Investigate Earth Conspiracy Podcast - Bail Reform Failure Conspiracy Podcast | with Attorney Ken Good

Episode Date: December 8, 2021

What happened with our justice system in 2021? We are releasing violent criminals back on the streets with low bail being set every day. Even in the event the bail is high, many charitable bail funds will still bail these people out. Tonight we talk with a bail reform expert, texas attorney Ken Good. All of that and more on Bail Reform Failure Conspiracy Podcasts

Welcome to Investigate Earth Podcast. I am your host, Chad, alongside my beautiful wife, Sherry. Say hello, Sherry. Hello. Hope everybody is having an amazing, amazing evening. It is December the 7th, 2021. It is a Tuesday. And it's getting cold, as is supposed to, I guess, in December.

But, man, we've had a good warm winter. Oh, yeah. It's not been winter. Yeah, it's not even winter yet. Yeah. But this is the first day. It was kind of chilly. and it was kind of weird.

Yeah, it was. It got cold like overnight, and it's just like, man, it reminds me of how much I do not like the cold. But guys, welcome, get comfortable. We have a great, great episode for you guys this evening. This kind of definitely relates to previous podcast episodes we've done.

We're going to kind of connect a lot of different things than this with everything from the Waukesha, Illinois, or not Illinois, Wisconsin Parade Massacre. We're going to talk about what's going on across the country in many major cities where they are literally just overrun with crime right now. And could it be because of bail reform? Could it be of this new agenda to essentially just release anyone and everyone back on the streets? And that's what we're going to talk about this evening.

We have attorney Ken Good. He is a Bell Reform expert, and he is out of Texas. And so we're going to have him on. We're going to discuss everything about Bell Reform, what he deals with, what he sees. What are the reasons behind this? Is there a motive? Is there a conspiracy behind this? And I believe there is.

And we're going to get Ken, Ken's opinion on this and see what he thinks. But just a little about Ken. Ken has over 25 years experience handling and assisting A. in multi-million-dollar cases that cover a wide spectrum of areas including business and medical liability claims, products liability, patent cases, toxic tort, and surety and fidelity bonds. Ken's also argued important cases before the Supreme Court of Texas and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Ken has a distinction of when in his first case in both the Supreme Court of Texas and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals 9 to 0, which means that all the judges agreed with Ken's arguments.

Ken also has many years of experience draft and proposed changes or charges, sorry, arguing the charging, conference, and handling any subsequent appeal. Ken has been the go-to guy for the numerous attorneys as a problem solver for big problems. So Ken also has extensive experience being the first chair at trial and in giving legal backup to others. Approximately 15 years ago, Ken was hired by a bondsman to assist in setting aside 45 default judgments, And when this was completed, word of mouth spread, that this area has grown into a statewide practice representing insurance companies to underwrite bell bonds. So since then, Ken has been heavily involved in bail reform, but he's also on the board, right, Sherry? Right. He's on the board of bell reform. Yeah, so he is on the boards.

He deals with this every single day and it's something that he's passionate about. And it's something that when we actually first was contacted by his PR firm, what I did want to know was like, what side of this was he on? Right. Because I was like, well, I don't want it to be a debate, you know, especially, I mean, it can be. I just want him to know about it if it's going to be. But I think, I think, and we're going to let Ken tell you more about kind of his stance on it. But I think Ken's stance on it is the fact that it's really being abused, I believe, and just even these charitable bail funds and the, you know, these lump sums of money that are being put in place by whoever,

that's what we're going to ask, that are just indiscriminately letting people go, including violent criminals, including things like Daryl Brooks. Now, I don't think Daryl Brooks, I don't think his case had anything to do with charitable bail funds. His case was just simple. It was 16 days before the Waukesha Christmas parade. He was in court in Milwaukee County accused running over the mother of his child

in his ford escape, the same fordic scape that he ran over and killed six people. And the Christmas spread. And so there was a pretrial risk assessment that said he was very, very high risk for committing a new crime. And so the prosecutor there set his bell for $1,000. Why, we may never know. But hopefully on tonight's podcast, we can kind of dive a little deeper into not just the charitable bell funds and where this money's coming from and why they would be doing this. but also, you know, I want to get this attorney's opinion and viewpoint on prosecuting

and what the prosecutors are thinking and what is in it for them and, you know, have a lot of questions for Ken. A ton of questions. Because there's articles everywhere. And, you know, if you go online and you look up Bell reform and you look up all these things, you know, it's essentially, I will say, the woke perspective of Bell. It is the perspective of if you look up anything about bail reform, you don't see too much about resistance or people that are fighting bell reform. And the reason why people would be fighting bell reform are for the victims.

It's for the people that are the actual victims of crimes committed by whoever is needing the bail. Exactly. It essentially, what it sounds like or what it looks like, it kind of turns, you know, the, victim, not the victim, but it kind of... The criminal into the victim. Yeah, is what it kind of does, because here they are saying, you know, I want Ken,

I want it to get it from Ken, but these criminals are basically getting free funds. It's like almost a free card to, you know, free card to get out of jail because of certain statuses that they represent. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. And so we're going to talk about all that. is set to come on in about seven minutes.

But guys, I want to thank you again for all of your support. We really, really, really appreciate everybody's support. We had a podcast last night discussing COVID and, you know, vaccinations and everything else. And that is, we've got a ton of messages from you guys reaching out, just telling us how great of a job we did and that you appreciate us. And we appreciate you guys. We do. And we're doing podcasts. Like every podcast we do, especially when it comes to COVID or when it comes to this bell reform stuff or when it comes to the politics or when it comes to anything that's really going on right now is for you guys.

You know, we want to use our voice to hopefully be able to help and change things. And, you know, it goes back to the bell reform thing. People are supposedly wanting change for bell reform and they want to pretend like it seems like that they are wanting change for the good. I think it's doing the opposite of that, you know, and there's just a lot of craziness going on. Tons of craziness going on right now. Right. But I don't, what is your thoughts, Sherry, on, we obviously, we've heard about bail reform. We've heard this, you know, this striking, not striking thing, but something that just is sweeping.

Right. This sweeping agenda that's going on in the United States right now. Now, we've heard about criminal justice reform. You know, it was something that, you know, the Kardashian, whichever one of, Kim Kardashian, I believe. With Rodney, I think. It started with him. The guy that was on death row and she was trying to get him free because, and I researched that whole case. And it was pretty relevant that he could be innocent and he had been convicted to murdering a young woman and was on death row for years and years.

And she and Dr. Phil kind of went. And Trump. I mean, not necessarily with that case, but she worked with Trump very heavily. Right. And just kind of presenting like reform of people that are convicted that are really innocent. So she really went after that side. And actually, I think Kim is in law school right now. Because, you know, she feels so like inspired to help people that are actually innocent and have been convicted wrongfully.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and so that's the thing. Criminal justice reform and bell reform are two different things. You know, I know Kim worked with Kanye West, I believe, and some others, Black Pastors unions and all this with Trump. During his administration, he actually got a lot done for criminal justice reform and incarceration. You know, there is an issue in the justice system. There's no question about that there is an issue in the justice system. You know, how we go about fixing things is one thing. And it's, you know, it's, you know, it's, It's very, to me, this whole thing kind of reminds me of politics in a lot of ways. And it kind of, the way they react to things and the way they do things, just like the bell reform. Radical changes. And radical changes, you go from far, you know, one extreme to the next. And unfortunately, the other extreme can get a lot of people killed. And, you know, it's like, have you saw all this rising crime in all the big cities? I mean, you know, you've got.

You've got Chicago, you've got New York. I know New York was a big city that, you know, was heavy on bell reform. There was a big outcry by the public once, you know, New York started this bell reform policy or mandate, or not mandate, but law or whatever it was. And, you know, then you had a big outcry from the public. I think they canceled or at least, you know, slowed some of that down in New York. I don't know to what extent, but I'll see if Ken knows about that. But, you know, you have shoplifters, people that are literally breaking in and stealing things from all these big stores in San Francisco, Los Angeles. I mean, for example, look at Chicago.

You know, Chicago, from what I understand, it's just like not only are they letting violent criminals out, whether it be from charitable bell funds or low bell. In a lot of cases, prosecutors are not even prosecuting people that, literally killed someone, just like the case in Chicago, where there were 70 shots fired, one person dead, and the prosecutor said it was mutual combat. So they just didn't prosecute at all. Yeah. And they was like, well, it's mutual combat, so you're good to go. Yeah, so we're on one stance.

