaker B: It's not quite that invasive. But you have to swipe the actual WIC card every time. [00:20:13] Speaker A: Oh, wow. Okay. [00:20:14] Speaker B: In an ideal situation, it's a fairly efficient system. But. But here's the. Here's the reality. A lot of the times the WIC card doesn't work. You have to rerun all your groceries. It's all this whole. This whole mess. And I ended up spending just a lot of extra time. And I say I. Because my wife is homeschooling and taking care of our children at home. It was off to me running to the grocery store. Right, right, right. So this is my story. I was spending hours at the grocery store. I was starting to feel this kind of. This slavery. Yes, we were getting some of our groceries paid for, but I was having to jump through these hoops to meet the government requirements. She was having to go to appointments every month to get verified and they would check our children and all this stuff to be approved again for wic. And that was always very inconvenient for her to load up all the kids some morning that they dictated and she goes and has to do this thing. But, like, what wore me down was conviction. After I kept going to the grocery store and dealing with all these hoops I had to jump through. But then also, every time I swiped that card, this thought kept popping into my head that this is somebody else's money. This is somebody else's money. And I'm walking in there and often I didn't even have the kids with me, and I'm swiping this WIC card and I'm just like. I started to feel that, like, man, this is. This is. [00:21:33] Speaker A: Yeah, this is a thing. [00:21:35] Speaker B: A little dehumanizing, a little emasculating, a little like, I like the free stuff because who, because who, who doesn't. [00:21:44] Speaker A: But doesn't like the free stuff? [00:21:45] Speaker B: But it's not free, ultimately. [00:21:47] Speaker A: That's right. Somebody's paying for that. [00:21:49] Speaker B: And so finally, when it was actually right before, my wife was trying to figure out how to make it to this WIC appointment. I just texted her. I was like, don't go. We're not gonna do this anymore. And I gave her a quick explanation of why. And she was like, okay. [00:22:08] Speaker A: Boom. [00:22:09] Speaker B: Yep. And we were a little nervous because it didn't make sense in our budget. [00:22:13] Speaker A: Doesn't make sense on paper. [00:22:14] Speaker B: It did not make sense in our budget. But I knew that we just needed to take that step. [00:22:18] Speaker A: Amen. [00:22:20] Speaker B: So, again, yeah, again, like I said at the beginning, I don't know if I'm trying to bind anybody's conscience with WIC specifically. You could have a philosophy behind WIC that whatever you have a biblical justification for. But we found that it was freeing to be off of that. And I would encourage everybody, no matter what kind of government assistance you're on to, if you literally can't drop it all tomorrow, start working too. [00:22:47] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I mean, I can draw a parallel for us, like we were on Medicaid, like, that was a thing that we dealt with for a long time. And the thing about that type of system, now for our listeners in England, which we have those because we're international. [00:23:03] Speaker B: Right. [00:23:04] Speaker A: Actually, I have one friend in England. So anyway, but for our listeners in England, they don't have any understanding of this at all because everything is government healthcare there. Canada, everything is government health care. So in the United States, we have a government health care sector. But then we also still have sort of private healthcare, even though it's not quite really private. But that's another episode for another time. But we used to be on Medicaid. And the thing that happened with that was we would go, but we could only go to the providers that they would allow us to access. And if we went, there was a certain expectation that we would do certain things through those providers. And as you know, Christians who take responsibility for the health of our families and our children, there are certain things that we don't want to do through those providers, whether they be certain vaccines or certain clinic appointments. And there was this defining moment for us where we were like, we got to get the heck out of here. And that's whenever we sat down with one of our daughters. I think it was our oldest, I think it was our oldest sat down in her appointment and it was the little pre check in moment with the doctor while we're still on Medicaid. And they handed her a little binder, a little clipboard, and they said, this is for her to fill out by herself. Okay. Granted, her parents are here. Actually, my wife might have been the one with her. I Think it was my wife with her at that appointment. And they're, like, looking my wife in the eyeball. Like, this is just for her to fill out. Not for you, Mom. She needs to fill this out alone. And my wife is like, oh, my wife is Latin American. So, like, the fire went off behind her eyes, and she's like, what did you just say to me? I mean, she didn't actually, like, yell at the person in line. She maintained herself very calm, cool, steel collected. But there was still just this moment where it was like, oh, this is slavery. You want my kids? Because the questionnaire that we're going through with these kids are. It's mental health evaluations, and it's questions like, how do you feel? Do you feel sad sometimes? Do you want to hurt yourself sometimes? Like, those are the kind of questions that we're going through and asking my daughter, who, like, doesn't have even categories for these things and who's being fed categories for these things by the state. And so my wife just went and sat down next to her and was like, no, we're not doing that. We're gonna talk about this. Thanks. And we were done. We were out of there after that. That was our last appointment in those things. But that was one of those. Those crystallizing moments where it's like, oh, this is not free ink. This is bondage. Someone else is trying to raise my child. It's happening right now, and we've got to figure out a way around this. We've got to figure out how to deal with this. It was still a journey for us to come all the way out of that. Because to your same point about the Wick situation, but being all the way out of it, man, it's free. [00:25:57] Speaker B: Yep. [00:25:57] Speaker A: Man, it's great out here. I mean, we pay more money. We pay cash for all of our appointments. We have doctors that we go to, that we, like. We have other doctors that we go to that, you know, we have to. But it's much better to be on the other side of those things. And the government subsidies of your livelihood, whether it's housing, whether it's medical, whether it's food, is a type of slavery. It is putting you into bondage. There's a great expression, I think, that's helpful here. If you take the king's coin, then you