Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: What's up, guys? Welcome to another episode of the Parish Circuit. Today we're going to be talking about U.S. senate candidate Jamie Davis.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: First, we need to just get back to the levels of the ACAs, where everybody could afford their subsidies, where healthcare was affordable, and in the future would love to move to a universal type medical device where, you know, everybody was covered.
[00:00:29] Speaker A: Today we're talking about Jamie Davis, new candidate for U.S. senate. That was him in that little audio clip that you just heard talking about his future plans for health care.
Now, this is a Democrat running for the U.S. senate seat in Louisiana, one of the U.S. senate seats in Louisiana. And what we did, he was coming to Opelousas, coming to Opelousas. And we went to one of the events that he was holding here in town.
We sent one of our beat reporters to go interview him, get some information on him, and then provide this information to you. And I just want to frame this all. You know, clearly one of the things that we decided that was worth talking about, related to this was for a long time, southwest Louisiana has been home to what I would call conservative Democratism. Okay.
Where people will vote for Democrats, but they'll be socially conservative. You know what I'm saying, David?
[00:01:27] Speaker C: Yes. I was actually just about to say that same thing as I'm looking up kind of more and more about Jamie Davis.
He's just unmistakably Louisiana.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Now, and that's been the trend largely for the last several years.
I would call the vast majority of people who vote Democrat here in southwest Louisiana, especially in Opelousas and Saint Lantry Parish. I'd call them socially conservative, generally speaking, but they vote blue every time. Okay. And it seems like that requires a degree of disconnect because of obviously, the policies of blue parties. But I've had conversations with practicing active Democrats here in the city of Opelousis about abortion, and they agree with me, at least, you know, in a room, whenever they can talk to me.
I've had conversations about the way government should operate, and generally speaking, they agree with me.
But here's why we want to talk about Jamie Davis, because what I'm recognizing here is a pivot in specifically local Louisiana politics, I would argue. And what I'm putting forward here is that he is shifting the Louisiana traditional conservative Democrat platform more to the left.
That's what I'm arguing for. And you can go to his website. You know, all his stuff is posted live there. You can go see. And so this is. This is a kind of like a Plea, if you, if you are a, maybe a Dixiecrat would be a better word for this. If you are a typical Southern, more conservative Democrat, you should examine his platforms and see what you think about these things that he's saying. And if you are a conservative Republican here in Louisiana and you're listening to this episode, it's time to start paying closer attention.
Because I know in our area, since we regard a lot of conservative Democrats as kind of, you know, they're close enough, we'll fund their campaigns even though we don't necessarily agree with the larger views of the federal level party of Democrats. But what I'm saying is, hey, you should probably rethink that right now. You should probably revisit that because it looks like on a local level here in Louisiana, we're taking a shift. We're moving more and more to the left. Does that make sense?
[00:03:46] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I think so.
It's very, it's interesting looking at some of his stuff on his website and things like that, going down the list of his platform positions.
It's.
Democrats in Louisiana can have just a very unique flavor.
And I think that's kind of what you're getting at.
He can kind of be shifting. You're saying he's shifting even further left maybe compared to some of the traditional conservative, ish Democrats in Louisiana. Yeah, I would agree in the sense that it's. Maybe some of his policies look more socialistic and very much like lots of federal funds.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: Yes. And we're gonna get into that, things like that.
[00:04:27] Speaker C: Yeah. But he's also very forward.
He's making sure he's putting out kind of an image that, that's very much like. And he's a farmer.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: He's a farmer. He's a farmer.
[00:04:36] Speaker C: Like, he's a farmer.
[00:04:37] Speaker A: He's a farmer on like, I think his website said something like 3,000 or more acres, that he farms like sorghum, does all these kinds of crops. He's built a business.
[00:04:46] Speaker C: Can I just say, he's a good
[00:04:47] Speaker A: old boy, this guy.
[00:04:48] Speaker C: I am biased to farmers towards farmers. I love farmers. I love a farmer too. I grew up with farmers. I went to college with farmers. And they are some of the most hardworking, love working type people you'll, you'll ever meet. But anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. But yeah, some of his positions that he's putting forward though, and making sure they're kind of upfront is that he's pro second Amendment conservative. He's, he's pro life conservative and he does, he does clarify though, in one of his, one of the posts I saw that it's pro life and that he's against, you know, killing innocent children in the womb, which should be an obvious position for everyone who wants any human rights.
