The David Knight Show - INTERVIEW The Toll Road Agenda

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

Sold as "choice lanes" the reality of toll roads is one of crony capitalism, "non-compete" restrictions on improving roads, and corruption. A push is on in Tennessee for toll roads for the first time. Gary Humble, TennesseeStands.org, on the issue and the important of we the people being aware and active at the local/state level.Find out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.com If you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here:SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation through Mail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @[e-mail] App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Money is only what YOU hold: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silverBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.

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Joining us now is Gary Humble. He is with an organization called TennesseeStands.org. And I want to talk to him about the organization, but it is, I think it's very important. Toll roads are one of the things, having lived with them in the Austin area, I absolutely hate them. I've been trapped by them when I traveled and forced to pay tolls. I've been charged for tolls that I did not use and had to fight that in Texas. I really hate to see these things coming in Tennessee. I was happy to see that Tennessee was one of the few states that didn't have it.

But now we have a Republican governor and legislature who look like they're going to be moving to it. So when I talked to Senator Nicely last week about tolls, I said, is there somebody locally that's doing it? I found Gary and TennesseeStands.org. So let's talk about that. Thank you for joining us, Gary. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Yeah, like I was stating earlier you know we started the response to covid but you know at this point we're really pushing back at

government overreach um definitely continuing to the fight for people to make their own medical decisions especially in terms of employment uh getting this progressive agenda out of our schools there's a lot to talk about not not not to mention in tech election integrity um has been an issue we've taken on uh as of recent but um let's talk about the beginning to mention in tech election integrity um has been an issue we've taken on uh as of recent but um let's talk about the beginning you know you told me when we were talking off air when i got you on you said you started in uh in 2020 as a pushback against this stuff what was happening here in tennessee because when we came through uh in 2020 we came through in august of 2020 uh it was far more relaxed than it was in Texas,

for example. I mean, even in rural Texas, but certainly Austin was just awful. But when we came through here, it was like, people were kind of, you know, they'd have to put the signs up, but you know, they didn't really want to say anything about it. If you, if you said anything to them, they were kind of like, Oh, I don't know. You know, they weren't going to push you on it. So they seemed a lot more relaxed about it. It's one of the things we liked about it what was the government doing at the time well the government was doing the same thing everybody else was our governor issued an executive order calling some folks uh non-essential and essential uh shut down shut down businesses by the force of his pen um there was a statement made sometime in april they were tracking they had asked they had asked people to stay home

uh yet during that act they were tracking people through a third party looking at folks uh gp gps movements from their devices and the governor made a statement that they felt that people were still moving around too much so the governor followed up that executive order with another one, officially issuing a lockdown order. And the penalty would have been a class A misdemeanor in the state of Tennessee. So, you know, we did all of those things. And of course, our governor went on the news touting local choices because we never made a state mask mandate. But what we did was enable tyrannical local governments and all of the major Metro areas including unaccountable unelected boards of health to make those mandates and force them through corporate policies so effectively the bottom line is um we're not some

Bastion of conservatism here in Tennessee. We did the same thing everyone else did. We just used different talking points. That's right. And I've had this fight with everybody. They say, it's just the Democrat governors. It's not the Democrat governors. I've seen it in Tennessee, saw it in Idaho. Look at what DeWine did in Ohio.

You're talking about tracking. One of the first things that Abbott did in Texas was to, he spent $300 dollars on a contact tracing company that's the very first thing he did and so they were all part of it they were all given massive amounts of money from the Trump administration to do this kind of stuff and they loved having that money it was like a discretionary slush fund for the governors and so all of them regardless of party got dirty in all of this and did all the things. Every single, without exception, not a single Republican governor did not get involved

in this. And so where do we stand today in terms of the toll road and the push on this? You understand exactly what is behind this. This is not even uh it's a bigger issue than even just the taxes involved because this is part of the larger plan to control our transportation and to reset our society isn't it absolutely and the funny thing about the the pushback is their mantra is that we're not collecting enough gas taxes and of course gas taxes are going to decrease because it's projected that the use of fuel is going to decrease because of the pending move to electric vehicles. But interestingly, here in Tennessee, our governor has made a in such a way that allowed us to forward $1 billion of our tax dollars to the Ford Motor Corporation to build their largest manufacturing

