Mr Bearded Truth – 45 – AMA with Jessica Ethridge.

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hello and welcome to mr america the bearded truth covering political and social issues one liberty at a time with
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entertaining insights of current events and important discussions on topics that affect us all
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shining the torch of liberty and brightening the future by bringing libertarianism into our everyday life
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and now your host the friendly neighborhood libertarian jason lyon mr
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murica the very truth on muddy waters media
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wait did he bring back the headphones he brought back the headphones what’s up everybody welcome in i’m so glad you
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guys are here i am of course mr murk of the beard of truth jason line thank you guys so much for joining us for another
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wonderful friday 8pm eastern show here on muddy waters america muddy waters of
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freedom buddy waters america i’d like it i’m gonna send that over to i know we got
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muddy murica but now we’ve got muddied muddy waters murica that’s got a nice jingle to it let me
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know what you guys think of the comment section below but anyways today we have a wonderful guest an amazing guest
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i have the one the only jessica etheridge she is on the ballot across all of south carolina this coming
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up november she’s running for a lieutenant governor she’s a good friend of mine she’s a incredibly
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uh incredibly well-versed and articulate individual activist she’s
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great when it comes to legalese she runs
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within her business and i’m sure we’ll talk a little bit about that as well um she’s somebody that people look up to
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she’s a true leader in every role that she steps into so i was excited to be able to have the opportunity today to
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come sit down and uh have a little ask me anything so if you guys have questions for jessica for a lieutenant
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governor running in south carolina um running under the banner of a libertarian party tonight is the show
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for you so thank you guys so much for doing for joining in tonight i’m of course jason lyon and this is a muddy
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waters media production which means that you can find this episode and every other episode on
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moneywaterfreedom.com or muddywatersmedia.com either site still works i do believe
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um i want to give a big shout out and a thank you to of course brian scott lambert and jenny
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for the intro that we use on this episode and every episode of mr america the bearded truth want to give a shout
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out and thank you to matt and spike for continuing to give me a platform to have amazing guests like we do tonight
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um i want to give a huge shout out to zuckerberg for not sucking us too far
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only slightly into oblivion so we are still here we are still pushing it out whether it’s on facebook youtube twitter
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i want to give a quick shout out for an upcoming event where we have in columbus ohio um i know we spoke about this
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before supposed to be august 20th 21st they have moved that back to the following
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uh the the weekend following elections so we will see that in november november uh 10th and 11th i do believe were the
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dates um so that would be
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sorry the 11th and the 12th there we go the 11th and the 12th i will get you guys that information as soon as i know
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more about that but you will be able to see myself you’ll see spike you’ll see kelsey lyon and of course you’ll also
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see the wonderful jessica etheridge i believe she’ll be joining us as well so we may be able to the poker and prada on
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that to make sure that she’s still uh planning to be in attendance for that we also have the wonderful fantastic
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coming up november 8th where if you guys are looking for something to do if you guys are in florida looking for a
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fantastic event head on down to brevard county florida november 8th it’s going
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to be that tuesday night from 6 to 10 we’ll be in the nyaminami river lodge uh
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it’s in brevard zoo fantastic night you guys are not gonna want to miss that head on over to lpbrevard.org gala to sign up you guys
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are looking to sponsor your uh your events your campaigns whatever it is whatever you’re doing head on over to lp
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brevard dot org slash gala hyphen sponsors
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i think with the exception of just this one more i think we might be might be through today
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you guys are looking to take your events to the next level you guys are looking to take take your campaign and spread it to
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millions and trillions and quadrillions of people you guys got to head on over to kelseylinedesigns.com
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go ahead and just sign up now go go sign up for her newsletter go sign up to talk
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to her engage with her she’s going to take your logos your branding your business cards your publications she’s going to make them better than what
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you’ve been receiving before she’s going to take you to the next level countless guests that we’ve had on this
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show have used kelsey line in the past and i believe that they would all vouch for her both as a person and as
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a branding genius so get on over there kelseyline designs you
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can also use kelseylion.design brand new website we’ll get a new flyer up for that soon
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use the code muddy waters you’re going to get a discount she’s going to love it some sad news that we have to share in
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the chat before we get bring our guests on uh joe hanouch has admitted to trimming his beard today
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i’m sorry man you know some of us can’t can’t handle keeping the beard up like this but nonetheless i want to go ahead
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and bring on my good friend um jessica etheridge i’m so excited for today’s conversation she’s running she’s on the
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ballot she’s going to be the next lieutenant governor of south carolina
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please everybody welcome jess how’s it going it’s going pretty good going pretty good
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bless joe’s heart right oh it’s so sad i don’t know you joe but
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this sounds like a tough break it’s it’s it’s terrible i couldn’t imagine uh you know
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doing that willingly and so he said it’s half gone
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well you know we were a few minutes late because jason literally had to groom his beard before
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we went live so this is a thing we were doing
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she’s not wrong y’all she is not wrong i i will not lie i will not tell him
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an honest politician what what is this so jessica you are on the ballot coming
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up in november we had gotten you passed pretty for us being libertarian party it’s
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pretty hard to get 10 10 out of 20 libertarians on board
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with something you were able to pull a super majority uh you were able to to come together corral
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people who otherwise disagree with a lot of the messaging uh inside outside the caucuses
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or you’re able to corral a lot of people and i think that this speaks to a lot of of who you are and how you you conduct
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yourself and so i’m so incredibly excited to be able to sit down and have this conversation with you tonight we’ve got a lot of
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johannes says this is best reason to delay we’ve got a lot of of topics that we’ve of course kind of set up for us
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tonight um but i i want to remind the the audience that if you guys are checking this out live you guys are more
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than welcome to pop your your chats into or your questions your comments everything else into the chat um i will
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uh try to get to as many of those as we can but i first wanted to say thank you again for for taking the time to come
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sit down with us tonight yeah thanks for having me it’s great to be here i hope i can um live up to that
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shining introduction you gave me oh it was pretty um
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no pressure yeah no pressure at all i mean you just on your worst day this is the what i
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described for everybody was her on her worst day so you know if if she i’m just
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kidding uh no pressure at all so it um but not only are you an activist in this
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area not only have you gotten the the support of libertarians around here but you’re also a fellow podcaster and so um
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i first want to be able to give you the opportunity to plug that i know you guys are on a hiatus right now because you seem to be busy with something i don’t
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know what it was uh but go ahead feel free to plug your amazing
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podcast that needs all of the eyes and ears that can possibly get yeah so we have parenting porcupines and
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it is myself casey whitener from the midlands and melissa kutcher from the low country she’s in charleston
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we’re just three moms we work we have you know careers we’ve got kids we’re all in different stages of our parenting
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journeys but we do a um when we are in season we do a weekly
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show and we talk about current events usually we’ll pick one specific topic