You have not only the bell reform issue, but you have a prosecutor, I can't even say that word, prosecutorial issue to where everything is so political now. We saw it in the Kyle Rittinghouse case. We see it in any case this televised or anything the media gets a hold of, things are so politicized. They are politicized based on whether a prosecutor is a Democrat or Republican, whether the judge is Democrat or Republican. Thankfully, for the vaccine mandate and things that, you know, are forcing people. Just today, a federal judge out of Georgia struck down the federal workers mandate. So they are no longer mandated at all.

any of the contracted federal workers. They are no longer mandated. I mean, military, that was already done. So they don't have any mandates. But it all has to do with essentially, whether you're Republican or a Democrat. And the agendas that they have. It's highly likely that the judge in Georgia

that struck down a mandate for federal workers was a Democrat. Yeah. Highly unlikely. You know. Because it's just so funny that even there was a case in South Carolina, it was a Savannah nuclear plant something or other where they were mandating all their workers to have the vaccination and they took it to court and the judge was, you know, a Democratic judge.

Because they were appointed by Obama. Yeah, that's how I found out because I went and looked her up and she was appointed by Obama. And guess what? She did not. I think she's the only judge that didn't reverse it that I know of so far. and she was in South Carolina. Well, I'm sure, yeah. I mean, and that's the thing.

It's because I think workers there took it to the federal level. She struck it down, said, nope, sorry. They're allowed to do it. And it all goes back to what your political leaning is. What your political views are. And that determines people's lives. And it is in bell reform, I think. I think it is in the prosecution side of things.

And it's just like the media would make you believe that no one has any idea why someone would be, you know, robbing stores every single day or we have an insane increase in crime across all the major cities. It just doesn't make much sense. It doesn't. And, you know, to me, when I first started learning about bail reform or, you know, what was going on, I didn't really hear much about it. But, you know, I am, you know, I do watch the news and I do watch a lot of political things.

but to me where I really saw it influencing the world, America, is during the George Floyd stuff. You know, when they were doing all the looting and the rioting, and right after George Floyd was murdered by Chauvin or whatever, I noticed then when all the looting was going on, there were tons of people getting arrested, but they were out within like two hours. And normally they would have been arrested and, you know, went through all. all this stuff and they weren't you know and i think that's when i first started realizing something was going on with the bail that they're just letting people out um for any kind of crime no matter what it was yeah it's it's gotten crazy in this country and and it's not i mean everything from it just makes

them think oh well you know i'm going to be let out i'm going to go do it again right now i'm going to go get another you know three thousand dollars worth of you know nikes or whatever you know yeah it's an incentive based thing it seems like you know if you get out of jail pretty easily you know then you know this, you know, you can do whatever, and you'll get out of jail again and again again. But anyways, guys, now is the time we're going to bring attorney Ken good on. We're going to talk with Ken, and we're going to ask him his thoughts on everything. Ken, how are you doing? Can you hear us? I can. Thank you very much for having me.

Yeah, not a problem. So, Ken, we did, we said a little bit about your background and kind of what you do, but if you want to just briefly go over what, you know, number one, you're an attorney. You're out of Texas, but give us a little history of just your life as an attorney and kind of what got you into the whole Bell reform situation? Well, I've been an attorney for over 30 years. I started out representing doctors in hospitals when they got sued, and I was interested in doing appellate law.

So early in my career, I argued a case at the Supreme Court of Texas, and I was on a trial team for medical malpractice cases, and we went to a seminar and had a section on new and important cases from the courts of appeals. three of the five cases were ours. And then, you know, I got a bondsman had a bunch of default judgments. And so he asked somebody, who do you hire to fix this problem? And someone said, well, you need an appellate attorney.

And someone referred him to me. And we set aside those judgments for him. And then word of mouth spread. And I started representing bondsmen. I continued my interest in appellate law. I've argued the two most important cases in the last decade regarding appellate law at the Court of Criminal Appeals, which is the highest court in Texas for criminal matters. And we won both of those. I'm now on the Board of Director of the State Association for Bondsman.

On their legislative team, I draft proposed bills for the legislature to consider. I testify on matters before the legislature related to bail. and just I specialize in bail issues now and travel the state representing bondsmen and their and different bail bond company as issues arise. So you're not a bondsman yourself, so you essentially represent bondsmen. Do you represent them when they're trying to get money back or how's that, how's that work? Well, Texas has two different systems for regulating bail depending on the size of the county. So in the bail bond board counties, which is the larger counties, I represent bondsmen getting them licensed. I also represent them on bond forfeiture cases.

And then, you know, sometimes they have disputes and either it's a question that has arisen from the county or a question from a client. And I step in and hope to help to get those resolved. Okay. So let me ask you what, so what is your big thing as far as what has happened? with Bell today. I mean, we talked about in the first 15 minutes of this show,

you know, what we're seeing, and we don't know if all of this is tied to Bell reform, quote, unquote, or whatever the case may be.

Or even like the Bell project or, like, really, how does the Bell project work? Well, I mean, the Bell project and other Bell funds or charitable Bell funds,

you know, I refer to them as a solution looking for a problem because they were created or they grew and got such large sums of money overnight based on a false allegation

that we were having this process large numbers of Americans and citizens were going to be arrested and that people needed to contribute money so that they could get bailed out and probably 99% of those cases criminal charges were never filed and people were released without bail

and so now we have these groups that have large sums of money looking for an issue. And so they've decided, well, we'll just start bonding people out. And they're finding like the rest of the bonding industry. First time offenders aren't being put in jail. So now they're getting into the middle of it because they're bonding out dangerous people who are going out and creating other crimes. And so you're seeing stories where people who are out on a bond posted by the Bell project

either commits another crime or even worse kill somebody and so they're not equipped for any of that and they're just you know i mean like i say they're a solution looking for a problem so let me ask you uh i i know that i don't know how common this is but typically if you commit a misdemeanor crime for example and you've never been in trouble before uh i've heard like a lot of people get to sign out on their own recognizance right is that an often is that often used in court still uh is I think it depends on the state, and I think it depends. In Texas, it depends on the county. But yes, I would say in our urban areas, there is no one that is a first-time offender or a misdemeanor that is not going to be released.

I mean, in Texas, we would call it a PR bond, a personal recogist bond, which is a free bond. It may have an amount tied to it, but you're promising, it's just a promise. You're signing a piece of paper saying you'll show up, and no matter what about it says, you're just a promise. just a paper problem. It's a pinky square. But I think you're one of the questions, what you were asking, though, is, you know, whether Bell reform is causing, you know, this increase in crime. And I do think it may not be the only cause, but it is a large contributing factor, especially, you know, like you can see it everywhere, but when you go to California and they downgrade certain crimes

from felonies to misdemeanors, and then in the big urban areas, they decide, well, we're not going prosecute those anymore. It's not really that, I mean, it's kind of common sense to say career criminals are going to conclude that that's a green light to commit more crime. Gray, hey, if we go steal this and we get charged with this crime, they're not going to prosecute us. They won't even arrest us or we'll get released before they can even complete the paperwork and our case will be dismissed. Same thing in New York. New York, they went through a period and there still have some of it left where they were, if you got arrested for certain crimes, you were just simply released.

No bond. And of course, criminals see that as a green light to go commit more crimes. You got one guy bragging on the steps to the courthouse. He's been arrested 85 times. He's like, hey, bail reform is great. Yeah, because what our good friends don't realize is when you set up these utopian rules that tie the hand of the judges because you've got this idea that they're taking advantage of first-time offenders, poor people, the people that are going to take advantage of the system that you just set up is career criminals, organized crime, and now you've tied the judges so they can't do

anything against them. And that's what we're seeing as a result of bail reform. Yeah, and one of the things I find this very interesting, and I think, you know, regardless of politics, regardless of any of that, many of people have a distrust in media today than ever before. And the reason I say this is because upon doing research of this, and obviously we've touched on bell reform issues or just, you know, prosecutors that went out and, you know, for example, the Waukesha Parade incident where Daryl Brooks was let out, you know, six weeks before, after he ran over his girlfriend or the mother of his child on a $1,000 bell.

But if you look up media-wise, you know, bail reform, you just, you look this stuff up. You know, it's hard to find things that are against Bell Reform, or at least that call out Bell Reform in the terms of letting violent criminals back on the streets. For example, there's an article in Vox. The article reads, Bell Reform, which could save millions of unconvicted people from jail, explained. And it goes on to say hundreds of thousands of legally innocent people languish in jails on any given day simply because they can't afford Bell. And the thing is, it's like the media obviously also has a narrative to the Bell Reformation. reform issue that, you know, for example, we run into this many times, but if you ask Sherry's mother, which is 87 years older, you ask my mom, which is 73. They typically read a lot of the

mainstream media. They read the headlines. They sometimes, you know, watch the nightly news. But the nightly news typically talks about things like this, bail reform, which could save millions of unconvicted, innocent people from jail. And this is the narrative that the media has kind of put on this Bell reform issue rather than calling out any problems that this may exist. And it's one of the things I said. Obviously, there probably is issues with Bell, but you can't really go from one extreme to the other. I mean, do you think the media is playing a big part and, you know, kind of rolling this

firestorm on down the road? Absolutely. Absolutely. Because, you know, when you say, hey, maybe there's, maybe there are some issues with Bell, I don't know if I agree with that. I mean, you know, the first argument we heard probably four or five years ago was, well, we've got to change bail because bail's unconstitutional. Well, now we've had two different circuit courts hold that bail is constitutional. So now we're hearing arguments, well, we need to change it anyway because, you know, it's not fair.