But he also means that in his interpretation of that, it means that we need to support Medicaid and universal health care and all of the top down, government funded.
[00:05:43] Speaker A: Whoa.
[00:05:43] Speaker C: Taxpayer funded.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: Whoa, whoa.
[00:05:46] Speaker C: Programs. Hold on.
And that's where we're.
[00:05:49] Speaker A: The only way we can stop killing babies is with more taxes.
Yes. What?
[00:05:54] Speaker C: Unless the government provides for children.
[00:05:57] Speaker A: Come on, man. It doesn't work that way.
[00:06:00] Speaker C: Then, yeah. Then, yeah. Or I guess, yeah. Anyway, we only get two side effect there.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: But I like his.
Actually, I like his, his little campaign slogan. Did you see his campaign slogan? Louisiana first is common sense.
I honestly love that. I think that's a great slogan. I love that slogan. I don't think he. And I agree with what it means at all.
But as a conservative, I used to be independent. Now they made me pick a side, so I picked the Republican side. So as a conservative Republican, I'm like, yeah, Louisiana first, baby. I'm in. I'm all in.
[00:06:37] Speaker C: I'm proud of my no party status, Stewart.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: I had to pick.
So most recently, whenever we had another vote, whenever I went down to the fire station to vote, they said, hey, you're registered as independent and these are primaries. Used to we had open primaries. Now we don't. You have to pick a side to vote.
[00:06:57] Speaker C: No. You aren't independent, though. You are no party.
[00:07:00] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I mean, because independent is a party. Oh, well, that's confusing.
[00:07:04] Speaker C: Just in case our listeners.
[00:07:05] Speaker A: I'm sorry, this could be helpful for our listeners. You're right, I was no party. That's correct.
[00:07:09] Speaker C: I've actually seen people, I know people, and I was tempted to check that box once, thinking that independent meant like, I'm not gonna associate with a particular party.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: But it was a trick.
[00:07:18] Speaker C: Turns out independent's a party.
[00:07:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, so go right now, check all your voter status, register as Republican, and then let's get ready to knock this bad boy out. But anyway, so he wants to provide. He's talking about the insurance crisis on his website. He's talking about education is in a bad way. He's talking about how things in Louisiana are less affordable than they used to be.
I agree with everything that he's saying.
[00:07:44] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: Okay.
But what I would say is that's because of government inflation. That's because of bloated government regulations, health care Costs more because of over inflated government oversight and billing systems. And why did health care get more expensive for everyone after Obamacare?
Why did that happen?
[00:08:11] Speaker C: Inflation.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: It was because it now became subsidized by the state. Medicaid only pays like somewhere between 15 and 30 cents on the dollar per billable dollar from a healthcare provider.
Go up and ask how much it would cost you if you pay cash and they will give you a hefty discount.
[00:08:30] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:08:31] Speaker A: Try it.
[00:08:31] Speaker C: And it's the water we swim in. Like, some people might be skeptical of that, but this has been going on in our nation for decades now, all the way back when kind of the war on poverty and some of the big welfare programs began. Those have only been growing over the course of the last 50, 60 years.
And so we've just gotten used to these ever inflating prices. But it's not because of the free market of medical or healthcare. It's because of the heavy government involvement that the high prices are getting higher and higher.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: Yes. So what we want to go after in this episode, we want to go after what Jamie Davis says is common sense. Okay, we agree, Louisiana First, St. Andrew Parish First, Appaloosas first. Like, we agree all the way down. Okay.
But we think when he says the phrase common sense, he means something else.
And you know what, we're grateful that Jamie was willing to take our questions. He was willing to take the interview.
Our beat reporter, whenever he went and asked for the interview, they asked where he was from and he told him the parish circuit. And they looked us up real fast on the Internet and his media person leaned over and whispered something in the air. And our reporter came back and told me, he was like, it looked like it looked, it was not a good thing that was whispered.
But he still took the interview. And I appreciate that. So, Jamie, thank you for being willing to have this conversation. And we'd invite you to come on an episode, honestly, and clarify some of your points. If we say stuff here and you're like, that's not an accurate representation of what I actually think, we would love to talk it through with you. We would love that. That would be awesome. But let's get into the meat and bones of kind of what's going on here.