facility in West Tennessee, which predominantly is going to manufacture the Ford F-150 Lightning, their electric truck. We are moving battery manufacturers here at a rapid pace. And just north of Chattanooga now, we've got the largest United States lithium refiner coming here to Tennessee. So we're inviting the industry, right, that apparently is responsible for putting us in this projected mess of not being able to pay for our roads. And the penalty for that, right, not only is the electric vehicle going to cost you more, as we well know, and along with all the other issues that's going to bring, you now need to pay tolls because we can no longer afford to build our roads.

And the bottom line is that the burden cannot fall beyond what our tax burden already is. And by the way, while we're talking about tolls, which in my opinion are nothing more than taxes, it's a tax increase, they're not discussing lessening any of the other tax burdens like sales taxes or property taxes or grocery taxes or even the current gas tax so none of that is projected to go down we're only going to now pay additional fees on top of the taxes we're already paying oh that's the way it always works isn't it yeah we've gone through this whole thing about we're going to vax and track you right now we're going to tax and track you because that's really what the tolls are are fundamentally about and and you know i remember uh back in the early

90s in the netherlands which has been at the forefront of a lot of this uh un globalist control stuff they started putting in some of the first license plate readers and things like that for uh purposes of tolls and the people in the netherlands readers and things like that for purposes of tolls. And the people in the Netherlands were very upset about that. They said they, they, it touched a raw point with them because they were, you know, they, they're very meticulous about everything that they do. And they kept a lot of records on everybody that they didn't do anything malicious with. But when the Nazis invaded as part of World War II, they didn't do anything malicious with. But when the Nazis

invaded as part of World War II, they had all these three by five cards with all this information about everybody. And they had so much information on it. When the Nazis came in, they said, well, you know, let's burn this so they can't find out what our political and religious affiliations are. They said they were packed so tightly they couldn't set fire to them. It was like trying to light a log. And so the Nazis got got all that stuff so that was something that was really ingrained into them was the danger of keeping this information because you might have somebody come along like you know some nazi who's going to use this in a malicious way and so they said we don't want to have uh these automatic uh charges on tolls and stuff because they were guarding their privacy.

That's gone by the wayside now. Nobody even thinks about that. And we're getting so accustomed to being tracked and followed and surveilled everywhere we go. And this is just another aspect of it. But as you're talking about the move to electric vehicles, that's one of the dangers of all this stuff is that it's not just the toll roads, but because there's not going to be a gas tax that they can collect at a point

because you can charge these cars anywhere, if you will, because of that, they are going to either put in toll roads or typically start taxing people by the mile. That's really also what they're going to. And all of those things are about surveillance and that's going to lead, the surveillance will lead to control. That's just the way it works. And that's why they're pushing these systems. That's why they want to have the EVs because they want to have a rationale where they will have to look at everywhere we go and charge us for every mile that we drive. And they'll have a system where you can only charge it on a central grid. And so then that gives them control over the power as well as over your mobility. All of this stuff is about centralizing everything, surveilling everything, and controlling everything.

And that's what is really concerning about these toll roads. Well, and interestingly, you also sort of hearken to user fees. By the way, it's worth noting beyond the toll roads themselves, there was a presentation given, I believe, just two weeks ago to our Senate Transportation Committee on a study done by user fees, which, by the way, Senator Becky Massey out of Knoxville, who also sits on that committee, acknowledged that she had participated in a pilot program to see how these usage fees, user fees, I should say, would work. And of course, this is an effort potentially to replace the gas tax, like you say, with user fees here in Tennessee.

And that would require tracking. As the guy was giving the presentation as to how this works, he mentioned tracking via your current GPS um you know technology on your phone but also the possibility of installing a case on your vehicle and so the question about privacy and he said oh well don't worry you know the the GPS technology we use to track this it's only one way communication and you know we can't actually see the location it's just one way communication and, you know, we can't actually see the location. It's just tracking distance. So, you know, the message always is we're going to use this technology, but don't worry. We're not really looking at anything we shouldn't be, but yet we all know the technology can do it all.