And that's where I kind of get kind of a little upset because I'm like, well, we have the most fair criminal justice system in the world. You may think it could be more fair. but we're really talking about tying the hands of judges and preventing them from being able to use their discretion so that career criminals and organized crime could take advantage of them and we're doing it all from the standpoint of, well, you know, it's just not fair.

You know, it's just we don't want we want some kind of utopia and we don't have anything to replace it with. We don't have anything that does it better. I mean, there was a district attorney and I can't remember where it was, but it came out today saying he was in favor, of a lot of the police reforms, but he could not agree to bail reform at this time until there

was something that did as good a job as the private industry bail system to take its place. Because everywhere you're looking across the United States, they're replacing their private shirdy bell or they're backing away from it and trying to replace it with stuff, and crime is increasing. It's because there is nothing that exists today that does, good a job as the as the current system that's been in effect for 200 years. And that's what I was going to ask you is, you know, when

this Bell project fund comes into play, I guess it doesn't go through the Bells bondsmen. And when they do use these project funds, do they look at like prior criminal history or what the criminal

offense that is, you know, at hand now? Do they look at that stuff? When determining they're going to let them out or not? No, there was an interview recently with, I think the Bell Project, one of its leaders and he was saying, you know, he doesn't even look at that

stuff about what offense they're charged with until after their release. And that's when he says, that was a quote from the interim executive director, Greg Lewin, L-E-W-I-N. He says, you know, I look at that once they're out. You know, I mean, that's kind of the problem.

One of the problems I have with these charitable bail funds is they don't have any, they're not regulated, they don't have any special training. I mean, they just have a whole bunch of cash. I mean, New York heavily regulates their bell funds because those predate the protests from last summer. They've been around for a while. Texas just enacted some, you know, reporting requirements, and people have come unglued. And they're like, well, we're not being treated like bondsmen. I'm like, yeah, let's treat you like bondsmen. I know I think Pennsylvania is looking like, looking to just require them to be licensed like a bondsman.

But the reality is if they were, if they were licensed like bondsmen, they'd all have to go out of business. Because bondsmen normally cannot solicit people at the jail to post their bond. And that's what bail funds do. Oh, nobody else can get you out. We'll come bond you out. Well, that would be a violation of the law in Texas if they were a bonding company. So where are these funds actually coming from? I mean, who funds these organizations?

Who's in charge of them? Yeah. Well, I think, you know, they're not-for-profit companies, so they're autonomous. They, I don't think they have to disclose who contributes money to them. You know, Camilla Harris, you know, during the protest last summer, sent out a tweet, and that's where one of the funds, you know, got $20 million is people contributing to it because her tweet was saying go to contribute to them. And so now they have a whole bunch of money.

And then, you know, like the Bell Project, you know, you've mentioned the guy from the parade the Bell Project tried to raise money from GoFundMe to post a $6 million bond for him until GoFund me shut it down. So they were on their way to trying to raise $6 million to get him out of jail. I mean, that's ridiculous. Yeah, I'm sure they'll find a way if I had to guess. It's, I mean, and the thing is, you know, it seems like when COVID came around the pandemic and all this stuff. I mean, it almost started to be like an excuse to be. you know, to start letting people out.

And I know that doesn't specifically have anything to do with the bail funds, I don't guess. But, you know, but at the same time, it kind of changed the narrative. It seemed like that was when prosecutors started, you know, either not prosecuting based on certain things. I don't know if you probably didn't hear the first 15 minutes of the podcast. But like, for example, the Chicago, there was a Chicago shooting a month ago that, you know, 70 shell cases were fired. There was one person dead in the street. And yet the prosecutor decided. not to charge based on mutual combat, which is supposed to be only a rule in fighting.

And it's really an old law. But, you know, is what I did want to ask is how much does the prosecutor, obviously, you know, a prosecutor can choose not to charge someone or to charge someone, but how much does the prosecutor have to do with how much the bell is? Because I thought the judge did that, but does the prosecutor have anything to do with that? Well, I think in most places the prosecutor makes a recommendation of what the bond is. Like in Texas right now, the standard is when a bond is said, you know, if the defendant wants to allege it was too high, you know, the court of appeals will review that on abuse of discretion standard. So I think that bail is set with the recommend, you know, they go to court, the judge looks to the state to make a recommendation on bail, and then the defense will respond, and then the judge will decide ultimately what he's going to require the bond to be.

So I think that's, you know, one of the things, but I think the pandemic does have some effect or some contributing cause of increasing crime because I like to say the pandemic has given us a preview on steroids of what these proposed bowel forms that we've been talking about for years would look like if they all just passed suddenly. Yeah. We had temporary measures and we see. But I think the other thing that contributed is we stopped trying criminal cases. And so you've got criminals that are being arrested, let go, arrested, let go, arrested, let go. And they're just seeing that as, well, I'm ultimately going to go to jail, so let's have fun now. Or they even worse, we're creating a situation where we're making it worse for criminals because they think that there's no consequences. They get arrested, the release, they do something else, they get arrested, they get released.

so they think that they're not going to be held accountable. And in those situations, the poor guys, when they ultimately are held accountable, they're going to end up probably serving a lot more time than if we had just charged them, tried their case, got the resolution, got the victim to have finality. But we've gone a year without trying cases. And so now we have a huge backlog. and I think that's causing problems because you've got judges

trying to help counties because the county jails are still full. That's kind of the lesson that no one wants to talk about is the jails are still full, but they're full of really, really dangerous people and if we start putting all these people who are missing

courting jail, then that's going to make them have to start shipping people to other jails and it's going to cost the county a bunch of money. And so they're trying to help the county. but we've got a powder tag that's just starting to erupt all over the country. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it seems like to me, you know, and it's one of those things.

Obviously, on this podcast, we do talk about politics. And one of the things, you know, we talk about is just the state of politics and how it is affecting everything that we're seeing. And this includes bell reform. And this includes all of that. But I did have a question. And I think this is an important question. And, you know, I've actually. listen to a couple of your other interviews before you came on because I wanted to

kind of see what people either haven't asked or whatever the case is but every time I go on a I guess like a bell reform website or say a bell reform article CNN or whoever it may be you know one of the things I constantly see is how race is put into this now I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole on this. But, you know, we have, you know, listeners from us, we have supporters all around the world, and we have many black supporters. We have many black supporters that reach out to us, even on the Waukesha incident, or just certain things like that, that, you know, agree with kind of our stance on, like, you know,

and I think they would do the same with this. It seems like a lot of the articles, when it comes to Bell Reform, if I was a poor white guy, I guess you can say. Would the bell reform groups or organizations come to my aid as a poor white guy? Or is this predominantly geared towards, I mean, everything I've read, a lot of articles I read, this is saying, you know, it's unfair to black people or it's unfair to this, whatever. And I know that's probably a big political question. And there's probably a, you know, I don't know how they would even got many, you know, the

bail reform money to begin with if it wasn't for politics. So I guess what you're asking is, is everyone vetted on the same information? Yeah, yeah. Is everyone vetted across the board the same way? Oh, that's a really, really good question because I think that we have, I think the answer to that is going to be different depending on your politics. Yeah. Because I think that, you know, we keep hearing this same argument that we have an over-incarceration problem of minorities and that that is, a symptom or a sign that we have a racism problem in our criminal justice system.

And I strongly disagree with that. And I disagree with it because I think the whole problem with the bail reform movement is it's not addressing the heart of the issue. The heart of the issue is how do we process large numbers of people through our urban jails quickly deficiently. And our urban jails or our urban areas are predominantly made up of one race. or a couple of minorities because everyone else that can get away from the urban areas or the inner cities have moved. And so schools have failed them, families have failed,

that drug abuse is rampant, and then we have loss of economic opportunity, which I think that the protests from the summer made that even worse because businesses that were destroyed are not coming back because they don't feel like they're going to be protected by the politicians. And I think if you overlay on top of that, I would argue that, you know, there's one political party that tries to whip up its supporters right six months before every election.