So listen to these three quotes from, from Jamie Davis as we kind of move forward.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: I'm a guy that believes in the Department of Education for rural parishes that don't have a real big tax base.
You know, those parishes need help. And the federal government has been that outlet where they got the Help from. There has always been dollars in the federal government to help with housing.
You can't cut housing funds and then think, we're going to have housing built. It's not going to happen.
So there you. It comes back to basically bringing it back to the federal government and putting the money back into the housing program that was there already. Right now I want to strengthen Medicaid and Medicare and make sure we get back to the ACA subsidies pre President Trump.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: So in those three points, there's two. Three points.
Federal dollars is what we keep talking about.
He keeps coming back to. Because that was one of the things that we wanted to press him about would be like, where does this money come from? You want universal health care, you want expanded education, you want better housing, you want all these things to grow. Where does the money come from?
[00:11:39] Speaker C: And by better housing, public housing.
[00:11:42] Speaker A: We're talking about public housing. Yeah, I'm sorry, I should have clarified. We're talking about public housing now. And where's he going for. What's he going after? He's going after federal dollars. My friends, my friends, where do the dollars come from?
Where do they come from?
They just materialize a magical printing press,
[00:12:03] Speaker C: a magical money printer.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: Well, let's deal with this in two different ways. Okay. Obviously, option one, they come from taxes. Okay, Right. Option one A, they come from taxes. Who pays taxes?
[00:12:15] Speaker C: Ultimately, that's where it all comes from.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: Well, unless they turn on the printers. And we're gonna address that in option two.
[00:12:21] Speaker C: But even the whole infra. Look, I'm sorry to get like super nitpicky here, but, but, but if we're talking all. The whole infrastructure that allows for the printing of money is taxes. Is tax dollars.
[00:12:31] Speaker A: Thank you. That's. That's an important clarify, an important clarifier. So it comes from taxation. It comes from national debt. Okay. Which is loaned and then paid back via taxation.
[00:12:43] Speaker C: Right?
[00:12:43] Speaker A: Via taxation.
[00:12:44] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:12:45] Speaker A: And then. Or maybe we just take out more loans and print more money to pay off the debt. Also not. And then there's the option of turning on the money printers again, increasing the volume of cash, which does what? It puts us in the same situation that we're in right now.
[00:12:57] Speaker C: Inflation.
[00:12:58] Speaker A: That makes 30. Prices go up on average something like what, 20 to 30% over the last five to six years.
That's the highest inflation increase in quite some time. In quite some time. Milk is $6 a gallon or something crazy like that. Like, this is a wild time for us to live in. And if we continue to pull from the Coffers of quote unquote, federal dollars. It's not gonna get any better.
We're gonna continue to deal with this again and again and again.
And he said one time, which I thought was really interesting, he said one time that his mechanism in the interview that he had with our bead reporter and the mechanism that he said also we'll tax the billionaires.
And that sounds like the new mayor of New York. We're going to make these billionaires pay their fair share. What if we incentivized billionaires to live in Louisiana and bring their businesses here?
That would raise the bottom line.
[00:13:56] Speaker C: We've talked about this on the local level, how in some ways we think like a city like Opelousis is getting it backwards in how we would actually see the city grow and flourish over the years and how to bring businesses in. It's not by increasing taxes in order to try to put a band aid on broken systems.
Now, Jamie Davis would be applied to a larger area, the state or the nation, but that, no, it's actually the free market that's going to result in flourishing. And what that would look like practically is incentivizing business, lowering taxes, making it easier to do business. Now, he does use some of that language. He does say he wants to benefit the small businesses and the middle sized businesses and make it easier to do business and things like that. And I hope he would maybe be in agreement on some of the things that we would believe. But it seems like his number one answer to a lot of these problems are just more federal dollars.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: Well, one of the things that he says specifically is he doesn't want to depend on the governor.
That was something he said in our interview. He's like, I don't want to depend on the governor, but functionally what he's doing is he's depending on Washington. Do you notice that? Yeah, but he's doing it with a Louisiana first slogan.
[00:15:14] Speaker C: Right.
[00:15:14] Speaker A: What does that mean?
[00:15:17] Speaker C: He talked about trying to hold Congress accountable as one of his like, platform issues.
[00:15:21] Speaker A: Accountable to what?
[00:15:23] Speaker C: The Constitution.