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um and we talk about just how we parent through these things how we talk to our
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kids how libertarian principles can kind of guide those conversations in some ways
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and then we talk about topics that aren’t related to uh current events things that are just parenting topics these things that all
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of us in this season of our lives are struggling with and so it’s a lot of fun
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it’s really cool because i get to talk about things that i love with people that i love
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and we all have different opinions and we all have different reasons for our opinions and it’s just really cool that
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people get to see us three moms talking about these things in these ways
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and it’s great we love it but casey is my campaign manager
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and melissa is our campaign treasurer so yeah the three of us are a little bit busy and
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melissa is actually running for her local school board so she’s not wearing enough hats is what you’re saying so we
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need to go ahead she doesn’t have enough we need to give her a few more yeah let’s let’s light him on fire before we
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give him to her though perfect she’ll be ready for this she’ll she’ll be able to handle it if
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anybody can handle it melissa can it’s crazy she is like i am in awe of her
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always because it’s like she is just there anything that is needed she’s she
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does it she just knocks it out she always knocks it out of the park i’m like i mean she’s super woman i’m convinced
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yeah no it’s incredible and and just speaking to parenting porcupines i’ve i’ve got to
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a couple years ago i was on for one of the episodes but watching these things as an audience
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member just as you described it you guys have three different perspectives they all fall in line with the the libertarian philosophy it’s all picking
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things through but it also is a way to for us as as porcupines as libertarians to be able to
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kind of really take this world view and apply it to somebody who is
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you know so impressionable we don’t want to have our kids being impressed in other ways from like the
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school systems or or what have you they’re there to be educated and so it gives it equips the parents in such a
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way it’s a it’s an incredible idea i’m so thankful for you guys for doing this um so it’s really it’s really neat too
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sorry i’m gonna say one more thing about it um because when we were creating this like when i first had the
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idea it was like how do we connect with people outside of our echo chamber right because it’s really easy as podcasters
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to focus on the people who want to hear what we have to say but how do we connect with people
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outside of that group and oftentimes parents that i talk to are like i don’t have time for politics i don’t
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understand politics and what easier way to connect with someone who doesn’t have
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that understanding of these ideas than how we talk to our kids about
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them right like that connection that shared experience and that that fundamental conversation i think is
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it’s really cool because people can hear it and they’re like oh that’s not that’s not so confusing after all yeah exactly
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it’s beautiful it’s it’s incredible so you you come from being an activist on behind the microphone which you know
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those are the best people clearly there’s no one better than people behind a microphone um
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but you also are engaged in your communities you were one of the people up spearheading up a lot of
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community outreach programs here in our county um we happen to be neighbors uh for
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people outside this podcast um where we’ve been out there and we’ve got signs now
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in our area saying hey look this is where greenville libertarians are picking up the shovel and doing it doing
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the damn thing if you will um so you’re heading up community
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organizations you’re heading up community activism you’re heading up or in partnership with heading up a
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podcast you’re a successful business woman you’re successful in the the legal area
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you’re you know you’re just you touch things and they turn to gold effectively um
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you’re laughing um but but at the end of the day like there’s a reason why so many people out
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across south carolina that know you love you and they respect you and they trust you and they’re willing to go out of
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their way in order to help support you and i think that this is something got highlighted and so i wanted to dive into
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i wanted to of course give you this platform to talk about that um but not to be like hey look at let me
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beat my chest i’m jessica etheridge but more of people get to see who jessica etheridge is but also get to see kind of
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that libertarian philosophy of it’s really not that complicated it’s really not that difficult often times we make it more difficult
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than than otherwise but i wanted to i wanted to ask for the first big question
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the first big gotcha question if you will how did you become a libertarian well talk me through like the big
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milestones that that got you to here to today so it’s really funny because i have
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always had an interest in politics since i was a little girl
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and it started because my dad and i my dad would get me up on i think it was friday
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nights it was really it would be really late and we would watch rush limbaugh um i know like gasp cringe whatever but
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back then you know it wasn’t quite the same but anyway so my dad would um would get me up and
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we would watch fresh limbo and he always talked to me about all the things i mean we didn’t you know
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hold things back and even through my teenage years my mom and dad divorced and i lived with my dad and so when i
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was a teenager we had a lot of conversations about current events and things that were going on we talked
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about religion we talked about all the politics so we had a lot of really complex
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conversations and he always taught me
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how to think it was never this is what you have to believe this is what you should think
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because that’s what i think it was always you know how do you feel about this why do you feel that way
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what makes you know what experience gave you that opinion
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and um so but i grew up in a conservative household obviously right rush limbaugh
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at all um but very conservative um blue-collar household and i went to college i went
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three semesters for political science i came home and i worked for a few years didn’t
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really know what i wanted to do i hated university which
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you know don’t let me talk about that later um you know sending kids to four-year colleges when they aren’t really
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determined that that’s their path but that’s how we got to student loan yeah they’re just encouraging i digress yeah
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yeah yeah so um i came home and i went i
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eventually went back to greenville tech and got a two-year degree paralegal studies and so i started my career and
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just having different experiences meeting different people and talking to different people
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and making those connections it gave me a lot of different
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a lot of exposure to a lot of different ideas and the more i thought about it the more i realized that
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maybe i’m not as conservative in a lot of the ways that i always thought i was yeah and so the more i
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thought about it there was a lot of like it was very introspective i guess
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um just really exploring that and i finally realized i don’t really have a political home because i
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don’t think i i align with this republican party and i don’t align with the
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democrats and so where do i fall in that spectrum like where do i go yeah
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you know and it was about that time that ron paul made his first
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presidential run and so that’s when i kind of started to get that um exposure
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and so over those years i just kind of kept an eye on things and i think the greenville county
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libertarian party the monthly meeting popped up on my facebook feed one day just randomly popped up and i was like
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maybe i’ll go check that out and see what it’s about yeah and i went to my first meeting and i didn’t talk very
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much because i was very intimidated because i didn’t know anybody and it was um it was all white men
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and so it was just kind of like intimidating for me but um even though i’m not really easily intimidated yeah
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i’ve never known you to be yeah i know so anyway but um but yeah so i but i even though i was intimidated it
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it still felt very comfortable and i was able to hear them and listen and they were very