Yeah. And they've done that for many factors. And I think we are now going to see this coming election, probably the first one in probably at least five cycles, where either that did not happen or if it does, it will not. have the same effect because what we I think the bail reform reform movement is a symptom of what they've been doing is they've whipped up their supporters to make them angry to make them come out and vote in larger numbers but they do it by making empty promises and then they they get mad because they don't fulfill their promises so now they're now more recently we see the more extreme elements of the party getting elected to office because they not only make the

crazy promise they follow through and so now now you see division divisions in the national in Congress between the left and the far left. Because I would, you know, say, you know, Pelosi didn't used to be the middle or the moderate. She used to be the far left. She's not the far left anymore. She's the middle. And so you're now seeing the result of that. Once you create a mob and you start, you can't control a mob very long. And so they're losing control of the anger that they have created. And, you know, I think one of the unspoken things that we can't talk about really is how close that party is to having the civil war. Yeah. But I think that's causing a lot of the push for bail reform. And the problem we have in our urban areas is we just don't have anything to replace it with. And that's the reason why we're having chaos, because they can't afford just at the very

beginning of someone's arrest to spend all this money when they have to go through trials and all these, they have to have all those expenses. And so that's why you're seeing, they just try, well, we're just going to release people. If you're charged with this, we're just going to release you. Well, the problem is career criminals see that and go, well, shoot, if I do this 10 times, I get arrested 10 times, they still have to release me. And that's what you're seeing happen. And that's why the public is getting so upset about it, because they should.

I mean, someone should have a smash and grab. You shouldn't have, be worried that someone's going to come in, 80 people and smash and grab everything. in your store and run, and then if 14 of them gets arrested, they all get released on zero bail because of bail reform. I mean, they're not going to be tried. I mean, that's not our community. We can't have, I mean,

that's not public safety, and we can't have a country if we're going to be run by that. That really is that you get to the point where you're saying, well, who's running that town? Is it organized crime? Or is it law enforcement? And it looks like to me that, you know,

Looks like organized crime is starting to get in control of that area. Yeah, I think so many people have just lost faith in government. They've lost faith in, and, you know, and here's the reality. It's strange because, you know, it's, you know, for example, the political lines on things, whether it be Democrat or Republican, you know, Republican has always typically been pro-government, pro-law enforcement. I think many still are, but it's just kind of the way the government is working now rather than for the people, it seems like, against the people in many ways.

You know, now you have two sides that are kind of just, you know, this side is always against the government. They've always kind of, you know, been against the government or, you know, always call out government on certain things. And now you have another side that's losing all faith in government and the things that kind of entail that. But it's a scary situation. Is there anything good about the bail reform issue? I mean, is there a need for it? And is there, you know, is there a middle? ground there? Is there something that

do we even need this? Is Bell good the way it is? I think any system can always be improved and I think probably I would look to Texas just passed a major Bell reform bill in its last legislative session

and it's different than what's passed anywhere else. It's based upon accountability and it has a section of crimes that if you're a career criminal or if you're accused of certain violent crimes, you're not eligible for PR bonds. And so I think that that's a step in the right direction.

We see other things that are being pushed that I think are just crazy. I mean, risk assessments have been pushed for four or five years, and they've kind of gone full circle. They were the darling of the left. Then science came out and said they shouldn't be using them. Digital companies came out saying they shouldn't be used. And now you try, you know, the right is trying to make them the darling of the right. when they've really been rejected by everybody by now.

So I think that there are, I think the majority of the claims for Bell reform are just politics. I think that most of the places that Bell reform is not needed because they're replacing it with a system that's worse than the one that they're using and they don't even know it. And so if that is what they're proposing, then no, you don't need any changes. because anything that's going, you know, we should always say, first thing we should do is do no harm,

but if the reforms they're asking and demanding that we do is just going to make crime go up, then we don't need to be doing it. But I think, you know, there are always things that we can do. But my concern right now is we're being reactive. You know, you've got the Soros group out electing DAs that are saying we're not going to prosecute certain crimes, and that's a part of the cause of increased crime. and then you've got now he's branching out to judges to elect judges that will either give less sentences or you'll continue down that path and I think then you're in a need Bower for him because then you're going to have to cut back on the judge's discretion to be able to do some of that because right now I mean part of me wants to say hey we're just going back to the 60s we had a similar problem then where the left kind of pushed our friends on the one side started pushing these types of issues. But I think it's worse this time around. You can see it in

Houston, Texas, where they put in place some of these reforms, crimes skyrocketed. But the people who put them in place admit crimes increasing, but they won't admit what they're doing is the cause of it. And so I think we're a little bit more political, a little bit more, people are a little bit more entrenched. I like to just kind of mention that, you know, a democracy is really the result of the losing side agreeing to be governed by the winning side. And we have a problem with that right now. Both the right and the left don't agree they lost, the last two elections. Yeah.

So whichever side lost, the other side stole it. And so if the losing side won't consent to be governed by the winning side, then that's what causes a lot of problems. And you can see that with our current president trying to undo everything the last president did and the last president trying to undo everything the president before him did. And if we're going to do that, then for the next, until we get that resolved, the first year of any presidency is always going to be to undo everything the last president did. And that's not really, I mean, we've not had that before until just now.

Yeah. Yeah, it's like how do you call that democracy? Because it's almost like a dictatorship while they're in. You know what I mean? Not, but you know what I mean? It's the same authoritarian. We've got these competing executive orders where we've got presidents that said that they would never do it when they were campaigning.

You know, Obama's saying on certain executive orders, I don't have the authority to do it. But then when they get in office, they can't convince the other side to agree with them. So then they just start doing it by executive order. And I really think, you know, what happened to the time, which was not the, that long ago where we had presidents that say, hey, I couldn't convince him. I don't have the authority to do it by executive order. I think a lot of our current president's lost in the polls is because he's trying to shove things down the public's throat that he can't convince the other side to let him do by executive order. And stuff he has no authority to do,

and he doesn't even care. It looks like, because he keeps losing in the courts. Yeah. And, you know, I got to bring this up because there's a couple things. how much do you think is the bell reform thing have anything to do with Chicago like you know I mean looking at Chicago and you know

the just insane amount of shootings is that more of a prosecutorial thing or is that does bell reform also play into Chicago gang members getting out I don't believe bail reform has anything to do at Chicago because I don't think they have bail

in Chicago I think that you know when they call it Bales kind of like the Wisconsin, the parade incident. They call that bail, but they don't have private shirty bail in Wisconsin or Chicago. All they have is cash bail. So if they set a bond for $1,000, then it has to post $1,000. We don't do business there. And so I think the problem you have in Chicago, especially Chicago, is I think you just have an organized crime problem.

And you have career criminals, organized crime, gangs, running the town. I don't know how you can get a weekend where 30 people aren't shot, and people just don't come unglued. And it's just a way of life there because I think gangs run the town. Yeah, it's like a Wild West town nowadays. And you mentioned George Soros, and we've talked quite often about George Soros on this podcast. And, you know, a lot of people, it's funny because, you know, a lot of people say a year ago, If we talked about George Soros getting involved in American politics or getting involved in American justice system, whatever the case may be, you know. It's a conspiracy.

Yeah, it was absolutely a conspiracy theory. I'm not saying it isn't a conspiracy, but it was a theory, you know, a year ago, two years ago, whatever the case may be. But, you know, I know you also mentioned, you know, the fact that especially like this administration, they will play into or whatever into events. or things, you know, they'll blow up something to, whether it be to get people out to vote, whether it be to pander to a certain audience, whatever the case may be. But what do you think George Soros is doing this for as far as, you know, getting people elected in our country? And keeping in mind, if you know anything about George Soros and his involvement in other countries and overthrowing governments in other countries, his direct involvement in that over the,

the many years he's been billionaire. You know, and you'd also mention the Civil War. I mean, what is his, do you believe, purpose in that? I know it's a little not necessarily to do with Bell Reform, but what do you think his pitch on that is? What do you think his motives? Yeah. Well, you know, I do agree with you, you know, two years ago,

if you just mentioned the word George Soros outside of Republican areas, you'd be scoffed at. You're just crazy. But now you see, I mean, mainstream stories about it. it and it's and it's not it's not a conspiracy theory anymore it's it's a fact that his political funds are contributing and contributing large amounts of monies to candidates running to be district attorney i talked to one of them one time and they were like well they wanted me to sign a document saying that i would agree to do these certain things and i ultimately uh refused and then

they came back to me they wouldn't going to make me sign it and i'm sorry I think initially they were having candidates sign or trying to get the candidates to sign documents saying that they were going to adhere to certain principles, which I think would be a big problem. And I think that's the reason why we haven't heard more about that. But I think his goal, you know, there's a coalition on that side. And part of that coalition just wants to create chaos. And part of that coalition coalition are true believers. they think that, you know, poor people should not be prosecuted because they're poor. And I just disagree with that.

I mean, I think that should go to guilt, but that only should go the first time and not the fourth time, not the fifth time, not the seventh, eighth, eighth time. You know, like in Harris County where they're keeping track of 150 people who've been murdered by someone who was out on bond at the time they were murdered. and most of them out on four or five bonds, some of them out on seven or eight bonds, and some out on 10 or 12 bonds at the time they murdered them. Yeah, and I think that is a big problem. Out on capital of murder, murdering somebody else out on bond and then murder again. Yeah, I think. So where he falls, does he fall on the creating chaos end of the team, or is he a true believer?