[00:15:24] Speaker A: To what standard? The Constitution.
[00:15:25] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, he references that on his, on his site a couple times. But he's telling a story, right? It's a narrative. And every, you know, I think he knows, he knows what he's doing. And again, this is pretty fascinating from a historical perspective. It's very Louisiana.
He's appealing to the common man. Right. He's a farmer. He's able to put that image forward.
He's able to put forward a couple of even conservative points that A lot of the common people in Louisiana would agree with.
He kind of sets the narrative as the trillionaires and the billionaires.
Trillionaire, sorry, there's only one and his name is Elon. The trillionaire and the billionaires are the ones getting the tax breaks, and they're benefiting from, you know, the labor of the poor and all that. It's kind of a communistic dynamic that he's putting.
[00:16:20] Speaker A: There's a proletariat and, yeah, there's the oppressed class and the oppressors.
[00:16:23] Speaker C: But what makes it so Louisiana is it's a kind of a rural socialism.
It reminds me of Huey Long.
[00:16:31] Speaker A: We're excluded. We're getting the bottom of the barrel because we're country people.
And we're trying to put Louisiana country people first again by making these.
These federal people give us money. We're going to go around the governor because he doesn't get us. I got to tell you, I've sat in a room with Jeff Landry before. Dude walks around in blue jeans.
Like, I think he gets us.
[00:16:54] Speaker B: Sure,
[00:16:58] Speaker A: I think he gets us. But it's. It's an interesting dynamic. You know, like, his appeal to improve education is the same thing that we've talked about in so many other episodes, too. It's more money.
St. Landry parish does not need more money.
We would not. Who would look at their under. Underperforming employees and be like, you know what? You need a raise that's going to make you do better work.
[00:17:26] Speaker C: How dare you, Stuart.
[00:17:27] Speaker A: No one operates that way. Literally no one.
[00:17:29] Speaker C: Yeah, it's. Yeah, there is a weird system. I mean, look there. There's a. There is a weird kind of protection of, of teachers. I was a teacher for a long time, and it was interesting interacting with. With some people who just by telling them that you were a teacher, you were automatically kind of like a hero. You were exempt from any critique or criticism.
So we see some of that going on maybe, but that's a. That's maybe another episode.
But yeah, we do. We do keep seeing this assumption. Let's call it a presupposition that if there are problems in the schools, the answer is more money for the schools. And the assumption there, too, is that education costs lots of money.
We would say, see our previous episodes. Education happens no matter what.
Education does not necessitate lots of money.
But the systems and infrastructures that we've built around education do cost lots of money. And they. They are mostly paid for by taxpayers.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: Ask any homeschool parent how much education Costs and they'll tell you on average, I would say somewhere between $500 to a couple of thousand a year.
[00:18:47] Speaker C: Yep. Books.
[00:18:48] Speaker A: Books.
[00:18:48] Speaker C: Yeah. Buy some books. And some books are expensive.
[00:18:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:50] Speaker C: But like, your kid is going to be educated no matter what. Yeah, yeah.
[00:18:57] Speaker A: This is a doable system.
Yeah. It's the. Keep cooking back to federal dollars. Federal dollars. This is why I would make the argument. The terminology I would use would be a soft socialist.
This is a soft socialism.
[00:19:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: We need more money from the state. Universal health care became a talking point. And we're not trying to say that. He's trying to like, I don't know, acquire. He's not saying the state should acquire the means of production. You know, that's communism. Isn't that communism? Yeah, Y.
He's not going that far. And he's also not trying to nationalize any particular industry, as far as I can tell, except he is with medical. He is trying to nationalize that industry. He wants to turn that into a universal healthcare system.
[00:19:42] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: And that is a socialist play.
[00:19:45] Speaker C: Right.
[00:19:45] Speaker A: He's a farmer.
He talks about that all the time. But his default answer to every problem is federal funding other people's money.
Right?
[00:19:56] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:19:56] Speaker A: And what we're arguing for is let's pay for it ourselves.
[00:20:00] Speaker C: Let's take responsibility. Yeah.
[00:20:01] Speaker A: Let's take responsibility and just do it ourselves. Now the refutation of that will be, but Louisiana doesn't have the money to fund its own education systems or Louisiana doesn't have enough money to be able to fund its medical systems appropriately. And I would just say, can we try?