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you know respectful and welcoming and so i just kept going back and the more comfortable i got the more engaged i
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became and here i am they uh they asked me to be the secretary when we we did our
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reorganization a few years ago and so i did that and that’s how i started to get involved and
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then i started at the state level and it’s a snowball yeah a snowball we were
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talking earlier about melissa having to wear a couple hats now you’re wearing i think 16 hats uh 17 on a good day at
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least um no it it’s one of those things that you’ve been you’ve been used and abused by this
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party and they’ve everybody has been made better because of that i i think
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i think that there’s an award that should be coming your way for all the things that you’ve done for the for the county level and for the state party um
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but now you are now you’re heading up you’ve developed and you’ve realized the republican party the democrat party is
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not the not the way an opportunity comes forward and it’s jessica etheridge on the ballot in
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november as lieutenant governor to help
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end the duopoly set people free in our lifetime and you’re beaming uh
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this you know it’s it’s an incredible opportunity that you’re on now and so i wanted to get
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into some of the some of the conversations that are are really weighing on the minds of at least
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the people that i’ve been speaking with and of course my small section of people may not be indicative of the entire state but
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there’s a lot of things that have been going on out there um and libertarians are you know the bread and butter things
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that a lot of us talk about the criminal justice system we talk about foreign wars we talk about the education system we talk about healthcare we talk
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taxation as theft right it’s not a libertarian podcast so we say that um
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but we’re seeing where the libertarians have a foothold in the conversation where
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it’s like both sides are kind of taking our our stance and pivoting from it and so i
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wanted to go i i talk a lot about the criminal justice system and i think that that’s a
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good point to start from just to kind of gloss through this uh 30 000 foot view
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you know as lieutenant governor what what are some of the things that you’re looking at in in south carolina how
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is there anything glaring in the criminal justice system and the way that it’s being used in our state that you
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want to say hey we need a change of direction in it well there are there are a lot of things
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there are a lot of things um i think the two biggest things that are being discussed right now are civil
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asset forfeiture and um qualified immunity right those
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are two really big things for anybody who is a an activist for criminal justice
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reform um because with civil asset forfeiture
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you are you know punishing someone without due process which is
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i don’t even know how we’re doing that it’s so unconstitutional right um and then with qualified immunity you
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know i think as with any profession i think that there should be consequences
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for your actions and i think that sheltering a group of
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people yeah based on you know that that job judges
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police officers uh it’s not fair yeah it’s not just uh and you end up having a system that
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serves itself and not the people that it is supposed to be serving absolutely and and i also think that one thing else
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that’s kind of important i i saw recently south carolina’s number two for cannabis
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uh incarceration like we are i can see i’ve already fired you up so
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take me take me down the take me down the cannabis dance where where is the campaign heading on this what’s the
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stance how are we moving forward i’m gonna i’m gonna go ahead and just give you the full screen that’s cool
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oh is it
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um sorry my husband just came upstairs even though i told him not to come up here you’re good i i didn’t set up the
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distraction yeah i didn’t set up the audio correctly for that anyway so we’re gonna have to be on on the split screen anyways sorry about that guys
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if you’d like to please repeat what the stance is uh because you said it so well and i don’t want to i don’t want to miss
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so what’s the stance on cannabis what are you guys moving for what’s the end goal what is the stance for today
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on cannabis for the state because right now for everyone to get the frame of mind
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in this state we’re second in the nation for the highest incarceration rates for cannabis we are
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utilizing anything and everything in order to keep using it we spoke about civil asset forfeiture um that is of
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course a proxy of the war on drugs but cannabis is something that’s on the hearts and minds of so many people and
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uh so what what’s the what’s the campaign stance how are you guys pushing forward on this
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well ultimately working toward full decriminalization of it um and i think the best first step
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is with the medicinal use of it because there are more than enough i mean an
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overwhelming number of studies that show the benefits of its use in treating a
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variety of different health issues from cancer to
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you know anxiety mental health it helps with seizures people used it for seizures successfully so
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there’s just i i i can’t even no matter how hard i try i can’t figure
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out how we’re still having this conversation like why is this even still a conversation and then there’s also the
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fact that i mean you have marijuana who are you hurting there is no one
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there’s absolutely no one being hurt by you having by you using
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this the struggle truly any drugs i mean really not that i
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advocate the use of drugs i wouldn’t want my children using drugs but
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you know i mean it’s not hurting anybody else yeah and i think you know but as it
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relates to marijuana i think working toward full decriminalization because it’s just ridiculous that
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we’re even still in this place in south carolina the dark
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ages oh you described our legislative body so well the dark ages just take it back as
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far as we can um so bad is so bad it it is one of those things and you know i
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commonly like to talk about like portugal and what portugal did and i i’m like you i’m not going to sit out here
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and advocate for people to use the drugs whether that’s cocaine
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meth whatever what have you i don’t like them but just treating it like a social
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problem rather than a criminal problem we are seeing where it helps in leaps and bounds for the individuals for the
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families for the community for every faucet um so i you know i’m glad to see
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that there’s actually a campaign out there that’s not just advocating for the marijuana growers i’m not there’s a
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campaign out there not to just be on the side of police but a campaign that’s out there for the people for medicinal uses
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for just ending the warm drugs go ahead well and i think it’s for a lot of people
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it’s really scary because there’s there’s this narrative around it you know growing up in the 80s and 90s it was a gateway drug
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you know gateway drug if you start smoking if you start smoking the pot the reefers
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you’re going to be a crackhead sure enough you know like living on the street
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no teeth and whatever i mean you know it was like this whole scary thing and
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um the reality is it’s not that but i have friends who are
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in law enforcement um two particularly and when there was a post a few weeks ago
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that i shared about um i believe it was about decriminalizing
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marijuana um maybe even drugs in general i don’t remember exactly but they were very
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upset with me in the comments and i never actually circled back to respond to them um
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which i meant to and i just i lost track of you know things but um
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it was pretty much both of their responses were in the tone of
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you know because they’ve seen the worst of the worst and one of them actually was a was
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a drug officer like that’s what he did he worked with you know like he worked to deal with cartels or whatever
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um and it was this narrative that you know
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when you see when you see your kids strung out
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then you will feel differently about this being a non-violent crime and i want to be very clear about something