So are they really not looking at that information and utilizing it? Of course they are, but well, they're using it now. I mean, for over a decade, we've been using maps on our phones. And even before that, there was a system, I think it's called INRIX, that was on a subscription basis that was picked up by the State Departments of Transportation. But they would look at the information coming off of trucks and coming off of passenger cars that had cell phones in it. That's where you get the red lines on the map. That's where you get the yellow lines and red lines and the green lines to show if there's any traffic congestion.

They're looking at that kind of stuff right now. They're just not mapping it to you personally so that they can give you a speeding ticket or so that they can tax you by how far you drive or whatever. Oh, that's coming. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's coming. That's it's all there.

The technology is already there. They're just rolling it out to us gradually. And that's what makes this so concerning to see. The toll road is one part of it. Of course, another aspect of the toll road, as you were mentioning, the big subsidies to Ford. Another part of this that is a big concern is the crony capitalism that's involved. And much of this crony capitalism is with foreign corporations. That's what Senator Nicely was talking about.

You know, Sentra is one of the biggest companies. They're based out of Spain, and, you know, they're using this. Spain. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, which is the same company that is managing these express lanes in Texas. So, yeah, we already know where this is all going. And it's interesting, you know, you mentioned the corporate welfare and the Ford deal.

You know, part of the information that's been given to the public in terms of the need for toll roads is because of how the whereas clauses in the bill actually state that Tennessee has seen such explosive growth and it's so prosperous that we can't afford to build our own roads. So I find that saving incredible. But part of the reasoning is because I think this administration loves corporate welfare. They're handing out tax incentives with your tax dollars to these corporations like Candy. And in my view, it's the government subsidies that are, I think, artificially inflating some of the growth we're seeing. I mean, if we would stop using our tax money to inflate more growth by subsidizing corporations, what if we actually used the tax money we already had to build infrastructure for the people that are already here, for the people that have already paid those taxes so what my ask is let's stop funding the issue let's let's let the market

grow itself and stop giving our tax dollars to these corporations that maybe we can all agree are causing this growth in the first place and now presenting the need for us to pay additional tolls because the tax base is not funding the infrastructure needed for all the growth it's it's just it's a it's a round robin you create the problem and then you spend more money to fix it yeah if you're gonna if you're gonna subsidize amazon coming in and we gave amazon 166 million dollars in tax breaks uh this is a trillion dollar company we're throwing money at them uh but you know if if they want do business, they should be able to pay their way. Nobody else gets that kind, you know, the small mom and pop companies.

That's why I don't like this. Chronic capitalism is nothing other than corruption. And whether you're talking about bringing an Amazon or you're talking about giving an NFL team a free billion dollar stadium or something like that, I don't, that's not the role of government. That is simply a corrupt government. That's right. And these Republicans, the issue is these Republicans always run when they're campaigning.

They always talk about small business. But when was the last time you saw a tax incentive go to Main Street? Never. Yeah. These incentives never go to small businesses. They always go to global corporations. Not even the PPP, which, you know, they always talk about public-private partnerships, but, you know, when Trump did it,

it was a payroll protection plan, and they were going to keep the small companies going, but more than 50% of the money went to 5% of the biggest companies, and, you know, they redefined what a small business was. Well, that doesn't mean that you've got fewer than 500 or fewer employees. That means that you've got 500 or fewer employees at one location. So any giant corporation, you know, how many of them have an installation that's got more than 500 employees at one particular spot? So they were pretty much able at all their locations to get the money. That's the way this thing works. And that's the shell game that they play with.

So we have to shut this down by shutting it down in principle because they're always going to micromanage the details. You know, when they set up an entitlement program, they'll find some way to, and we look at this and say, well, that's good. They're going to help us because we're small businesses. No, they'll find some way to get all the money themselves with a fine print. We've seen it happen over and over again, especially with Republicans. And so let's talk about what is happening here on the ground and what your organization is doing.