I mean, it's just my opinion, but I believe he wants to create chaos. I completely agree with you because there are so many people that, you know, they'll have four or five really good charges on them. You know, I have a lot of friends that are a police officer, our law enforcement, and they have, you know,

really good cases, and either their charges get dismissed by another charge, or if they had charges like murder, burglary, or like anything like that, they'll get a plea bargain for the lesser charge, and it's not even on the record. And then they go,

when they go and commit another act, of crime. They don't... The most violent thing. Yeah, it's not on their record. Well, and you know, that kind of goes back to the point of, do we have an over-incarceration problem or right now do we have an under-incarceration problem? Like in California, they've been mandated.

They haven't been building jails for so long, and they're under a court order to release people. And, I mean, they're not looking for people who've been rehabilitated. They're just releasing numbers of people. And, you know, all these things contribute a little bit. So when you change the law to change certain felonies down to misdemeanors and then you say we're not going to prosecute those anymore in certain towns, that's going to increase crime. You've got just criminals being released and you've got prosecutors. You're saying, well, you know, we don't have room for them because of the pandemic.

So we've got to make special deals. We got to give them really great punishment. So we're discounting crime right now. And it just all is kind of coming to a head right now after a year. of the pandemic, and I think that it's just going to get worse before it gets better, because you're going to have to hold more people in jail, hold them accountable, and before it's going to get better. And I've told judges in my area that, you know, if you don't care whether people show up for

court, well, then you don't need us. That's what we do. The bonding community gets people to court. That's what we guarantee, and that's what we have the best appearance. rate of anything that's tried. If you want half of your people not to come, then try something else.

But if you don't really care that people come to court, then you don't need us. And if you don't need us, then you're going to get more backlogs. That means your cases aren't going to get resolved as quickly. Victims aren't going to get

resolution. And of course, you're going to have chaos. And isn't that what we're seeing in the urban areas where they've tried bail reform? You know, I hate to say it again as far as conspiracy theory goes, but you know, it's, you look back and you see, you know, the administrations or whatever using certain things for political purposes, especially near elections. But it just seems like there's been a lot of stuff that has played into exactly what is happening right now from the bail reform, from prosecutors being put in place that are not. prosecuting to judges that are dismissing things or whatever we saw that under Trump.

We see it now under Biden, especially with the mandate stuff. But more so it's been on the left side of things that have had judges or prosecutors in place to either release or rule on something that went against one other party or whatever the case may be. But we started seeing this not just with, you know, not as much under Trump or Biden, but, you know, we started seeing this in Obama's term, the first four. years. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He started putting in judges in place. He started getting, you know, he, he kind of went on a campaign more so for the judges and prosecutors and so on and so forth. And he tried to get as many of those in as he could. And, you know, looking back now, it's affected a lot of

stuff. It seems like if you had a, I don't know, let's just say, if you had a deep state or some group that had some plan about whatever they wanted to do over, say, 10-year period, Here's your 10-year goal. And we're going to start with these things. We're going to get these people elected because then eventually we're going to have this. And then we're going to bail reform. We're going to prosecutors in. They're not going to charge people.

You know, doesn't it seem like it's been kind of a longer thought-out plan more so than, you know, just the past, say, even year? No. I'm less conspiracy theorist on this issue, on the bigger issue. I go back to cycles. You know, it's all cyclical. And you have to start with, you know, it's. It's not a coalition of everybody wanting to create chaos. You've got some true believers, and you've got some people who think we can just make

the system better. So it's a coalition of different-minded groups, and I think it's a cycle. We went through a period where crime was going down. We felt really safe. New York was very successful. And then so people started saying, well, we've got too many people in jail. Okay, well, that makes sense. You know, I feel really safe.

And then we got, well, we need to have fewer people in jail. We need to get in this practice. We need to end this practice. And that'll make us better. We'll be more racially diverse. And so as things start getting chipped away about law and order, gets chipped away, gets chipped away, well, crime is slowly increasing. It's not like this is just suddenly popped up. I mean, I was listening to a police officer in California.

So the crime has been going up for the last couple of years in California as they made that change from certain felonies being changed to misdemeanors and then certain urban areas no longer prosecuted them. And so I think it's just now reached the point where it's the suburbs, as I like to call it, is recognizing it. And they're no longer willing to accept it, which is exactly what happened in the 60s as well. I think maybe there's some elements of it as we get more technologically advanced on coordination and stuff like that. That makes it seem a lot more worse. But my prayer and my hope is that this is just another cycle that's coming crashing down. You see Democrats across the United States now saying, like mayors especially, that law and order is their top issue. So they're abandoning their issue or they're trying to give window dressing.

or lip service to the law and order so that they can get reelected. It's just going to get worse for them before it gets better as well. I think law and order is going to be the top issue of this election and just like it was at the end of the last cycle in the 60s.

So I'm hopeful that this is just a normal cycle and I'm hoping that it's not anything more than that. Yeah, it's just scary. I think politics are at the root of all evil in this country, it seems.

and, you know, I just, I, with all of this, I just don't, I don't, I don't know that any of this, in regardless of politics, I don't know that any of the things that we're seeing right now would, would at all be happening if it wasn't for politics? I mean, I think, I think there's right and there's wrong, you know, and it seems like, it seems like today what used to be right is, is in the media now wrong, and vice versa, and I think that's a big issue. I think the one of the things, and I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but I think one of the things that's kind of upset me a lot in the last year is this appearance of a double standard. You see the protesters from a year ago being treated one way, and then protesters at January 6th who seem to be from a different party or supporting a different party being treated a different way. Well, you can see that same thing on a smaller scale from county to county. In Texas right now, we have certain counties that no longer will prosecute marijuana charges or unless it's over a certain size. And then the very next county still prosecutes them and still will send you to jail for them.

And so all of that undermines the public's faith in the criminal justice system. I mean, I don't know how we fix that. I mean, you've seen that now even more on the national scale. You can see the debate on the case at the U.S. Supreme Court on the issue of abortion and whether they're going to reverse reverse his way. And you can see people coming out and say, if they reverse it, it's just political. So we're in a point where if you don't agree with one side, then you're no longer a valid institution. And so that's dangerous in my book.

I mean, that's dangerous. To me, that's one of the really dangerous things that we're facing. And I think we just have to put our head down and just vote a bunch of people out of office. Yeah. Yeah, it's scary, man. You want to have faith in the country. And then you see GoFundMe's for murders that are raising millions of dollars. And I think a lot of the problem with those funds and GoFunds Me is, you know, well, I think a lot of the problem is when these people are going to jail, they're not being reformed.

Like they want to, you know, and they're not reforming anybody. Well, there's no reforming. Yeah. Like, there's no rehabilitation. There's no, I don't think. Like, they just let them out. That's the biggest, you know, that is one of my criticisms of all these, you know, changing sentencing and all that. Let's look at everybody's in jail and just release a thousand of them.

I mean, if we would, could come up with a system that we're looking for people in jail who've actually been reformed. Like, they went and got their GED or they went through some type of. training for a skill. And we could, but the problem is that goes back to the whole concept of government. Government can't do any job well. And so they sure can't go through the jail

and say, okay, you've been reformed. We think you've been reformed, so we're going to give you early release. Because if they did it, they're just going to be accused of racism. And so they just do it across the board, and that's what I think is causing some of this increase in crime. They're just releasing criminals across the board, and some of them

are just like, yay, yippee. it's a green light, we're going to the party. We're to commit more crime. So, Ken, is there a way that, I mean, what is the answer and what is the solution? And is there a way that anybody can do anything to better this? Like, I know that you're a proponent of, you know, fixing this. But what is your thoughts and plans or ideas? Or even the board.

Yeah, the board or whatever. The board of reform. Yeah, what is a... What's on the table? Yeah. What's the future? Well, I think the bill that tax is just enacted is a good roadmap. It's based on accountability.

And so I think we have to have accountability. If you don't show up for court, then there's a penalty for that. You don't get, if they forbids your bond, you don't get a new PR bond. So I think we have to, first we have to hold people accountable. And if it's just holding accountable for not showing up for court. And then I think we have to get cases resolved more quickly. I think part of the reason why that we're having people languish and going through cycles is because their cases are not being resolved in any type of method or quickly. But I think the biggest problem is our urban areas.

How do we process large numbers of people through the jail quickly and efficiently? Historically, our urban areas have used a bail schedule. They're being pressured not to use those currently because that heavily relies upon the private industry if you can afford the bail schedule. But they're replacing it with simple release, which has been catastrophic, even in New York during the middle of the pandemic. They repealed part of their reform that allowed that. There's still others, parts that need to be repealed. And so I think that we have to get rid of these bad bail reforms that made current situations worse. And I think we need to do a top-down evaluation of what constitutes certain crimes, and we can agree to get rid of certain crimes.

but this piecemeal thing where one county we prosecuted another county we don't I mean I agree with you this prosecutors having too much discretion is really killing the faith in our legal industry and and then the biggest problem is you know I'm going to be honest with you I think the biggest problem right now is we've got a runaway drug problem and we've given up on fighting drugs oh yeah initially we said oh we're not going to put them in jail and or we're going to give them drug rehab. We're not doing that. We're just saying that. It's just pure lip service. We have completely given up on the fight on drugs. And so many other crimes are a result of the drug problem we have in this country.