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i want to be very clear about it i haven’t experienced that and i hope i never do i hope my children are never addicted to anything
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yeah anything however as a parent
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the best thing i can do is equip them with the knowledge and and the ability to make decisions for themselves and
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then at some point i have to trust that they’re going to do that um
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if they are 19 20 years old using drugs and i’ve used every resource at my disposal to
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give them the help that they need and they continue to make that choice and they overdose
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that is their choice i don’t want to lose my kids it kills me to think that i might ever that i could
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um but i think at some point we have to accept that there’s some level of personal responsibility in that
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situation now the other side of that if you have a drug dealer who is
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selling drugs that are tainted and he knows that they’re tainted i mean drug dealers they cut things right i
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mean that’s what they do so and somebody dies that’s obviously different because that is a
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there is a victim yeah there’s a person yeah um as with any business right i
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mean you sell tainted prescriptions you’re going to get locked up so anyway
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i kind of went wanted to go down that rabbit hole a little bit because those were two it was two really and they were
30:47
very valid comments and i can see where they were coming from but at the same time there was that like
30:53
underlying fear that was driving them and i think that when you remove fear from that conversation and you have it
30:59
you know from a reasonable perspective um and and again i
31:06
i respect these guys they’re very good men um they’re good police officers they’re
31:11
they have integrity they um do a lot of good things in their community they care about people um
31:18
and i have a lot of respect for them and i respect their opinions and their experiences and so i would i would never
31:24
seek to um to best merge them try to invalidate
31:30
their their experiences because their experiences have been pretty bad you know they’ve had some pretty and those
31:36
exposures bad stuff that was always the thing for me it was like the question of well what if your kids are are you know
31:42
suffering and and my thing is i was like the worst thing i could ever do is say i want the criminal justice system to come
31:48
and fix this for them with the recidivism rate with everything else like the best thing i would want as
31:54
a parent is to equip them to be able to to go and and seek help um and as for it
31:59
being a gateway drug just real quick the only gateway drug that it’s ever been for was a gateway to taco bell and now
32:04
that it’s not a dollar menu anymore like it’s not even that great of a gateway so right no more taco tacos yeah they yeah
32:12
they’re just taking all this stuff away darn you inflation um you’re taking my use
32:17
exactly what little bit of it i have left you’re taking it yeah little by little so
32:22
so we hit on on a couple things in there and i think that that’s incredible you know just the reasonableness of end the
32:29
war on drugs we don’t want we want to see the society get better um so i want to i want to jump into
32:36
a little bit about healthcare this is something that a lot of families are facing not just
32:43
here in our state but across the nation and we have we’ve seen where the the barterings and
32:49
the arguings and the the partisanship um both at capitol hill and down in the swamp of
32:56
colombia where it’s just prescriptions of of these solutions but nobody’s
33:01
actually talking about the source of some of these problems and i know that you’ve got some of those stances out there that you’re like let’s face these
33:07
things head on let’s handle them in a jessica way where we’re going to call the out we’re going to call it
33:13
for what it is and we’re going to start addressing these things so i want to know how is it that
33:19
people of south carolina would see through whatever means that you have whether that’s leveraging people having
33:25
conversations with legislators or or or taking action how would people of south carolina see better
33:31
health care more affordable health care or or what have you i think the biggest thing is creating
33:39
more of the free market for health care right you create competition
33:44
and when there’s competition there is innovation there is price competition
33:50
one of the things that has always bothered me is that anytime you go to a hospital
33:55
you go in for treatment for whatever is going on
34:02
with with you let’s say you’re going to the emergency room because you cut your foot open and you need stitches
34:08
they don’t give you a quote up front they don’t give you like a a price list of these services and these
34:16
items yeah um so that you can choose they don’t give
34:21
you options and i think that’s insane because
34:27
you’re just accepting whatever they’re going to build and you don’t even know what that is i
34:33
mean we go to a restaurant and we’re given a menu with all of our food options and all of
34:40
the prices why do we not expect that from our health care providers
34:50
there’s nothing there’s nothing making them do that they operate behind this curtain they’re protected by
34:57
this monopoly almost i mean we have two i think two really big healthcare systems
35:04
in the state of south carolina we have prisma and st francis right are there any others
35:09
in the upstate no really yeah and i mean prisma i’m looking at
35:14
you when we talk about i’m looking at you
35:22
not sorry yeah no you can’t be not with prisma so um but they they get to operate behind this
35:28
curtain meanwhile there i mean a group of doctors could come together and say we want to start this emergency clinic
35:36
and they have to jump through 15 000 fiery hoops and they still can’t do it
35:41
because of all of the roadblocks that are in place so all of these these measures stifle
35:47
that competition and so people don’t have choices in their health care they don’t get to make informed decisions
35:54
because they’re not even allowed to yep it is on that note
35:59
and kelsey’s in the comments section so i get to use her story i was going to use it if she wasn’t but i’m just
36:04
signifying that she’s she’s in the comment section so thank you kelsey i love you um you know when kelsey had her
36:10
her heart surgery we had to go to prismo because that was like the local thing and i was like i don’t really have much
36:16
of a choice uh so i went and took her down to the to prisma and they almost killed her and so
36:23
then it was like now we need open heart surgery what are we going to do it’s like do i take them back to prisma and say yeah you guys
36:30
failed the first time on killing her let’s give you guys a second go at it or i had to rely on on communities to take
36:36
us all the way up to boston massachusetts from south carolina to go up to to mass general where they took
36:43
incredible care for of us um so it’s one of those things where it’s like
36:48
nobody not many people are going to be in the circumstance that we were in so if we if we’re talking about healthcare
36:54
healthcare has to be one of those things where it’s accessible for as many people as possible
36:59
and you know to to your point of the government regulation when it makes it
37:05
more affordable or more accessible it works against it because it’s been propping up these monopolies so we need
37:10
to have those things um this is
37:16
i get fired up every time i talk about healthcare i gotta i gotta calm down but [Laughter]
37:21
it’s the the the pricing transparency that’s such a big note
37:26
yeah how much is this going to cost how much is this band-aid i i i realized that band-aid yeah that band-aid is
37:33
going to cost you at least 750. and you won’t find out about until three
37:38
months later when you’re when your insurance company is bartering with the the insurance or the health care
37:44
providers and it’s like no just i could go down to cvs right across the
37:49
street and buy the same band-aid give me a prescription to go buy that band-aid i’ll be i’ll be better off
37:55
yeah so
38:00
you guys i wanna i wanna give you guys this opportunity as well in the comment section just a reminder this isn’t ask me anything so if you guys have any
38:06
questions i know you guys have been going live and going uh crazy with these comments um
38:12
i i appreciate all those if you guys do have a question just put a question mark before you guys have your um your
38:17
statement there and i will have the moderators who are standing by be able to check those and we will try to get
38:22
those questions asked for you guys so feel free to ask those questions um
38:27
oh healthcare so you you actually talked a little bit about certificate laws and that’s an incredible thing that i love
38:34
talking about with people and i would um i’m gonna do a shameless plug if you guys don’t know about certificate indeed laws go ahead and go back to a previous
38:41
episode where we can talk about those um on those but we’re in a state right now where the
38:50
what is he what was he referenced as the pedo hitler if you will uh the the
38:55
commander-in-chief who was standing there in front of the red lights looking like hitler from back in the day
39:00
where he denies the existence of inflation um but the economy is something that isn’t necessarily working
39:07
for a lot of americans it’s not really working here in south carolina for a lot of families what are some of the things
39:12
that you um should you be elected what are some of the the conversations that you would
39:18
like to see facilitated in order to help just the average uh south carolinian be
39:24
better off well i mean i think removal of those certificate of knee balls is the first
39:30
step right trying to work with our legislature to figure out how do we move forward on that because
39:38
i mean it’s like every time it comes up we might get a little bit closer a little bit closer a little bit closer and then
39:44
it doesn’t happen yeah um i think that’s the biggest thing because once that’s done then we can start working within
39:49
our communities we can work with doctors and um and clinics to figure out what the needs
39:56
are of the communities and we can start to help build that we can start to help build those networks to create those
40:04
services and those facilities that are that are needed because you know you should you should have
40:11
options in your care you should be able to make an informed decision you should have the opportunity to make an informed
40:17
decision um and you should you should have a choice i think you should always have choices and i think taking away that
40:23
choice is um yeah it’s it’s almost barbaric i mean in
40:30
my in my opinion it is it always is um but i think i i think that you know
40:37
we’re looking right now we just recently had the gas tax uh final increment be added to to south carolina families we
40:44
saw where the inflation of course is coming from outside of of south carolina coming into the state um we’re seeing
40:51
where you know some of the the the barriers the artificial barriers if you will um coming into the state for
40:58
trade and everything else are kind of making it difficult for for families financially um are there things that we
41:05
can see you know i’ve seen people have conversations around tax holidays of
41:10
whether it’s on the the gases whether it’s on um maybe maybe not a holiday uh maybe maybe
41:17
just a retirement if you will but are there is there anything in there that you’re looking to alleviate for the
41:25
families of of south carolina well first of all i don’t like the idea of tax holidays because it’s not a
41:32
solution to the problem right it’s it’s it’s a temporary uh
41:38
band-aid it’s not a solution and i don’t think that we should view something favorably
41:44
that is a non-solution especially not when it’s being presented by the same party that created the problem in the
41:50
first place um i think that