Is there any, uh, organized pushback outside of Tennessee stands.org, uh, any organized pushback, uh, and how can we organize to push back and have our voices heard? Yeah, there is now. I mean, we were the first, uh, now i see that represent a state rep from citizens for renewing america which is a russ votes organization they're they're opposing the tennessee conservative news of course has been vocal about opposing and americans for prosperity uh is now opposing the bill so we we have we're gaining a little bit more traction basically i look i don't know of a grassroots conservative group that actually supports moving the state to toll roads no one does um of course they don't they

don't call them toll roads david these are these are choice lanes right because because you have a choice yeah so which is the problem and and look i i'll and i'll say this to kind of close the loop on the toll road situation the The problem is the messaging. So what you're going to hear now from the GOP is Gary is a big bad guy because what he wants to do is he wants to raise taxes on the rural communities. He wants the rural communities to pay more taxes to fund roads in the big cities. But what us conservatives want to do, right, we want to implement choice lanes so that the people that use the roads in the big cities. But what us conservatives want to do, right, we want to implement choice lanes so that the people that use the roads

are the people paying for the roads. That's the argument right now. And it sounds, look. Looking for reliable IT solutions for your business? At Innovate, we are the IT solutions people for businesses across Ireland. From network security to cloud productivity, we handle it all.

Installing, managing, supporting, and reporting on your entire IT and telecoms environment so you can focus on what really matters, growing your business. Whether it's communications or security, Innovate has you covered. Visit Innovate today. Innovate, the IT solutions people. I've got to admit, they're really good at what they do, right? It sounds good. But we all know, as much as I love rural communities, today, right now, but as we stand, rural communities do not generate enough gas tax revenue themselves

to build their own roads. The state is one big melting pot. And you'll see from state funds that some of that gas tax money is funneled, which this bill does partially do that as well, money back to the rural communities to build infrastructure. So it's a bad argument. It's incredibly flawed argument because it's not the way it works right now. The bottom line is, we are already paying gas taxes. We're already operating this year, scheduled to operate at a $5 billion surplus. We've been operating on a $2 to $3 billion surplus. What if we stopped giving all that surplus money to corporations and started

building infrastructure? See, that's what we need to be thinking about. And that's what people need to ask themselves a question. How was it that in the middle of the 20th century, we could build an interstate system for the federal government and why they can't do anything like that now? They can't even fix them. Instead, they're spending billions of dollars to tear down roads that Boudiguet calls racist, right?

So what is it about our government that it can't figure out how to do the things that it always used to do. That's what everybody ought to be asking. As you point out, we've got a $5 billion surplus. Why do we have to have this new way of doing things when that worked so well? What is it about you guys that you can't figure out how to tie your shoes anymore? You know, that's the reality behind this. And we know why this is happening.

It's kind of a rhetorical question because we know that they don't want the general public, rural or urban, to have private cars. And they want to narrow this down to the people who can afford a super expensive electric vehicle, and they're not going to have enough charging capacity for everybody to have a car, even if you had enough mineral capacity for everybody to have a battery-operated car. And so they're going to limit the whole point of all of this is to get rid of the private car, to gradually constrict. The government has become, you know, when you look at the note, don't tread on me. Now, I can't look at that without thinking of the government as a boa constrictor. And it's just gradually, every time we breathe out, it tightens up on us so we can't take

another breath in. And so when you look at what they're doing to us, it is this gradual process of constriction of our transportation and many other aspects of our life. And that's why they say that they can't build this. They could. They don't want to because we know what the plan is. And that's really what is fundamentally behind all of this. Yeah. And I want to make sure I make this point too, because this is a broader point, not specifically with this bill

in particular, because this happens on many bills. But for example, the governor came out last week in a state of the state address and announced to the state that we're going to, he's pushing the Transportation Modernization Act, and we're going to move to choice lanes and all these things the problem is the public never really was notified that this is where we were moving and never had an opportunity to speak to it so what they did yeah is whenever the legislature came in the session they filed what's called a caption bill okay which is a bill that typically consists of one sentence and has no other information as to what the bill is going to address. Next thing you know, overnight, within 24 hours, that bill goes from one sentence to 32 pages.