And until we decide what we're going to do, what do we stand for. And if the drug rehab is not working, then what are we going to do with these people? can't just let them run free. And currently, I think that's what we're doing, because we've, we've, this, this, this mindset that we've lost the war on drugs is, is kind of pretty well entrenched right now. And I think that that's a severe danger. If you give up on the drug crime, then you're giving up to chaos because that's the cause of probably 80, 90% of all of our crime in the United States, people doing other crimes to get money so that they can get drug. And we've talked about this on previous podcasts. Not that I agree or kind of agree, but a lot of what we're talking about, like, okay, so certain states have legalized marijuana.

Has that met, you know, like you're talking about county to county or the solicitors are different. Well, there's a lot of people that want to legalize drugs, period. Yeah. But what if we, to me, what if we legalized all drugs, then it's going through, you know, the legal channels or whatever. and there's not drug dealers and people stealing for this and that. Well, I think they might still be. And actually, he makes kind of a good point because there is this big talk about legalizing all drugs to stop the fentanyl crisis, right? Or the, you know, people that are dying of fentanyl.

And, you know, we've been seeing that more and more every day. And I'm sure you guys see it a lot in Texas with, you know, being close to the border. And everything else and all the fentanyl there. But, yeah, I mean, but at the same time, you kind of make a good point, too, a lot of crime is committed based on drug use. or, you know, I mean, you see this every day. I'm just wondering if we could come. Let me just carry your argument through on that one. Because doesn't that argument suffer the same problem as a lot of the other arguments that are approaches that we've tried?

Doesn't that give a free reign to organized crime? I mean, okay, we've now legalized fentanyl. I mean, I think people think, well, okay, now we're going to take that away from organized crime. I think you've given them a green light of free hand now. And yeah, you've tied the hands of law enforcement. They can't. They can't stop it because it's now legal. Wow.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's, yeah, and it's definitely, um, is, and that's the thing. But do you feel like that would be the same thing with like marijuana? Like, you know, some states, marijuana is legal. Some are not. Like, but now every state, people don't care if they smoke marijuana because it's legal in some states so they're like, why are you busting me? You know, it's illegal in this state. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, I was talking to somebody from Colorado recently and they were

saying that, you know, that's where I'm from. The effects, the effects of marijuana, making it legal in Colorado have been pretty devastating. So I think the jury is still out on that one. I think that we're going to see that, and that may go full circle. It may not. I just don't know. I just don't know. I have an opinion on that, but I really have no experience with it to really express a strong opinion. I just think that it's terrible. It's doing damage to our community by having one rule in one county, another rule in another, and even one rule in one state, another rule in another state. Yeah, everything needs to figure out what the answer to that is and do it.

It needs to be unified one way or another. Yes, ma'am. It's a scary thing that we're, I mean, it's a scary place that we're living in 2021. And I think that bell reform and this whole bell issue and not just bail, but the prosecution and people where they're in place, it is literally our future. I mean, regardless of how we look at it. Look, I think, you know, when we call it bell reform, we're the low-hanging fruit. Nobody likes bondsmen. So it makes it really easy to say, oh, we just need to reform bail reform or get rid of bondsmen.

But, you know, we're really talking about criminal justice reform. Yeah. And it's a bigger issue than just bondsmen because you've got prosecutors who are deciding whether to prosecute crimes. If you don't think someone should be prosecuted, well, then you don't care whether they show up for court because you don't think that they should be there in the first place. The bigger debate is what is a crime. And you've got prosecutors in this country right now that think misdemeanor should not, you know, are not real crimes. They should be prosecuted. And I think you're seeing evidence everywhere in the country that misdemeanors matter because people who are getting a green light on not.

prosecution are not, they're not going to have to have bail. They're seeing that as, hey, we can keep doing this. And, you know, if too many people get that green light, there's not, there's no room and we can't build enough jails to hold those people. So we better get a handle on this pretty quickly. Yeah, because, I mean, you're going to start seeing more people enter the system that wouldn't probably have normally entered it. That's right.

And Ken, do you feel like, like I was talking to a police officer today and he feels like a lot of the crime, it does come from. drug use. Like everything, you know, is a step up from drug use. Yeah.

Yes. I think everything, I mean, I think a lot of crime is from drug reuse because it's, you know, they're robbing a car

so they can get money for drugs. Or these smashing grabs, they're recruiting 80 people to go in and grab whatever they can and then they meet up and give them

$10, $20 for whatever they got. And that, you know, they're either buying alcohol or drugs with that. Yeah. Yeah. Man, there's so much, so much wrong.

But hopefully, you know, hopefully, I say hopefully, we have something that comes to ahead. And, you know, I just, there's just so much. There's literally so much at, you know, that is just complete opposites of the other that, you know, half the country thinks this and half the country thinks of this. And one side is devout on this and one side is devout on the other. And it's like, what is going to be the outcome? And, you know, what's going to be the solution? And we don't know. But I think the bail issue and the prosecution issue and the crime,

criminal justice reform issue is, I'm not saying that necessarily our justice system is perfect. And I'm sure there's ways you can fix it along with certain things in law enforcement. But, you know, what we're seeing is going to the extremes on everything. And it's scary. Well, I think we've got a lot to do. But it's bigger issues than that in our urban areas. areas where how do you fix the schools? We've been trying to fix the schools for

for 50 years. How do you fix families? How do you encourage families to stay together? How do you fix your inner city drug problems? How do you keep people in school? How do you keep people from dropping out? How do you get them a trade? How do you give them economic opportunity?

If you could if you could just fix one of those, and one of the things we hadn't even talked about is the number of mentally of people in jail who have mental health issues. In Texas, the largest mental health facilities in the state are in the county jail.

That's outrageous. It is. And if you got rid of those people or took them and put them in a mental health facility, you wouldn't have jail overcrowding in Texas. But we don't. That's where we put them. And that's part of the problem. You get them in.

You get them their drugs. They're stable. They get released. They get off their drugs. They start having problems. It's a cycle. It's just a vicious cycle. Yeah, I mean, and that's the thing.

It's like, yeah, you got to go to the real. root problems of those things, which is actually having mental health facilities. And going to the schools, the families, like you said, everything, having facilities, everything like that. Yeah, instead of taking them in jail, take them to a mental health facility or whatever the case is. But I, you know, I don't know why we don't do that. You know, just for example. But, you know, that's a simple issue too.

How do you make them go? I mean, they have to agree to go if they're not, you know, otherwise they have to go to jail to go to court so the court can order them to go. it's the same with drugs. I mean, people, oh, we just need to go to rehab. Well, how do you get a drug addict to go to rehab if they don't want to go? You arrest them, you put them in jail. They can decide to go to rehab or go to jail.

Without the hammer of going to jail, they're never going to reach out for the carrot. And for these people on the other side who are, some of them are in good faith, to say, oh, we don't need to send police officers to conflicts. we need to send CPS workers I mean we're going to get suits against counties for all the CPS workers that are killed

because they didn't come prepared for you know a gun fight and those are just those are ridiculous ridiculous arguments who's going to triage those calls the police do that yeah and those are the

most difficult calls to go on yeah and the funny thing is Sherry had a friend that she grew up with that, you know, she has tried to help over the years that has had this, well, over the past at least five years, that has had a pretty big issue first with alcohol and then heavily with drugs. And especially the past six months or eight months or whatever she would call Sherry and she would be homeless or on the streets or whatever. Do whatever again. She's been to rehab three times. But the thing is, when we started figuring out and she lives in, you know, four states away from us, when we started actually trying to get help. for her, you know, as far as like actual help in either of that county, a county next to her

or county next to that. It was almost impossible. She doesn't want the help. But even if she did, finding the help was almost impossible. Oh, it was impossible. Like I had, I searched all day. This is an issue that's very close to my heart. I have a sister who had a car accident in 1989, broke every bone in her face, and she started a 30-year prescription drug addiction and then other things as well. And, you know, I mean, how many times, I mean, attempted suicide, drug rehab, family intervention. I mean, I didn't get her under, I didn't get her straightened out if she was ever

straightened out until I was had her declared incompetent and I was appointed her guardian. And then their last five years of her life, she lived in an assisted living facility where they managed her medication. And she ended, you know, she died suddenly, but she was happy. She had a brain injury as well. But she, you know, she was very well loved by the other people that lived there. She was a lot younger than them because, you know, she had that car accident so early. But, but, I mean, I'm telling you, our experience, my family's experiences with, with prescription drug abuse and other drug abuse.