41:56
when we have this conversation about inflation and the impact it has on
42:02
families in south carolina um and especially
42:07
communities that are already underserved right the poorer communities the
42:13
more rural communities that don’t have the same resources as say greenville charleston columbia yeah and the bigger
42:20
cities um i think we really need to look at things
42:25
like occupational licensing i think we need to look at the business license requirements within municipalities and
42:32
counties because those things can be very burdensome and i always use the example of hair
42:39
braiding i like to use that example because it’s a good example for several reasons
42:47
but right now you have to have a license i think a cosmetology
42:53
license to be a hair braider and so if you have a community where there is a
42:58
woman who is known for her hair braiding skills she can’t do that for income without
43:06
having that license also you know probably a business license she has to
43:11
submit herself with that licensing to dhec inspections and things like that which
43:17
opens her up to fines if things aren’t just perfect um which makes it incredibly difficult to work out of the home which creates
43:24
overhead right so all of these things start to add up and so you have a woman
43:30
who is exceptionally good at braiding hair and could make a very good living in her community doing that
43:36
and that’s a that’s something that can be a business that could be started with virtually no overhead
43:42
otherwise but she can’t do that and if you look at the cost to start that business as it is
43:48
right now with all of the licensing requirements i mean that could be groceries for her family
43:54
for a week or two weeks or three weeks or a month and when choosing between feeding your kids
44:01
and starting a business you’re gonna probably choose your kids right like it’s it’s really hard to to
44:08
say i’m not going to buy groceries because i want to start this business and these are all the things that i have to do and even after i do them
44:14
i still might not be successful you know i still might not ask and i still might not even have a fair shot and so i think
44:20
we have to have conversations about what these barriers are that the government has created and how do we take them down
44:28
to allow people to enter this market to start businesses to be entrepreneurs
44:34
to have that competition um because those things breed innovation
44:40
right innovation makes economies stronger and i think it’s it’s just important
44:46
that we have conversations about those things i think that’s the first i think that’s a reasonable first step
44:53
i think that that’s it’s an incredible story that you were talking about the hairdressers um for two things and the first one is when
45:00
we talk when we talk to older generations and they were talking about when their grandparents came to the country they came with a dollar fifty in
45:07
their pockets and a will and a dream and they came in and they built up their
45:12
lives and they became successful because they were able to work hard they were able to be successful this isn’t kind of
45:18
the world that we live in anymore where you know as you spoke about the occupational licensing the um
45:24
i just blanked on the term but you have so many things where government has come in and regulated so finely so so
45:32
meticulously in every every faucet of our lives that it makes it so difficult
45:37
and and the second thing was was joe news has a fantastic comment on this if you can trust your neighbor to do
45:44
something it shouldn’t need a government license to do it absolutely absolutely
45:49
100 and i think that’s i mean that’s the idea of a free market right i mean
45:55
you’re going to give your business to the people and this might just be kind of a sidebar slash rabbit hole but in a free
46:02
market you’re going to give your money your business to people you trust and people who are
46:10
known to be sheisty they’re not going gonna get people are gonna stop giving the money they’re
46:15
gonna stop trusting them they’re gonna stop giving them business and i think it takes care of itself those problems take
46:20
care of themselves but i absolutely agree with that i think you know two consenting people
46:26
contracting for services the government should never be involved in those transactions there’s absolutely no
46:31
reason and and just to make sure that this is a a true and proper libertarian podcast when those two people are are
46:37
interacting with one another the third party doesn’t get to steal portions of that taxation is theft we can move on
46:43
[Laughter] um i just closed that tab um so
46:50
occupational licensing economic freedom we kind of hit those those are very important things right of of actually
46:56
giving people an opportunity to be successful um i couldn’t imagine being a parent of two daughters and not being
47:03
able to start a business because we couldn’t afford to start the business to be able to fund them it’s terrible um
47:09
well and you have to think too sorry not to cut you off no you’re good you’re good i’m gonna cut you off
47:14
um it’s that whole that mentality of pull yourself up by your bootstraps
47:20
right just pull yourself up by your bootstraps work hard you’ll be successful
47:26
you can’t expect somebody to do that when you take away their damn boots
47:31
yeah like you can’t expect them to do that if you take away their boots
47:37
the um so we have comments coming in on this um
47:42
so the irs just goes ahead and well not the irs the congress federal congress just
47:50
passed and gave us 87 000 new irs agents um is that going to make it easier or more
47:57
more difficult i i would love to hear just your federalist idea of the irs uh we in
48:04
south carolina are free people and we don’t need you guys intermingling in our 601 venmo transactions uh from neighbor
48:11
to neighbor yeah um
48:17
that’s a big it’s a big conversation yes uh so sorry because i think because i think
48:24
part of that is also this idea of secession right and i think that’s a big conversation right now especially within
48:30
our party with all of the talk from national about this national divorce which
48:36
i don’t fully understand not sorry um but you know i do think
48:41
that a state should have every right to say you know what we’re not gonna do that because
48:50
you work for us yeah right and i think that’s something that gets lost a lot of times when we have
48:56
political conversations everybody thinks the federal government is the the the daddy right they’re the daddy
49:03
and everybody has to listen to daddy right but that’s not true that’s not how our founding fathers built our country
49:10
that’s not what they envisioned for our country it starts at the local level the people control their government they
49:17
control the local government they send people locally to the state to represent them
49:23
it is up to the state um to run itself
49:28
and it we send people from the state to the federal government to oversee that right
49:34
like that’s it’s bottom up not top down and i think this idea that
49:40
the irs can hire over 80 000 new agents and all of a sudden they have some authority over all of these things it’s
49:47
absurd it’s absurd um and i absolutely think that states should have
49:53
every opportunity and i think that it should be respected if they say no we’re
49:59
not going to do this because it is completely possible for a state to break away from
50:04
any federal thing i mean like the department of education if south carolina broke away from the department of education altogether and started
50:11
working for itself on its own education system had its communities working for themselves
50:18
working with teachers and educators to make sure that they had the ability to run their classrooms to do what they are
50:25
trained and educated to do instead of having all of this bureaucratic red tape um sorry another rabbit hole oh you’re
50:32
good you’re good but but but those are the types of examples where states should absolutely have the right to say
50:38
you know what we don’t need your federal funding we don’t want your federal funding we are going to completely step out of this
50:45
and the federal government should not be able to do anything contrary to
50:52
what those states wishes are yeah and and i love on this on this
50:57
topic of that decentralization i love that
51:03
i don’t remember who started this i don’t remember if it was a red state or a blue state but the idea of
51:08
sanctuary states whether that was for immigration whether that was for abortions whether that was for the
51:14
second amendment right there’s some there’s some flavor that that sings to the heart of of most voters that they’re
51:20
like yes this is what we need why not education as there’s a giant
51:25
wave of families out there and i think this is the next topic that we can tee up as as the conversation around school
51:31
choice and that the public school system f post covid um because of covet pre-covet now it’s kind of in our faces
51:38
um families are like there needs to be some serious changes and the federal
51:44
department of education isn’t really doing it so let’s go ahead and give some more empowerment to the families give
51:50
some more empowerment to the to the parents into our community so i i think that there’s a huge conversation that
51:56
can be had around education i want to know what’s what’s spinning around in your head what are your thoughts uh
52:02
whether it’s school choice whether it’s how do we fix the public system is there a fix to the public system um
52:08
i’ll i’ll open up that huge can of worms for you yeah that’s a pretty big one um and you
52:13
know it’s it’s interesting because when we were working on our education policy
52:18
for the campaign that was not something that we just sat down and created based on
52:25
talking points that outline things that people want us to say
52:30
our campaign sat down with educators with teachers who teach every
52:39
single day and asked what is it that you need
52:44
for your classroom for these kids to be successful for you to teach these kids what they need to
52:50
know and i think overwhelmingly it was clear that
52:58
there are way too many administrative costs there’s a lot of bureaucracy involved um
53:06
and i think that paring that down finding out figuring out how to pare that down right
53:12
um parents should always have a choice in their in in a say in their children’s
53:18
education in the direction that it goes whether they want to homeschool put them in a private school
53:24
use the public education system um i am one of those libertarians who
53:30
i’m not an anarchist i’m a menarchist i think that there is a role for
53:36
government i think that a reasonably sized and well-regulated government
53:41
well regulated i like those words right um meaning regulated by its
53:47
citizens the people that it’s supposed to work for um but i do think that there is a role and
53:54
i’m not necessarily opposed to a public education system
54:00
but i think the one that we have is really broken and i think it’s broken
54:05
really beyond repair and i think we need to scrap it and start over i think we need to let teachers do their jobs i
54:11
mean my god these people are tired they have done so much and if anything that
54:16
we learned during covid um there is so much stuff that they do
54:22
during the day that just seems like filler i guess why are my kids sitting in class for seven hours a day and
54:28
they’re not like most of the stuff the substantive stuff can be done in four
54:34
hours yes like this is ridiculous you know
54:39
so i don’t know if that really answers your question no it’s it’s it’s an incredible start i mean you talked about
54:45
actually going to the people who are engaged on this topic yeah absolutely what do you mean time
54:51
here’s the thing anytime you’re making decisions about something that impacts other people
54:56
especially their jobs their paychecks they should always have a say
55:03
they should always have an opportunity to give you input because especially if you’re not somebody who’s ever done that
55:09
job you don’t know what you’re talking about you don’t know what you’re talking about
55:14
and you need those people you need to listen to those people you need their opinions you need their
55:21
perspective you need to hear their experiences because you cannot solve for
55:26
a problem you don’t understand and if you don’t understand it if you can’t comprehend it then you need to
55:32