OK, with with this bill in particular, it would we found out later to be HB 321, which was filed at the beginning of session as a hidden caption bill. This bill had already passed the House subcommittee, had already passed the subcommittee before we found out that the Transportation Modernization Act had actually been amended into this caption bill as HB 321. The only reason all of Tennessee found out about this bill was because we found out through folks in the Capitol that in less than a week, this bill was now heading to full committee. And so the first time Tennesseans ever made a phone call or ever sent an email to oppose the Transportation Modernization Act, it had already passed subcommittee. And worth noting, by the way, as of today,

the bill's been amended for well over a week now. It was amended on February 8th, a 32-page amendment. The only place you can get that amendment right now is at TennesseeStans.org. Is that right? You will not find that amendment at Capital.TN.gov. How's that for transparency for you? Yeah. They aren't required to publish that? I don't know what the rules are. Typically, you'll see an amendment posted the next day once it's been put on the bill. But if you go right now and you go to capital.tn.gov

and you search HB 321, you will see in the bill history that it was amended on February 8th. The amendment has still not been posted on the website. We have it at tennesseestands.org. Well, that's good. And see, that's one of the things, you know, we have a national, international audience, but I want to say to people these same tactics you see everywhere, right? This whole idea of putting out a caption bill and the last minute you drop the contents into it. That's similar to what's been going on for the longest time with Nancy Pelosi, who was the first one to do it in a big way with thousands of pages dropping. And, oh, we'll give you a whole 48 hours to look at this thousand page. Pass it, then read it.

Yeah, yeah. Well, we've got to pass it to find out look at this 1,000-page bill. Pass it, then read it. Yeah, yeah. Well, we've got to pass it to find out what's in it, you know, and that type of thing. But this is how it looks at the state level. And it's not just going to be Tennessee. It's going to be many other places like that that are going to be doing exactly the same thing. That's why it's important to try to find out what is happening in your state. I can't cover all of the information that's happening state by state. I mean, we talk about what's going on in Michigan

with people pushing back against the school thing. So we pick up these issues when they rise to the surface state by state. But if you really want to know the detail, that's why it's important to have local state organizations like TennesseeStands.org because they're going to follow in detail what is happening in your state. And if you don't know what's happening on the ground, that's how they get us. All politics is local. They want to run these plans on a global and a national level, but they're implemented at the local level.

That's where the battle is. That's where they've got the best chance to stop it. And so that's why it's important to have these local state organizations that keep an eye out on what is happening there locally. So that's good that you're doing that. You got a video, Gary, about the real cost of the toll roads. And as you talk about the choice thing, and I know the reason that Governor Lee is talking about that is because for libertarians, it's always been, well, we should have all the roads should be privately owned and we should

run them, pay for them with tolls and that type of stuff. And it sounds good until you start to look at the actual implementation of it. And what you wind up with is not privately owned roads, but you wind up with corruption, crony capitalism, and economic fascism, where you've got a merger of the state and government. That's the way it looks in reality. There isn't this clear distinction between government and corporations and private businesses. You have this blending, this merger, and this real corruption.

That's the problem with it. But what is the real cost of these toll roads going to be? Well, see, the devil's in the details. It's not just about what's in the bill. All the bill's doing is setting the foundation for these contracts in the future. And that's where the details really get hairy because what you'll find, I can't say all, but I can say many, especially the ones that we've reviewed in Texas, of these contracts with companies like Centra out of Spain. They include non-compete clauses with the state, which means once the state signs a contract for these choice lanes, the state then is restricted from using tax money to build any additional state-funded highways in these same areas that may relieve any future congestion.