I mean, how does, I mean, to a lot of things. families, you know, jails are the poor man's drug rehab. Yes. You took that away and say you can't hold somebody in jail just because they say they can't afford it. Well, then how is the poor people? Doesn't that hurt poor people more? Exactly. Because I told my best friend, I was like, the only thing really that's going to save you is if you get arrested and go to jail for something to get you cleaned out.

And if you're saying, well, we can't hold anybody because they can't afford it, then you're taking, I mean, you're making it even worse for, you know, poor families. families like we were when this happened. I was like, you know. You can't just go to any rehab without insurance and being homeless. It's really hard to find. Yeah. And the thing is, it's weird. That, you know, jail sometimes or whatever might be the only opportunity that they're

sober enough. Yeah. Long enough to have an opportunity to maybe change. I don't know. But you're right in the same sense that, you know, jail is not a rehab center. And, you know, it's, it's, unfortunately, jail, I thought, you know, the whole concept was supposed to be for, you're supposed to basically reform yourself an audit, but that's just not what happens. If anything, sometimes when people come out of jail, they're worse.

And, you know, and it's because of, I don't know, I mean, but at the same time. Well, we're trying to make our criminal justice system stuff that it was never intended to be. We're not, we're not going to give services to people, or we should not be trying to give services to people when they're arrested to find out what the problem is, why they, they've committed a crime, or they're charged with a crime. they're supposed to set a bond, set a bond high enough to ensure they appear. They appear. We get their case. We either get it, they plead guilty or it's dismissed or they go to trial and they get found guilty. And then the victim gets resolution and then we go to the next case.

Now we see all across the country where they're trying to make our criminal justice system, the social services system, where we find out why. Why did somebody commit this crime? What services do they need to fix them? that's not the purpose of the criminal justice system. And the time is when they got all those opportunities, the system has failed them every chance they have. And so the defendant's last opportunity to become a productive citizen,

we're throwing that chance away because we're saying that we can't do that in the criminal justice system. And we're just failing people one more time. It's ridiculous. Yeah, it's crazy. I hope that there is a good feeling. future for our country and whatever that is, I don't know, but there are a lot of issues. And I think the bail issue and the prosecutorial issue is definitely one. Ken, now, is there, what are you doing now and what is, you know, what are you primarily focused on now in your career?

Well, I'm still, I do specialize in the bell law. I write a lot of articles on bail reform. We just had a major bill passed in Texas. So, you know, people who want more information on the issues that we see is bell reform and what's not working across the country. They can go to pbtX.com and they can look at our blog. We have an elected officials corner on our menu. We have we just started a podcast of our own. We just did an episode on what the heck do bondsmen do.

so people can see all the work that bondsmen do to get people to court. And is your podcast on the website? Yes, yes. Okay, so the website was pbtX.com, right? Yes, the professional bondsman of Texas, so pvtX.com, and all the information that we've talked about is on the blog. And what's the name of your podcast? The bell post.

Oh, okay. Okay, cool. The bell post. Cool. Now, are you guys on Spotify and all that stuff? Can people find you on there yet? Yes, they can. We've been there for probably less than two weeks.

Okay, cool. We just did our first podcast two weeks ago. Awesome. Well, guys, if you don't listen to him, go check him out. Ken, look, it was very good talking to you. And we will put his information on the Facebook and Instagram. Yeah, we'll put your information on our website and all that stuff. Facebook and Instagram don't love us very much, so they don't, I don't know if anybody's going to see your stuff on there.

Oh, yeah, we're on Facebook. We're on Twitter. Yeah, we're on all those things too. But we will definitely put you on our website. And you guys can just lick them up too. Yeah, we're actually launching our own social media here shortly, so we'll put you on there. But Ken, thank you so much for spending your evening with us and talking about this. I think it's a major issue.

And I think there needs to be people like you guys talking about this because if it isn't for you and if it isn't for people like you, nothing's ever going to be done. And no one's ever going to know about it. And I think that's, you know, when we saw this opportunity to talk to you, and with the amount of listeners we have and we've grown for three years, we wanted to do something that maybe could help. And just the fact that people can hear this may help and it may do something to change, you know, the outcome of our future and what's going on right now.

So we do definitely appreciate you. Well, thank you for having me and I appreciate it. We really see ourselves as a resource and a spot to get educated on the issues. I know probably not that long ago people say, oh, don't listen to them. They're bondsmen. But we have people across the country coming, asking us for information and listening to what, are reading all the different articles we've read and the stuff that you've mentioned. So we've really worked hard to be a resource and to try to make the system better,

or at least not make it any more worse than it already is. But thank you very much for having it. Yeah, not a problem. And good luck to you. And we might bring you back when there's some other craziness, because don't worry, there will be more craziness. There absolutely will. We'll love to.

All right. We'll talk to you later. Thanks, Ken. Thanks, Ken. Bye. All right, guys. So that was Ken Good. And he, man, you know, he had a lot of insight.

There's a lot of info and insight. And the thing is, we need people like him. We need people like him to be able to talk about the things that not a lot of people were talking about. I mean, we talked about what the mainstream media is doing. If you look up mainstream media's narrative of the best, bail bond or the bell reform or any of this crap all they all they bring is is BS and you know Ken is don't seem like he's very political you know I I tried to pull him in on a couple things to

kind of get you know just some of some of what he thought and um but I respect the fact that he is he's he's taking this in my opinion from a just a reality of where we are mostly I guess non-biased respective but it's hard to not be biased when you see reality. Bias means you have a leaning towards something. Obviously, you lean towards nonviolent criminals not being let out on the streets based on political agendas to raise money. Violent criminals.

I mean, sorry, violent criminals. Based on political agendas to raise money for these people and not even looking at. To get votes. And not even looking at what they're charged with. Like he said, you know, these are people that, the one guy that was over one of the big organizations, the bail reform, the mayor. the main one, I think, was like, oh, we don't look at what they actually in for. We just bell them out and I'll look later.

And then I'll look later. It doesn't matter if they murdered somebody. Like, what the hell is that? I mean, there's no regulation in this bell reform and there needs to be some kind of regulation set in place where we are looking at the crime at what's now in past crimes. And not just past crimes that were convicted, but even just arrest records. because a lot of times these people might be convicted on something of a lesser charge. Yeah, I think arrest records would be a great. Yeah, they need to look at the whole record because there's a lot of times they have four or five charges,

but they go with a plea bargain and that's all they're looking at is the one thing they're convicted at, you know, with. Yeah, because look, here's the reality. Here, and I wish I would have brought this up with Ken, but, you know, you have one or two things. You can say that, hey, you know, you can say, hey, well, you know, you're innocent until proven guilty. Yes, you are correct. And I have a big thing about that because I've often thought like, man, you are innocent. Because when I think about this bell reform thing, and I know Ken, you know, and he's right. Our justice system is probably one of the fairest in the world, or at least was.

I don't know if it is anymore. and maybe we bring him back on another time to talk something something else but what I wanted to what I wanted to say was like he mentioned a January 6th thing and how there are people being held without Bell there are people just being screwed I'm talking about anyone and everyone doesn't even matter if they went into the Capitol yeah they're trying to go after Alex Jones yeah and and that is politics these are political prisoners like if you really want an organization to help people out in the justice system

why are we trying to help people out that are that are in jail for beating their wife or for murdering someone or for running people over or for robbing someone carjacking with a gun beating the shit out of someone beating an elderly man why are why do we have organizations in this country looking out for these people but not but not looking out for political prisoners that I mean and I'm not saying the January 6th thing was is right but what I am saying is I think there's a lot more to that situation than we know. I think that was definitely a, there were provocateurs that were making sure. Right.

I mean, they were opening doors, letting gates open. But it's more one-sided, though, basically. It's one-sided. Yeah, it is. Well, I mean, and that's the problem. But that's also why I asked the race question. Yeah. Because every article I read about this bell thing, it talks about race.

But there are poor white people. Racial disparity. Disparity. Yeah. But there are poor white people that also would need bell money. But, you know, and, you know, it. But this whole reform thing is based on race. Is what the reform is.

Well, it is. It's based on race. Yeah, most articles. Not really even poor people. But the thing is, I mean, you know, you have this issue where, you know, if you look at the just population, you know, there are a lot more white people than, I guess, blacks. If you look at, like, the, you know, demographics. And so how many more whites? I would like to have a stat on how many poor whites under the medium.

salary range of say, I don't know, 15,000 are in jail versus blacks in jail under that same scale. But guess where all these, like what Ken was saying, all these people are in one, like, place. The urban areas is where all the crime is. Well, that's not where all the crime is. It's a lot of it. Yeah, but what he's saying is, yeah, I mean, I understand what he said. It's the urban areas, the poor areas. Yeah, a lot of them. And, you know, the people that could get out of there are out of there. So the people are stuck there. So the people are stuck there. are the ones that are like stuck with crime. That's the only way they know how to live or can live.