find somebody who can help you comprehend it because you can’t solve for a problem you don’t understand yeah absolutely yes
55:40
that’s all right you know i you can’t say that on this podcast because we only come to the pundits and
55:46
the only pundits are the people behind the microphones and that’s the only people you can come to so we’re gonna have to can’t but on a serious note that
55:53
is so refreshing because you don’t hear other candidates from any arguably even a lot of libertarian
56:00
candidates aren’t going out there and talking to their community saying what is it that you need you’re in this role
56:07
you clearly especially teachers there aren’t teachers that are necessary
56:12
there may be some there are not for the most part any teachers out there for the vast majority of teachers they
56:19
are there because they want to make a positive impact to their students they want to teach they want to help them
56:25
develop and to grow so you go what do you need maybe we
56:31
should have this conversation meanwhile you have republicans democrats and arguably even some libertarians i’ve
56:37
done this where we go i know what to do listen to me
56:43
yeah so we are we’re bad jessica’s right on this you you’ve won my heart and soul on that one
56:49
um college tuition’s a fun one
56:56
so here we go so there’s a lot of the conversation going on
57:01
because we just had ten thousand dollars between 300 or 550 million billion
57:08
billion with a b uh dollars being utilized in another manner um in
57:15
order to have some relief what is it that we can kind of see from the trajectory of
57:21
jessica etheridge is now engaged in these conversations with south carolina universities in order to
57:28
help try to make it um make it a more welcoming and a more financially feasible decision
57:36
for for the next generation well i mean for as long as the
57:42
federal government is issuing or in any way involved in student loans with these ridiculous interest rates
57:49
that create debt that can never be repaid i mean
57:54
most of these people can’t figure out how to repay these debts um i mean they’re essentially
58:00
subsidizing these colleges and they’re able to charge it’s just like health care they’re able to charge whatever
58:05
they want to charge and they’re going to get paid and um
58:11
that’s not good that’s just not good i think that you know there
58:18
there are a lot of ideas floating around right now obviously the primary thing is
58:24
making it so that these things can be discharged in bankruptcy so that if someone does have this debt they can be
58:29
freed of it in that process
58:35
restructuring of the loans that are currently on the books i think that’s a good step too to allow people to be able
58:42
to pay their debt i don’t like the idea of wiping out debt
58:48
um especially in this way because it does come back on taxpayers whether you think it will or not it will we’re gonna
58:54
pay for it it’s gonna you know it’s gonna increase inflation down the road and
59:00
i think that this is all
59:07
part of a bigger problem in homes i think that parents aren’t
59:12
talking to their children about their options i’m a huge advocate for trade schools
59:19
and technical colleges i got my degree that i use every day from a technical college
59:26
granted it’s a little bit different career path i built it myself um it’s
59:32
not a traditional career path that i went down um but i’m a huge advocate for those
59:38
opportunities for kids because not every kid wants to go to college and i think selling this narrative that you have to
59:43
go to a four-year college you have to get a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree and you have to get a doctorate
59:50
or whatever and i’m not saying that those things aren’t important because to some people they are and there are a lot
59:55
of successful people with those degrees um but i think if a kid
1:00:01
doesn’t fully understand what that’s going to look like or maybe
1:00:07
they don’t feel sure that that’s that what they want to do i don’t think they should be forced to and i don’t think we should be feeding this narrative not
1:00:14
parents not guidance counselors not friends and family
1:00:19
we’ve got to stop that right we’ve got to stop doing that because we are pushing these kids toward these colleges
1:00:26
that they can’t afford their signing notes that they’re never going to be able to repay they’re coming out of
1:00:31
college with useless degrees because now we have flooded colleges with these kids
1:00:36
who are all getting the same degree there aren’t enough jobs they also are not receiving counseling for how to use
1:00:42
these degrees what all their options are when they come out of college they don’t even know what jobs to look for it i
1:00:48
mean it’s there are so many issues that have to be addressed and i think it really it all starts at home
1:00:53
um that’s just my personal opinion but um but back to the trades
1:01:00
the trades and technical schools i think it’s really important that we offer those to kids that we make sure
1:01:06
they understand those as opportunities because maybe it’s a situation where a child does want to go to a four-year
1:01:12
school after college but they know they can’t afford a four-year school instead of forcing them to take out these
1:01:19
extremely high interest loans let them go to a tech school for two years and transfer they can work while
1:01:24
they’re at that tech school getting their you know the core classes out of the way save up the
1:01:30
money it allows them to pay more toward their education as opposed to taking out these loans why aren’t we talking to
1:01:36
them about that why are we doing our communities a huge disservice by not telling our kids that they can be as
1:01:42
successful as plumbers and electricians and auto mechanics and welders
1:01:48
it’s it’s it’s such a needed conversation and i know i made i personally made a lengthy post when we
1:01:53
had the the student loan forgiveness uh debacle going out but it was we have a cultural problem which is what
1:02:01
you’re describing because i know for me like i work in a combustion lab for my day-to-day job and
1:02:08
so many of the people there were like i was you know i was 16 17 years old and my parents said you know you got once
1:02:14
you turn 18 you got to go to college or you got to go join the military and it’s like man like there are so many more
1:02:21
options out there there’s so many different paths of availability and just as you would describe
1:02:26
technical schools community colleges many times if you live so for south
1:02:32
carolina you can go to a community college for free as long as you’ve been a resident for a couple years like
1:02:38
we have these opportunities out there um that you’re not going to be incurring all this debt
1:02:44
and and just the saturation of those markets that you were talking about nobody needs to go to ucla for four
1:02:50
years just right out of high school to get their degree like you’re not yeah you’re going to be gaining
1:02:56
something for going to a prestigious school but going through another way of saving that money these are conversations we need to have you’re
1:03:02
starting off these conversations it needs to be brought in to the hearts and minds of everyone out
1:03:08
there so i’m glad that somebody out there is actually bringing that up for us
1:03:14
so is there anything that you would see
1:03:20
because i know for a lot of the colleges here in south carolina a lot of the big ones right
1:03:25
you’ve got clemson who receives huge subsidies and taxes um
1:03:31
tax breaks and everything else and and of course college of charleston gets this are these things that you think are
1:03:36
are in the correct view of the government um should they should they be providing that should it be curtailed
1:03:42
should it be removed outright um these are are some of the conversations i’ve been seeing a lot more people have
1:03:49
around these if we get rid of the subsidies does that mean that the students will pay more or
1:03:55
you know of course this is diving into the weeds of things but it’s one of those things that it speaks to even
1:04:02
the college loan forgiveness where we arguably may see schools cost another
1:04:07
ten thousand dollars now as a as a result of ten thousand dollars being forgiven forgiven for new new tuition
1:04:14
rates is that is that gonna be applicable here as well i mean the government’s never gonna give
1:04:20
away money that’s not a thing they do right like we know that and anybody who thinks that they will
1:04:26
i’m sorry but you’re delusional unless you’re cronies but that’s it yeah
1:04:31
yeah um you know i think i think if the federal government were
1:04:37
to remove itself and the market were able to to drive the
1:04:42
value of these educational opportunities i think we would see the cost come down
1:04:48
because you know we would see
1:04:53
people may be choosing the different options that they have available to them because it’s not as easy to go when
1:04:58
you’re getting this this loan that you don’t realize is really not a good deal right
1:05:04
um but and it creates that competition right because then universities are gonna have to compete with trade schools
1:05:10
they’re gonna have to compete with community colleges and so they’re gonna have to lower tuition um
1:05:18
there was another part of that and i completely lost it i’m sorry no don’t don’t don’t it’s been a long day it has
1:05:24
been it has been and we’ve already gone over our hour but i i appreciate you sticking that out for me um has it
1:05:29
already been over an hour really yeah yeah it’s 9 11 right now never forget oh wow
1:05:35
i said that um
1:05:41
yep that that definitely happened so in the end so you you may have
1:05:47
potentially started a discussion around menarche versus anarchy but we’re not going to touch that one too much um
1:05:53
but what is what would you say is the role of of the south carolina government what do
1:06:00
you what do you what do you see it doing well or what do you see it doing that it
1:06:06
should be done better or what are what are some of the things that you see that it’s doing that shouldn’t be done at all
1:06:12
well i mean i think the government again it works for the citizens it should serve the citizens yeah our campaign
1:06:18
talks a lot about community-based solutions and what we mean by that is
1:06:25
finding ways to get the government like government regulation and all of these barriers to get those things out of the
1:06:32
way so that we can not only allow but empower communities to
1:06:38
take care of themselves right because there is there’s a lot of
1:06:44
dependency on the government for a lot of things i mean everybody
1:06:50
seems to depend on the government for something and that’s always the answer right for people because it’s the easy
1:06:55
answer it’s easy just let the government do it like you need a welfare program the
1:07:00
government will take care of it we’ll just pay taxes and the government will take care of it um because we’ve been conditioned as a
1:07:07
society to think that that’s how things can be effective and i think that we have
1:07:13
found out that that government is anything but effective um yes but we talk about these community
1:07:21
solutions from the perspective that government should act as a um more of a networking
1:07:29
facilitator right so as lieutenant governor if elected i think my primary initiatives would be
1:07:37
finding advocates and activists in communities connecting them to help helping
1:07:44
communities identify their needs and then connecting them with the people in other communities or within their community who can help them achieve
1:07:50
um those things for themselves rather than relying on the government to do it and that’s true in cases of um
1:07:57
you know for topics like abortion that’s a big one
1:08:02
allowing allowing communities to empowering communities to be able to provide services to women and families
1:08:09
in crisis so that they don’t feel like they have to seek abortions right um and providing the services to
1:08:16
proactively prevent unwanted pregnancies
1:08:22
and those are pretty big conversations that you know we may not have time for tonight but those are the community
1:08:27
solutions that we that we’re talking about in our campaign um and i think that
1:08:33
you know overall the idea is that government should act as a facilitator
1:08:39
as a helper of communities in achieving
1:08:44
those networks and those goals as opposed to dictating what they have to be
1:08:50
and then being that provider and pulling all those strings and determining