That's what I hate about this. I lived under that and I saw it. For years, they would shut everything down to build this, a couple of lanes that they're going to charge people for. And then in the process, what they would do is they would set up obstacles and they would redesign the existing roads, put additional traffic lights and other things like that to make it harder to get that to disincentivize the non-use of these toll roads, put additional traffic lights and other things like that to make it harder to get that to disincentivize the non-use of these toll roads to force you on the toll roads, right? That's the way they want to talk about choice. It's the same kind of cynical stuff we heard about

vaccines. Yeah. Well, you've got a choice. I'm not making you do this. You can have a job or you can have healthcare. You can take the vaccine. That's your choice, and that's what they're doing. They put all these obstacles on the road to slow the traffic down, to try to make you choose, to force you, to coerce you onto going onto the toll roads, and then to, as you point out, this non-compete thing, to make sure they don't ever add any additional capacity. We're already in a situation where the cities and the states do not build a sufficient capacity as people move in, as businesses move in. They don't make the roads any bigger.

That's right. And the point about, as you say, the push to make sure that it's painful to not choose the choice lane, right? Well, these are businesses. They're not doing this out of the kindness and generosity of their hearts. They're not a government entity that provides a service with tax money. They are a business that demands a return on investment. And by the way, this non-compete clause in these contracts, these leases run for 50 years on average. And as they're collecting fees, those fees are doing what? They're funding more choice lanes and future toll roads. That's the expansion of how it works. So we calculated, we used some examples in North Texas where I used to live. If you were driving this five mile stretch of road during rush hour traffic every

morning and every afternoon, you would be budgeting as an individual over $200 a month. Now, for most people, when you talk about $200 a month, that is a legitimate monthly budget item, right? That's not just disposable income that you throw around. So these are real dollars that are going to affect real people. We had someone from North Texas comment on my video. the IT Solutions people. She said, you know, I live in Keller, which is on the west side of town, and I got a job in Addison, which is in North Dallas. The job was amazing. We were so excited. But she said, whenever I calculated the tolls and she mentioned the Expressway, I was like,

I'm going to be in the middle of the world. And I was like, I'm going to be in the middle of the world. And she said, you know, I'm going to be in the middle of the world. And I was like, I'm going to be in the middle of the world. Madison, which is in North Dallas. The job was amazing. We were so excited. But she said, whenever I calculated the tolls and she mentioned the express lanes that I would have to take to get to work, it didn't make any sense. And I had to turn down the job. Yeah. OK, so the what were the message we're trying to put forward is this whole idea that, you know, it's just a choice lane and it's your choice and it's a user fee and all

these things that those things sound good. The problem is they don't function that way once these things are implemented. And as you pointed out, that money is going to go to them and they want more of these things. So that's where they're going to invest their money in making more toll roads, prohibiting more non-toll roads. There's going to be a non-compete agreement there. And I've seen that in practice.

I've seen that whenever a state, whenever Florida or wherever, North Carolina or Texas, places that I've lived, whenever they bring in a toll road, it's a big deal. And then all of a sudden they start multiplying. It metastasizes like a cancer. And it just completely chokes out, uh, other transportation. And we're sending this money to a foreign corporation. What are they going to do with it? And then of course, there's been a lot of, yeah, there's been a lot of problems with, uh, these toll roads and, um, having, uh, financial issues, you know, cost overruns and things like

that, bankruptcies, and then people buy them out and transfer them over again. I mean, there's been issues with that in Texas and Indiana, many other places where these things have been a big financial drain on the people who live there. So how do we stand together? How do we push this back? What's the effective way to oppose this? Yeah, well, right now it sits in the House Transportation Committee uh that they had the bill was scheduled to be heard on Tuesday we actually got that push through our activism which we're thankful for uh the committee rolled the bill to Tuesday February 28th so on February 28th that bill is supposed to come back up in the house Transportation Committee and if you go to tennesseestands.org you'll see a take action form to say no to toll roads. And we've got, I think there are 25 members on that

committee. It's a very large committee. If you hit the take action button, you can send personalized or a form letter. You can send emails to all 25 members of that committee. And we've got a call list as well. And that's where we are right now. We are trying to make sure that the members of the Transportation Committee in the House hear from constituents and hear from people, and hopefully they get details where they become educated. Let me say this. It's not a hopeless task because I remember in North Carolina in the early 90s, homeschooling was starting to multiply.