are the king's man. Okay? And so what that means, basically, is. And it's not always a bad statement. Like, good kings would give good gifts, and with their good gifts, they would kind of, like, get your allegiance as a result of it. Like King, [00:26:54] Speaker B: there were mutual obligations. [00:26:55] Speaker A: Yeah. It was like, I'm going to provide for you and you take care of me. It's not necessarily a bad statement. But who are you getting the coin from and what are they going to require of you? [00:27:04] Speaker B: Yep. And I'll just say the example you were sharing with Medicaid, we don't always feel it. And so sometimes it comes across as controversial to say this, but like the whole setup of our current secular kind of government system, which is heavily influenced by socialism, things like that, the state does function as if it owns your kids 100%. That is what's going on. [00:27:32] Speaker A: Go listen to our public education episode. [00:27:34] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's something that we think Christians need to grapple with because again, we can be very comfortable. We can still feel very free and safe. And we might be for a little while. But like, the reality is the government often believes that it owns your kids. [00:27:51] Speaker A: Yes. [00:27:51] Speaker B: And that is being carried out in a lot of practical ways. [00:27:54] Speaker A: 100%. [00:27:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:55] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And, and, and we're letting it happen because we're the King's man. [00:28:01] Speaker B: Yep. [00:28:01] Speaker A: We've taken the coin and they own us. And you don't have to. I mean, you really don't have to. To your point, like. And since we have been out of the Medicaid system, my wife has saved so much time and is able to devote that because she's in our household. My wife is our primary healthcare overseer. That's her lane. We decided that a long time ago. And so she's the one who kind of is making sure that what we need to eat is what we're eating and our diet is right and our appointments are happening and the people that get checked on are need to get checked on or getting checked on. That's kind of her Lane. She saves so much time by just not being connected to this incredibly broken system. And she's now able to use that time to be much more fruitful in other areas, like homeschooling the kids, like doing her own research and legwork into remedies that we can deal with in our own house, deciding what types of shots we ought to get and which ones we should not. [00:29:05] Speaker B: Wait, are you saying that hospitals existed before the government? [00:29:13] Speaker A: What get straight out of town? [00:29:16] Speaker B: Or education existed before tax funded government schools? [00:29:21] Speaker A: Look, look, look, look, look. I got stuff to say. So this will have to be its own entire episode, but I recently got to interact with, with one of the last free standing self funded hospital institutions in the Country. Okay. And the care that we received there was phenomenal, like, next level. And it was because. And this. Even the nurses would say this whenever we would go there. They were like, oh, well, it's because you're at Disneyland. This is not like every other hospital. To which I knew that very well, given our most recent interaction with the government healthcare system. But it was just profound to see what a free market and the generosity of donors can do to perpetuate quality health care for those who are in need. And also the doctors, like, go ask your doctor if he wants to file insurance or Medicaid or if he'd rather you just paid cash. And he will say every time, please pay cash, please. And they'll give you massive discounts for that. Hospitals will, too. Not as much as they used to, but they will give you giant discounts if you walk up and say, we're cash pay. In fact, that was a defining moment for me. Can I share a story? [00:30:49] Speaker B: Yes, please. [00:30:49] Speaker A: All right, we're getting way off the subject here, but I got one more story, and then we're done. Just to help encourage people to get off of the government systems. Okay. So when I was young, my daughter became pretty severely ill. And we didn't know what was going on, but she had some pretty significant health situations. And I took her. At the time, I was insured through Blue Cross Blue Shield. Okay. And we took her to a clinic in town to try and get her seen because there was something dramatically wrong with her. We didn't know what was going on, and I had to get her checked out. I was. We were super broke at the time. We made like. This is the season where we were making, like 1200 bucks a month. I was still paying for health insurance. We hadn't moved into the Medicaid space yet. And we went up to go buy the visit for my kid, and I was like, hey, how much is this visit? And they were like 70 bucks. And I said, okay, no problem. And then I took out of my wallet my insurance card and my debit card, and I handed it to them across the thing, and they said, oh, well, you have health insurance, so it's actually going to be 140. And I was like, what? They said, yeah. I was like, it costs more because I have insurance. And they said, yeah, sorry. And I was like, well, then just don't run the insurance card. Don't run that. Just pay cash. And they're like, well, we can't do that now because legally. Keyword legally. Now that we know that you have insurance. We have to run it, or that's insurance fraud. And I just remember sitting there saying. And I was like, okay, so this is a game. Got it. And I'm going to figure out how to play. And from then on, man, it was just this terrible realization of how incredibly broken our healthcare system is because of government involvement. Man, be free. We can be free again. You can just do stuff. You can just do stuff. It's going to be okay. I know that that's scary because we think about people being homeless without housing. We think about people starving without food. We think about people dying without medicine. I know that it's scary. I'm not trying to negate any of the fears from you. What I am saying, though, is that that fear is helpful. It makes you work harder. It drives a certain level of good and right productivity that we've kind of lost. And I think we can reclaim it again. We can be a free people again. Amen. [00:33:17] Speaker B: So should we close out with any more commentary on Jesse Ballard's statement that we started with? [00:33:21] Speaker A: I just love this whole episode and the direction that it's taken, honestly. [00:33:25] Speaker B: Yeah, Jesse, it's been fun. [00:33:27] Speaker A: Way to go. Go harder. [00:33:35] Speaker B: Yeah, man. There's a lot more we could say, but we can leave it there. [00:33:39] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll leave it right there, guys. Thank you all so much for listening. Let's see you next time.