1:08:55
what is needed when where how how much um
1:09:02
yeah yeah no that’s incredible now you said a term earlier and i i hate to be
1:09:07
this guy you said a term earlier you said the term well regulated and for me i
1:09:13
i i like the term well regulated but i like the term well-regulated from the
1:09:18
1779 version when the constitution was written yeah and that means to make regular and and so i agree with you if
1:09:25
the government should a government exist anarchy versus monarchy should a government exist
1:09:32
it should be there to make regular prosperity it should make regular for living for happiness for joy for
1:09:40
it should be doing things in order to help exactly to facilitate people to get what they need not to be
1:09:47
the provider not the dependency but the dependency on one another um but that’s
1:09:53
you frame that so well i’m i’m and then i get used well regulated so i get to
1:09:58
bring back that so incredible uh i don’t know if you want to dive into the abortion topic i i
1:10:04
would be happy to give you a little bit of time to talk about that if you want to go a little bit further into that uh because i know on the hearts and minds
1:10:10
of a lot of people right now is the age uh 53-99 bill which was just passed by the house to be sent to the senate
1:10:17
likely to pass there and then will be signed by uh henry mcmaster who said that we don’t need exceptions and one of those as well
1:10:25
um but if you want to dive into that we’re more this platform is yours
1:10:30
uh i mean if we have time we can talk about it yeah the time is yours yeah sure whatever whatever you would like to
1:10:37
discuss this is this is more this is for you um so well first of all we know that
1:10:43
prohibition doesn’t work right i mean we know that prohibition
1:10:49
does not work it doesn’t so you tell women that they can’t have abortions you tell doctors
1:10:55
they can’t perform abortions we’re going to go back to the days where there are back alley abortions and women are going
1:11:00
to be dying because they’re having to seek these unsafe uh procedures
1:11:07
and i know you know there there are so many viewpoints on this there and people feel
1:11:12
very strongly about this topic on both sides and they should it’s a very important discussion it’s a very
1:11:18
important discussion i personally am pro-life as am i first personally
1:11:25
pro-life however i do not think the government should
1:11:30
ever have a say in the decisions that are made
1:11:35
privately between a woman and her spouse a woman and her partner
1:11:42
a woman in her family because i know there are a lot of stories where you know teenage pregnancies
1:11:48
happen and parents make their daughters get abortions and their daughters are forever changed and forever
1:11:55
um traumatized yeah by those experiences
1:12:01
um and i’m you know i’m not here to speak on that i’m not here to say what’s right or what’s wrong or what people should or
1:12:07
should not do that’s that’s not my place um
1:12:12
i know a lot of people believe that conception you know life begins at conception
1:12:18
a lot of people don’t think it begins until the baby can live outside of the womb and both of
1:12:24
those i think are valid points of discussion
1:12:29
um on the you know the various merits that exist
1:12:34
for them um and i’m gonna bounce back and forth because this is a topic that it it took
1:12:40
a lot for me so much there’s so many ways there’s so much to unpack i mean people who make this a black and white
1:12:47
like very clear-cut issue it’s because you don’t understand like you have not
1:12:52
taken the time to understand this it is not an easy thing to discuss it’s not an easy thing to
1:12:59
understand um and i think that it’s really really easy
1:13:05
because people feel so passionately and especially even within libertarianism
1:13:10
we have that very clear dividing line right and people who believe that um
1:13:16
that life begins at conception believe that it’s a violation of the nap because it violates the rights of the
1:13:22
baby people who believe that life does not begin until
1:13:28
um the baby can survive outside of the womb or that the mother should have the right to
1:13:35
decide over her own body regardless of the
1:13:40
gestation where they are in gestation they believe that it’s a violation of
1:13:46
the nap to make her carry the baby right so i mean these are
1:13:52
these are conversations that there’s really no clear answer to yeah except
1:13:57
that the government should never have a say in that decision ever
1:14:03
and so the idea that our legislature is trying to cram this through a special session
1:14:11
and they’re trying to do this before the election so mcmaster can sign it into law is
1:14:17
to me it’s important like i cannot believe
1:14:23
that this is happening right now um and i cannot
1:14:28
i cannot understand how people can support this i do understand because
1:14:34
they don’t understand right like i understand that they don’t understand um
1:14:40
but it’s heartbreaking as a woman to know even though
1:14:45
i don’t think i would ever make that decision but then again i’ve never had a
1:14:51
pregnancy where my fetus could kill me yeah i’ve never had to make that
1:14:57
decision and to think that i might not be able to make that decision if we pass a total if we pass a total ban that’s
1:15:03
what we’re talking about yes i mean if if i get raped if i if i leave my i don’t know if i
1:15:10
leave a restaurant after dinner with my girlfriends and some guy grabs me and takes me behind a dumpster and rapes me
1:15:16
and i get pregnant i have to carry that baby like the fact that i can’t make that
1:15:22
decision is unacceptable there was a tweet that i
1:15:27
saw and i i don’t wanna i don’t break up this because it’s beautiful what you’re saying but there was a tweet that i saw
1:15:33
that was like men can now choose who their baby mothers are that’s
1:15:38
that is pretty much and we don’t have a say yeah so that’s that’s terrible on its own and
1:15:44
so for for everyone wondering at home age 39 or 53 99 which is a bill that’s
1:15:50
being passed by the special legislative um session this is it has no exceptions the only
1:15:57
exception is an immediate and it calls out an immediate threat to the mother’s life so that means that you know there
1:16:04
was recently a south carolina representative who went semi viral but he was talking about
1:16:11
how a mother who had a stillborn inside of her during the gestational process
1:16:17
had a stillborn inside of her they could not could not remove
1:16:23
the stillborn the dead fetus that was inside of her because it would have been violation of the laws
1:16:30
already on the book so we’re looking to tightening those up and because it’s not an immediate threat to her life it would
1:16:36
be a threat a couple days maybe a couple weeks later who knows when but maybe she’ll pass the
1:16:43
the the fetus through through i forgot what that’s called like an instantaneous abortion or spontaneous abortion there
1:16:49
we go spontaneous abortion hopefully she has that and it doesn’t come to a point where it is threatening her life but to
1:16:56
put people in limbo like that is just terrible well and also i mean knowing i mean
1:17:02
there are women who are pregnant with babies that they know are not going to make it to term and instead of being
1:17:08
able to choose to end that pregnancy they’re forced to carry a baby and
1:17:15
eventually deliver a baby that they have to see and i’m sorry
1:17:20
if you’ve never delivered a baby you don’t know what that feeling is like delivering a baby not only the the
1:17:26
physical aspect of it but the emotional aspect of that and seeing that baby and i’ve never
1:17:33
delivered a stillborn baby but my god if i were told if i were pregnant and my doctor said that that
1:17:40
baby was not going to make it to term at you know when i’m at 15 weeks
1:17:47
and they said there was something like massive you know just majorly wrong yeah and
1:17:52
like i had to let that baby grow inside of me only to give birth to it at 27
1:17:57
weeks and it be a baby like a baby that just born was born dead i mean these are the
1:18:03
circumstances that we are talking about that people aren’t thinking about like these are things
1:18:08
that actually happen for women and not allowing them to have a say
1:18:15
is it’s very shaky ground it’s and it’s frankly it’s unacceptable
1:18:21
um but also we have to have the discussion about you know miscarriages like are we
1:18:27
going to start investigating women when they have miscarriages to make sure that they miscarried naturally versus did
1:18:33
they have a miscarriage because they you know fell down stairs and did they do that on
1:18:40
purpose and are we going to put them in jail for that i mean like these are this is a very
1:18:45
slippery slope and i don’t that this is it’s scary it’s scary
1:18:52
as hell and anybody who is not thinking about these things i would i would beg of you
1:18:59
please consider if you’re watching this and you haven’t considered these things please think about them think about the
1:19:06
women in your lives and think about these things happening to them and what you would want for them
1:19:12
nobody i i don’t know a single person who has had an abortion
1:19:18
who was glad that they had an abortion yeah it is not something they wanted to
1:19:24
do it was something a choice that they made because of their health because of their
1:19:30
economic situation um because of their home situation i know somebody who had an abortion
1:19:37
because she was being abused and she didn’t want to bring a baby into that abuse um
1:19:42
and she didn’t know how to get i mean like there are just so many situations and thinking that people just get abortions
1:19:48
because they want to kill babies it’s absurd and i’m not justifying it again
1:19:54
pro-life yeah but i also understand that there are experiences that i haven’t had
1:20:00
that i will never have that should never allow me to to have a say
1:20:07
in what somebody else does it should never allow the government to be able to dictate a decision that somebody else
1:20:12
makes absolutely agree i buy that wholesale yes i am i’m 100 on
1:20:20
board with you right the pro-life side of things but the anti-government getting the hell involved with it this
1:20:25
is this is we have to be involved and and so i know that you
1:20:30
you’ve referenced some of the things there of what can we do whether it’s a crisis center whether that’s looking at
1:20:38
the adoption care the foster care system how can we help facilitate those lives and make the the children that were born
1:20:46
make their lives better what can we do when it comes to contraceptives and making those over-the-counter oh my gosh
1:20:54
so much stuff i mean there’s so much there’s so much that we as communities could do i mean yeah making contraceptives available over the
1:21:00
counter or at least where you can go to a pharmacy and say this is what i would
1:21:06
like to do and i understand that there are specific reasons why historically that hasn’t been possible because there
1:21:12
are health risks associated with using contraceptives with using birth control for women
1:21:18
higher risk of stroke higher risk of heart attack especially if you smoke or drink um it can you know it can create other
1:21:26
issues so i think that’s why it’s a prescription drug or has always been for the most
1:21:33
part a prescription drug because they want to make sure that you’re receiving the medical care needed to make sure
1:21:38
that it’s not harming you right so i i understand that i do um but yeah making those things more
1:21:45
easily accessible is a huge thing but i think also
1:21:50
educating our kids about it um i think that allowing for because we
1:21:57
have sex education in schools right and it is a very basic overview of
1:22:03
reproductive all the reproductive things um
1:22:08
i don’t know what other schools do i know what my kids schools do because i’ve reviewed the materials i reviewed the materials before i allowed allow my
1:22:15
children to participate in the class because i want to make sure that what they’re being
1:22:20
told is what i think is age-appropriate and accurate
1:22:25
um but i think you know we can work with these community
1:22:31
groups with doctors to create these educational programs for kids that are
1:22:37
offered at community centers that can be offered through you know
1:22:43
other outlets i mean some churches may want to offer it to in in their community um
1:22:49