Can we try?
[00:20:21] Speaker C: Let's take it even deeper. Was it ever the government's job to educate to begin with?
[00:20:25] Speaker A: Never was. Thank you. Thank you, David.
[00:20:27] Speaker C: Wasn't ever the government's job to provide healthcare?
[00:20:30] Speaker A: Boom, boom. No, no, never was.
[00:20:32] Speaker C: And we would argue that while those systems have, in most Americans minds, maybe become inevitably tied to government, we would argue that they're only ever going to get continuously more expensive and worse as the institution that is not supposed to run them is running them.
That makes sense.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:20:55] Speaker C: So, yeah.
[00:20:56] Speaker A: Yeah. He also had some comments about AI that were interesting.
Our beat reporter asked, what are the issues that you're seeing with it with AI as you think they should be addressed? And his answer was something to the effect of if I say I will legislate with common sense behaviors, that means whatever that issue was or is, it will be legislated by common sense tactics. It was interesting that he didn't really have a conversation about AI. Even though AI is on his platform, he doesn't really have. It doesn't seem like maybe he just flustered, flubbed in that particular moment.
[00:21:34] Speaker C: Maybe.
[00:21:36] Speaker A: But I would think that if it's a talking point in your platform, you would be able to talk through it
[00:21:42] Speaker C: a little bit more. Like elevator pitch.
[00:21:44] Speaker A: Yeah, this is exactly what I mean.
[00:21:46] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:48] Speaker A: So what I. What we want to try and bring out. And here we should probably start wrapping this up because we're hitting about 20 minutes right now. What we want to bring out is, listen, universal health care is socialism.
100% facts, boots on the ground. And this guy is advocating for it openly.
It will not improve your health care. Go talk to people from England they do not like is a less quality system. I've had friends across the pond who have had conversations with me about how would they come to America to get certain things taken care of because they can't get. They literally can't get it in England. Or if they can get it, they got to wait six months. In fact, one of the most recent conversations I had with them was that the National Health Service, which is their nationalized, standardized health care system, they call you. They had a problem with the waits being so long for services.
And so their solution to that problem was now they call you, and if you don't answer, you get taken off the list for whatever that service is. And they could call you at any point.
And you get three phone rings. You get three rings.
And so one of my friends, his wife is pregnant and they're trying to get her maternity care. Okay.
And the phone rang at some inopportune time because they've got three or four kids running around their house as it is right now. They didn't get to it in time. And then boom, bumped to the bottom of the list. And apparently the wait for her maternity care for, I think it was a doula that they were trying to sign up with, is after the baby will be delivered.
[00:23:22] Speaker C: That's not very helpful.
[00:23:24] Speaker A: No, no. It doesn't make things better.
[00:23:28] Speaker C: And if you think that, like, the healthcare system in England or in Canada or wherever that is run, that is universal and run by the government is going to, like, get better over the coming years, right? Like, no, it's not. It is not going to get better.
[00:23:45] Speaker A: It's not going to get better.
[00:23:46] Speaker C: All the universal health care programs are on a trajectory and it's not up.
Yeah. So that's just something to ponder there.
[00:23:55] Speaker A: If you hear any candidate, doesn't matter if they're conservative or Democrats say, we want to start new programs. The first, first question that pops into your mind should be, where does the money come from?
That's what every voter's question should be, and that's what our question is here for. Jamie Davis, where are the federal dollars coming from? They're coming from your pockets, my friend. And if they're coming from debt or money printers, they're coming from your children and your grandchildren's pockets.
This is something that we have to take very, very seriously and go through there.
He talks about work and his trades and his farm, and he sounds like a typical conservative, but then when he actually talks about the issues, the soft socialism, I call it soft socialism comes out.
Comes out. We got to pay attention to this, guys. Thank you all so much for listening to another episode of the Paris Circuit. If you got questions, you should ask them. You can go to the parishcircuit.com to submit any queries that you may have. You can also, like, share, subscribe to this podcast or article or online publication. And also, you can now support the Parish circuit. My friends, feed the children.
So far, this project doesn't make any money, and that's fine. We're not here for that. But, man, it would be great to hire some staffers to help get this thing really cooking. Well, that would be amazing. That would be amazing. That would be amazing. We're here to build conservative Christian media in southwest Louisiana, and we're here to do it well. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next time.