And so the teachers in the state, you know, all the teachers in the state got together their unions and trade organizations, and they decided that they would shut down homeschooling. And the state was pretty much run by Democrats at the time. It looked like a hopeless cause, but people started writing their representatives. And even though there weren't a whole lot of homeschoolers, they typically don't hear from anybody over any issue. And so that non-participation actually works in our favor. And this is true on any issue in any state because most people are passive and they don't participate. If you start sending letters in and they look at the stuff and they weigh the quantity of mail that's coming in, if you start writing these people, that gets their attention. It really does.

And if you can have a few homeschoolers take on the massive teachers unions and professional organizations and the Department of Education in one state and win, you can win on this issue as well. It's not a hopeless situation. Yeah. Look, when you're advocating for policy, part of the thing to understand is, for example, like I said, this particular committee, you've got 25 members. In Tennessee, these House members, and over the course of four months, our session runs from January to April, they're going to look at 1,500 bills, roughly, that runs through the House in a four-month period, 1,500 bills. And so I think to take the heat off of them just a little bit, I don't want to take all the heat off of them, but just a little bit, they're not as educated as they need to be on all the nuances of all of these policies that they're having to vote on. So it is incumbent

upon not only advocacy organizations like Tennessee Stands, but it's incumbent upon the citizens and constituents of the state to get educated on these issues so that, by the way, per Article 1, Section 23 of our state constitution, so that we can instruct our state representatives. That is our duty and citizens ought not to shirk that duty because if if we're not educating our representatives on these issues and making calls guess who they're listening to the lobbyists those are the only voices left right so I I would just challenge anyone in every state and around the world listening to this program. It is incumbent upon you. That is a self-governance duty for you to be educated on these issues so

that you can instruct your representatives as to how you would like them to vote so that they walk into these things educated. Because I guarantee you, these 25 members of this transportation committee, they've been sold the idea of user fees and we're going to minimize congestion without putting burden on the taxpayers and all these great things. And are just not aware of the bulk of the, or I should say, all of the other ancillary issues, right? We talked earlier about tracking. I guarantee you, none of them are thinking about the possibility of government surveillance and the future ability to now track citizens as they move about. So these are, these are just important conversations we need to have. That's right.

They've only heard one side of the argument. They haven't heard any negative aspects of it. And so you can't expect them to make a reasonable decision if they don't hear the one side of the argument. They haven't heard any negative aspects of it. And so you can't expect them to, to make a reasonable decision if they don't hear the other side of it. You know, that's, that's one of the key things that we have when we struggle with free speech now in this country,

the whoever is, has got an agenda and they're pushing to change everything on us. They want to make sure that only one side of that is heard by the public, heard by everyone. And so you can guarantee that these people in your state legislature are only going to be hearing one side of the issue if they don't hear from you. Well, I'm glad that you're taking this on. I'm glad that you've got an organization like this, and thank you for coming on and telling us about this. This applies to everybody everywhere,

really. This is a specific issue, but it is a template for the way that all these different state governments operate everywhere, regional governments and other countries as well. Thank you so much for joining us. Gary Humble, TennesseeStands.org. Thank you so much. Thanks for the time. Thank you. The Common man. They created common core to dumb down our children.

They created common past to track and control us. Their commons project to make sure the commoners own nothing. And the communist future. They see the common man as simple, unsophisticated, ordinary. But each of us has worth and dignity created in the image of God. That is what we have in common. That is what they want to take away. Their most powerful weapons are isolation, deception, intimidation. They desire

to know everything about us while they hide everything from us. It's time to turn that around and expose what they want to hide. Please share the information and links you'll find at thedavidknightshow.com. Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing. If you can't support us financially, please keep us in your prayers. thedavidknightshow.com. Looking for reliable IT solutions for your business? At Innovate, we are the IT solutions people for businesses across Ireland. From network security to cloud productivity, we handle it all. Installing, managing, supporting and reporting on your entire IT and telecoms environment so you can focus on what really matters. Growing your business. Whether it's communications or security, Innovate has you covered. Visit Innovate today. Innovate, the IT Solutions People.