Yeah. I guess my point though is is that it's, we have to, we have to think about it in the terms of, obviously this is a political agenda of why they're doing this. And, you know, the fact that George Soros is putting these prosecutors in place, not even, they're just skipping the bell thing.

They ain't got to worry about bail because there's not prosecuting people. And this has happened a lot And I think it's happened a lot in Chicago I think they've literally just let Chicago go I mean like not the well I mean There are things that happen in this In the actual city now of Chicago

I mean it's not safe really Necessarily to be in the city of Chicago We've seen a lot of instances of people Being murdered in the streets in downtown Chicago Yeah downtown on like Michigan Avenue Listen when I go visit my mom And ever since I've been visiting my mom for 10 years She's like we can't go to this outside

We can't go to this outside because, I mean, it's so scary. Yeah, but now it's like, you know, it's like spreading. Yeah, now do you want to go to the city? You know, because of, I think, this bail reform. Yeah, and it's not just bell reform. It's the freaking prosecutors. Yeah, it's they're letting people get away with breaking the law and being criminals

and saying it's okay to do it. So they're going to do it again and again and again. And they're going to, you know, each time they commit a crime, it's probably going to get worse because they know they can get away with it. Well, the thing about it too, is that, you know, this is something that, you know, Ken didn't touch much on. But, and I ask about, you know, the, the conspiracy of a long-term thing that they've done here. I mean, you've had Obama start putting judges and stuff in place.

It was almost like they knew what they were, what the whole plan was back then in his first term. Ken didn't necessarily agree with that. But what I am saying is that it just fell in perfect place from the time Obama was in office to everything that's happening now. And especially if you look at like even when Trump was in office, anything Trump wanted to do good for this country, some federal Democratic judge would block it out of nowhere. Remember, we were always like, how the hell are these blocking it? I voted for Obama. And I was really excited. I'm like, you know, this is a great thing.

We're going to have to delete this podcast now. This was a great thing. We're going to have to delete it. By the way, the reason she voted for Obama was because you told me to. No, because Mitt Romney was the other freaking candidate. You told me to vote for Obama. But anyways, listen, this is like when Obama was in office is when I first started seeing a separation between people. Anyways, look, my...

Did you hear me? Yeah, I do. I get it. But let's just rephrase that because, you know, or not rephrase it. You voted for Obama because Mitt Romney was a trash piece of work. And he still is. He's a fake Republican. And the reality is Obama, in my opinion, although well-spoken... I thought he was very well-spoken.

But that doesn't mean anything. He was the start of our problem. I agree. That's what I just said. I said that's when I first saw a separation of people. Yeah, he wasn't necessarily a start of a problem. I mean, even if you go back to Bush. Yeah. Well, problems have gone way back to the beginning of times. Well, I know, but yeah, but like Bush even. I mean, you know, we were okay with the government completely lying to us on a daily basis when Bush was in office and Bush senior. All the things that we thought were just exactly how they were, right? The reason we're going to war here is because of this. And Bush

Sr. The reason we're going to war here and this. Because they did this or whatever. And we believed everything they said. I think the problem has come in though now because we don't believe everything they said because we have more access to information. Yeah. We have a worldwide information network. So whereas whereas this is a really bad thing on some

terms, I don't think you're ever going to stop it at this point unless, like, say, the United States government regulates Internet. And if they regulate Internet, which they have talked about doing, to stop misinformation, they've literally talked about this, to regulate the Internet. I'm talking about they take over the Internet of what you can look at. So say, for example, you're at a work and, like, they can stop you from looking at websites or whatever the case is. It could be any website.

It could be CNN or whatever. It's the network you're on is who's the network you're on, is who's stops you from doing network administrator. Right, right. The government can easily do that. They can do that with the Internet. And if they start doing that, then it limits everything we know. And then it's just China because that's what China does.

Oh, yeah. There's a lot of other countries that do that already. Cuba did that. Cuba did a blackout of Internet when they were oppressing their people in Cuba. Just recently. Yeah, like six months ago or whenever it was. Or was even six months ago. And they were on the streets and hadn't eaten like in three or four days.

Yeah. And by the way, this administration and Colin Kaepernack and all this, came out in support of Fidel Castro, the most oppressive dictator in history. And literally, like, these people have went through hell because of him. But anyways, that's neither here nor there. Well, we don't want that, that's for sure. But that's where we're headed.

I know, but we don't want that. And like Ken said, there is a chance of a civil war coming through. And he was talking about the left in the, I think he was talking about the left and the far left, between the party Yeah is what he's seeing The thing is

You gotta call it like it is I mean The way it is Today is that the left What it appears Is trying to destroy This country There is a big

And growing consensus Of people That want this country Divided into two They want two different countries They realize There are people on the left Saying there's no way

In hell We're ever going to agree With people over there And the people on a writer saying there's no way in hell we're ever going to agree over there so let us have our president Biden which has zero clue what the hell's going on you can keep him by the way and we'll pick our president and like i mean i know that sounds crazy but i don't know i mean outside of a civil war which could happen and even though would it would it not happen if we had two countries i don't

know i mean we'd probably we'd probably be like a north and south korea us being north korea because we're going to be more powerful obviously and we're going to have the nuclear warheads in the military. But then when you think about worldwide, you know, I told you last night on the podcast, I feel like it's a revolution of 2021. It's, I feel like all over the world, people are saying what's going on in the dictatorship that's going on in the tyranny throughout the world. It's not just here.

It's everywhere. Which brings us to the New World Order things and to the one world government. And it brings us to the Bible. And whether you believe in the Bible, you know. And it also links us to people like. finally standing up and saying we're not putting up with this crap. And that's why I'm saying revolution. Yeah.

Like they're not going to do it. Well, we're going to see. I mean, you know, but, you know, we unfortunately at the moment have to worry about, and all of us do. If you're in Australia, you have to worry about what's happening in Australia. What's happening in your country. You got to worry about crossing a line to put your laundry in the laundry thing. But what I'm saying is the people in Australia have to worry about Australia.

Yeah. The people in China have to worry about. China right now. The people in Ukraine and all these people. And you have to do something in your own country because no other countries are going to come save you right now. I mean, every country is just all to hell. And so for the United States, for example, but here's the thing. It only takes

one country to make a definitive stop to the bullshit. I'm talking about one country that says hell no. By the way, Australia, for our Australia listeners, we have a lot of them. your protest and your uh and what you're doing in the streets and by the millions it looks like is not going unnoticed it is it is a voice and a a almost like a shot in the sky around the world that people are seeing that and is and and and by your bravery and your steadfast um patriotism to your rights and country and whatever else that is being heard around the world around the

world it is starting other protests it is starting other people to say hell no we ain't going to Yeah, and it's funny. It's starting in Australia. I mean, it's not funny, but I think Australia has started this. Yeah, they started a worldwide revolution. Because they're like, you know, we're not doing, I mean, but I think they were the most locked down and they're, you know, they have to fight back. And by the way, typically guys, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Austria, Germany even. I mean, these countries that are trying to force crazy shit down people's throats right now.

I want you to understand that normally the United States would come and come to your defense. You bail you out. But we won't. Because our own country wants those same things. And it just so happens that our administration is now, they are kind of for tyranny, it seems like. And the thing is, you know, that's all on another podcast. We're not going to talk about this on this podcast. But we do just, you know, we want to hang out with you guys for a few minutes.

Ken, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you. It was awesome information. And I really enjoyed listening to what he had to say. I mean, he had a lot of valuable information. that we all can take away. And we definitely appreciate Ken. You know, we appreciate Ken.

By the way, guys, if, you know, I don't know if he has a Google page or anything. Go give him a five-star rating or something. Yeah. He came on here. Yeah, it took his time. And he's doing something for the betterment of this country. It doesn't matter about politics. And our people.

He's doing it to protect you guys, innocent people and victims that are basically not having the right to be a victim anymore. because of the people that are criminals being victimized. Right. And so he is fighting a war that none of us are and while we're sleeping and nobody else even thinks about this. These people are doing that. And we got to give him all the credit in the world the fact that he's doing that. And I believe like law enforcement need more attorneys like this. Yeah, just everybody.

You know? Yeah, I mean, law enforcement. Because their hands are tied. We need attorneys that really know what's going on. Just like he said, judges' hands. Everybody's hands are tied. You're right. But guys, this has been another Investing Earth podcast.

We thank you guys so much for listening. Thank you, Ken, good, for coming on. And we will be back very soon. Thursday, at least by Thursday. At least by Thursday. Thursday, we got a great podcast. We got Dr. Sean Baker coming on. Sean Baker is world-renowned for the carnivore diet.

He has been on Joe Rogan. He's talked about the carnivore diet. He does a lot with COVID. We have him on Thursday night, guys. You are not going to want to miss that. And until next time, bye. Bye bye now.