schools may want to offer it as an elective class right um but but teaching to teach kids about
1:22:57
about these things because they don’t always i think get that full picture from those base level sex
1:23:03
education programs that they have in schools now so i think that education piece for our
1:23:09
youth is very important and making that voluntarily provided and voluntarily
1:23:14
participated in but encouraging that participation to hopefully kind of curb
1:23:20
um you know those youth pregnancies and teen pregnancies yeah i think also as
1:23:26
part of that you know when we talk about these programs being offered by community groups i mean you know we used
1:23:34
to have home economics in school and i know in home economics we would talk about i mean we would learn to you
1:23:40
know we learned how to cook we learned how to sew a button yeah um but we also talked about balancing books and things
1:23:46
like that i mean and i think those are things that parents should be teaching their kids but let’s be realistic not
1:23:52
all parents know how to do that you know not all not all parents are equipped
1:23:58
with that knowledge and ability so maybe have that is something that’s offered to help kids
1:24:04
you know understand what goes into
1:24:09
a home life um which opens up the door for other conversations but yeah i
1:24:15
i don’t mean to plug this because i know you guys are on hiatus but maybe that’s something that
1:24:22
parenting porcupine should do an episode on if you guys haven’t already is like because right now right when it comes to
1:24:28
the sex education thing right a lot of us parents kind of just know that they’re going to get that through the school system and it’s a it’s an
1:24:34
incredibly like awkward conversation just thinking about in your head to talk to your kids about
1:24:40
it and be like hey here’s what sex is here’s like how you were created now the kids like thinking about you and it’s just like i don’t have uh just go talk
1:24:47
to your teacher well we talked to we talked to sorry just a quick funny story we talked to my younger son about it
1:24:53
because he got very curious and he saw some things online so we had to have the conversation with him about it and um he
1:24:59
was very uncomfortable with me so i michael had the conversation with him
1:25:04
um and he said that you could see it click like when he realized oh gosh that’s how i was made you know but it was funny
1:25:12
because then a few weeks later we were dying easter eggs and you could tell he was really thinking
1:25:18
about something and i was like are you okay and he said you know what mommy
1:25:24
these eggs are a chicken’s period i was like
1:25:30
you know you’re kind of right kids like yup that’s just the fact that he was like putting those pieces together and
1:25:36
said sorry i interrupted you you’re good michael did a fantastic job but that’s one of the things it’s like
1:25:42
it’s incredibly difficult and of course like little boys are gonna be more comfortable with their dads and typically girls are gonna be more
1:25:48
comfortable with with their moms um but that’s stuff that you know people have
1:25:53
got to navigate and and certainly one of the things that that comes through is that there are kids that you know
1:25:59
little boys that don’t have fathers in their homes or little girls that don’t have mothers in their homes and so having that cross-reference even as well
1:26:06
of like parents got to have that responsibility that ownership again we can’t just be
1:26:12
dependent on on the system to provide us this but when we talk about providing these types
1:26:17
of opportunities to educate the kids we can also provide those for
1:26:23
the parents as well like allow them to participate in a in a program that teaches them as well because maybe they
1:26:29
don’t know maybe it’s a how to talk to your kids about sex i mean you know and
1:26:34
i don’t know that there would be a demand for it but there may be you never know if you don’t try but these are the types of things that that we would like
1:26:41
to help facilitate you know working with advocacy groups and activists and then um things like yes making it easier to
1:26:48
foster children making it easier to get the approval to do that you know and i
1:26:54
understand why they have some of the things in place that they have because they want to make sure that when they’re placing
1:27:00
children in the care of other people that they are you know going to be taken care of
1:27:06
yeah people yeah um and that they’re going to a safe a safe environment um
1:27:13
but yeah making adoption more affordable it should never ever ever cost
1:27:19
more money to adopt a baby than it costs to abort one i think it’s absurd that it costs more
1:27:26
money to adopt a baby than it costs to abort one
1:27:31
and i think that if adoption were a more affordable option i think that it would allow
1:27:38
more people to utilize that that opportunity and um
1:27:48
you know i think also providing support and counseling to families in
1:27:54
crisis because maybe there is somebody a woman let’s say a woman who gets pregnant by rape and she’s not sure
1:28:02
um what she wants to do and she needs counseling she needs to talk to somebody
1:28:07
like let’s make that counseling available within our communities let’s work together to provide that support to
1:28:14
this to these women to these families um so that they are equipped to make
1:28:19
the decision because they may not that abortion may not be their first choice if they know
1:28:24
all their options if they know what what support they have um through other avenues
1:28:31
um you know i think i just there are so many things that we can do
1:28:36
as communities and i’m just gonna say for those of you who do this standing
1:28:42
outside of these clinics and these
1:28:48
supportive service provider facilities
1:28:54
with signs that people are going to hell with pictures of
1:29:00
babies in you know the the pans after they’ve come out like
1:29:07
that doesn’t help i’m just telling you that does not help anybody so stop it like if you want to help
1:29:15
volunteer go go help counsel women in crisis go be a part of the solution stop
1:29:20
standing out there with your stupid signs that makes me so angry makes me so angry
1:29:26
i have a question from the audience on this one should taxpayers fund abortions
1:29:32
absolutely not absolutely not quick and simple here we go perfect i wanna i wanna um is there
1:29:40
any topics that you felt that we should have covered that we didn’t cover um
1:29:46
yes jess yes which one events volunteers i was going
1:29:53
to wrap up with that for the entertainment of course of course i was i was going to save that for last of
1:29:59
course uh as you continue to roll more and more people into being loving and enduring what you’re saying
1:30:04
so you guys are clearly on the campaign trail november 8th is the big party
1:30:09
that’s the big day this is not a jessica does this all kind
1:30:14
of thing this is not your gubernatorial candidate bruce reeves
1:30:19
this is not him doing everything this is an all hands event so what is it that you know the the great
1:30:26
people tuning into this mighty waters media episode what is it that they can be
1:30:31
doing to help engage with you to learn from you to follow what you’re doing socials
1:30:38
anything and everything how do they get involved well first of all we are going to be
1:30:45
ramping up our appearances at local events we’re going to be a lot of festivals and fairs
1:30:51
in your communities in south carolina if you live in south carolina we need help we need people to come out
1:30:58
and help us hand out materials we need people to come and talk to
1:31:04
our people in our communities and help us spread the word so if you would like to
1:31:10
volunteer with us we have lots of opportunities you can email us at inf i think info
1:31:15
reeves for the number four sc.com and we can put you in touch with our
1:31:21
events coordinator and our volunteer coordinator who can get you plugged in we also always have needs for
1:31:29
hands behind the scenes whether it’s helping our amazing communications
1:31:34
director kelsey lyon with graphics and other promotional materials
1:31:40
or helping coordinate events we always need help so email us at that
1:31:46
info email address you can also follow me on facebook
1:31:51
instagram and twitter you can dm me there if you have questions
1:31:57
or if you’re in the upstate area and want to meet i’m happy to sit down and have conversations with
1:32:04
anybody who would give me the time um
1:32:09
i think that was it so you guys heard it here first go to
1:32:16
reeves4se.com that’s r-e-e-v-e-s or the number four sc.com you guys can
1:32:23
go there click the volunteer on that website you guys can sign up and join in
1:32:28
help make help start the conversation right we we spoke about a lot of the
1:32:34
issues here today and jessica here being able to facilitate and start these conversations conversations that people
1:32:41
aren’t having with hey teachers what do you need in order to to be equipped to help teach our next
1:32:47
generation conversations like that to bring those to the forefront head on over to reeves4se.com
1:32:53
follow her everywhere and anywhere that you’re on social media um i will make sure to get all of those links all of
1:33:00
the sites where you can email her etc uh in the show notes for you guys
1:33:08
jessica it was a hell of a of a good time i’m so thankful that you thank you for having
1:33:13
me yeah this was great i always enjoy chatting with you so thank you for
1:33:18
having me always always you’re always more than welcome and we will have to get you back on so i can have
1:33:25
the i missed this so i i couldn’t i couldn’t frame it properly but you’re not even
1:33:31
going to be the first lieutenant governor a female lieutenant governor from greenville because the current one is from greenville your other your
1:33:37
democratic candidate on the other side she is also from greenville so all three of you guys come from the same neck of
1:33:43
the woods so it’s gonna be pretty cool isn’t it lawn sign central up here hey there’s something there’s something
1:33:49
special in the water up here y’all better watch out it’s it’s gonna be good but uh jessica thank you so much for for
1:33:56
coming on i i appreciate this immensely and uh i i look forward to seeing you be successful as you’ve
1:34:02
always been and i will talk to you here in a little bit thanks jason thank you
1:34:08
guys jessica what one hell of a woman i mean she gets the
1:34:14
the hearts and minds of libertarians across the state and now she’s going to be running to be the next lieutenant
1:34:20
governor here in south carolina i am so incredibly excited for her for her and her successes her continued successes um
1:34:26
as she continues to bring about liberty for not just one but for all uh so thank
1:34:32
you jess for for taking that time to join in with us tonight uh if you guys are looking to find out when the next
1:34:37
live stream of muddy uh murica is coming i’m gonna talk to matt we’re gonna get something concocted here in the next
1:34:43
couple weeks or so if you guys ever have any topics you guys want to see go ahead and uh send us a message you can tag us
1:34:50
you can tag muddy waters media you can tag myself.jsonline you can tag matt wright find us tag us on the topic
1:34:58
say i want to see you guys do a deep dive on this money murica always standing by to help give you guys as
1:35:03
much information as possible um whenever however uh joe hanouch please
1:35:09
do continue to grow out that beard you’re half the man you were from before you trimmed it because you just shave off half um but with that guys i want to
1:35:16
say thank you guys so much for being here uh for joining in tonight for all the questions you guys were all incredible
1:35:22
thank you guys so much for really making this chat go crazy um jessica’s one hell of a lady i’m excited for her success so
1:35:28
make sure you guys are heading over to reeves4se.com sign up and help support it if you guys have
1:35:35
friends family in south carolina because you’re from out of the region make sure you guys are sharing her out to them
1:35:41
spread the message spread the liberty spread the love it’s all about the community here but with that guys i hope
1:35:47
you guys all have a great weekend it’s the labor day weekend so hopefully you guys got a three or four day weekend out
1:35:52
of this enjoy your time off we’ll see you guys next week back here friday night 8pm eastern stay good stay well
1:35:59
keep fighting the good fight