The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - 30 Minutes With CEO Brent Lillard On I Love CVille; CVille Allowing Homeless To "Own" Rivanna Trail

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

The I Love CVille Show headlines: 30 Minutes With CEO Brent Lillard On I Love CVille CVille Allowing Homeless To “Own” Rivanna Trail & River Bathrooms, Needle Disposal, Janitorial For Homeless Characterize CVille Business & Political Climate Today Reaction To Erika Kirk Speech At Western Albemarle Reaction To AlbCo Schools Throttling Free Speech Iran War, Gas Prices, Labor Market, AI, Redistricting Video: Buckingham Farmer Lashes Out At Supervisors Read Viewer & Listener Comments Live On-Air Brent Lillard, Co-Founder & CEO of GovSmart, Inc, joined me live on The I Love CVille Show! The I Love CVille Show airs live Monday – Friday from 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm on The I Love CVille Network. Watch and listen to The I Love CVille Show on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, iTunes, Apple Podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Fountain, Amazon Music, Audible, Rumble and iLoveCVille.com.

Welcome to the I Love Sevo Show, guys. My name is Jerry Miller, and thank you kindly for joining us on a Wednesday afternoon in downtown Charlottesville. Very much looking forward to today's show. We're going to spend the hour with Brent Lillard, community stakeholder, serial entrepreneur, family man, a gentleman who grew up in this area. And a gentleman that has been self-employed for 16 years now is creating a lot of jobs for the area, a lot of tax revenue for the area. He's got skin in the game on a number of different levels in Charlottes. Almoreland, Central Virginia, and we'll talk about that on the show today. The news that I find most startling, and every day I wake up and I find news to be startling. I mean, it seems to be more and more this Pandora's box of what the hell is going on around here has just absolutely open. But from a local level, 28 minutes ago, Charlottesville City Hall released a press release, sent a press release out to some of us. And in that press release, this is absolutely bananas. I cannot believe I'm even saying this. Charlottesville government is now going to make the homeless encampment by Free Bridge on the Rivana Trail and the Rivana River more comfortable for the houseless population by providing janitorial services, porter pottys and bathrooms, dirty needle disposal containers, and other outreach services on taxpayer dime.

This is our money that's being used. to fund this outreach. This is legitimately Seattle, Portland, and the stuff you see on television that's going on in San Francisco. And now it's happening on what I always thought was an incredible amenity for our community, the Rivana Trail and the Rivana River.

I want to talk about that with Brent Liller today. We're going to characterize the Charlottesville political and business climate, the vulnerability of it, the upside as well, potentially. We'll talk Erica Kirk at Western Amore High School. We'll talk Erica Kirk in general. The Almore County School Board, changing the rules on Almore County students.

We will talk the war in Iran today, surging gas prices, the labor market, the impact of artificial intelligence, redistricting in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Goodness gracious, grab your ice coffee, your lunch, and sit back for the hour because Brent Lillard has a lot of opinions and a lot of commentary and a lot of stuff.

He is textbook perfect for a talk. I sincerely mean that. Judah Wickcar is behind the camera. We'll highlight one of the partners that make the program possible. Stanley Martin Holmes is a home builder and a developer that is doing some pretty significant stuff locally with condominiums and town homes and single family detached houses. They're bringing thousands of homes to market in Green County right on the Almaral line. They have had positive impacts in the Glenmore neighborhood down Fifth Street extended,

Avon extended, so many different pockets in seven. central Virginia. It's a trusted name in home development and home building, and it's Stanley Martin Holmes. If we can go to the studio camera, Judah, and then a two-shot, make sure we have a three-shot lined up. Judah, you're a compelling voice locally, and I want to weave your commentary into the show as well. Brent Lillard, without further ado, first, I'm extremely grateful for you joining us again. Thanks for having. It's my pleasure. Why don't we start just with an introduction of you first, and then we'll get to the nitty-gritty. Introduce yourself to the viewers and listeners. Sure. Yeah, I'm Brent. I grew up in Madison County and, you know,

obviously close enough to Charlottesville, I considered this home. Went to George Mason up in Northern Virginia and came back here in 2010 to start GovSmart. So, and I co-own Gracie Charlottesville as well, the Jiu-Titza Academy. He is a family man. He's got two boys, got a wife, grew up in the area, serial entrepreneurs, community stakeholder. All right, the news that just broke, the Free Bridge Encampment. This is absolutely bananas to me. I'll give you the bullet points, which you already read, the viewers and listeners. They're basically making the homeless encampment more comfortable.

Bathrooms, dirty needle, syringe, disposal containers, janitorial services, and other maintenance and outreach at the Free Bridge homeless encampment that everyone sees when they're on that side of town. Where do you want to start with this? Yeah, I generally don't believe in propping up unsustainable behavior. That's the real issue with it. I'm a big believer in safety nets for the disabled, whether it's mentally or physically disabled, and even temporary safety nets for people who become unemployed just down their luck very temporarily. What I don't believe in is the long-term sustainment of these things.

I don't think it is sustainable. I think that long-term it's going to be a disaster. So hearing things like them putting out the, you know, heroin needle depositories or whatever you know that's just really sketchy it's amazing to have you know a government that both you know outlaws and prosecutes people for something but then enables it and incentivizes it at the same time it's pretty pretty two-sided in my opinion so I think that's a terrible idea I you know would have loved to be able to hike the Rivana Trail and go in that

area with my kids no way in the world that I would ever bring my you know four and six-year-old boys down there or my wife certainly even with me, and I'm a trained martial artist. I still feel like it's super sketchy and just not a good look for Charlottesville. You can see it when you drive by. I've been seeing a lot of comments from people from the community, people that have left the community and come back and are really shocked to see it. It's just a black eye on Charlottesville,

and I think it perfectly complements the problem that we have at every street corner, you know, where you have the same people over and over again that look perfectly capable of getting jobs and, you know, doing work like the rest of those. but they insist on standing there. And, you know, I used to be one that give them money. But then I saw the same people, same people, same people, and then just kind of came to a realization that that's probably not the best thing.

I've tried hiring some of them. I actually did hire one right from the street corner, picked him up in my car, and, you know, drove him around, bought him groceries, and then hired him at GovSmart to attempt to kind of rehabilitate. And that particular case actually worked well. He ended up getting another job. That was the whole goal is to, like, kind of incubate him into getting the job that he wanted.

it worked out. But it's, I think that that's where we need to have more programs, rehabilitating people into the workplace and really helping people stand on their own two feet instead of propping up an unsustainable system. Judah is showing photos on screen of the Free Bridge homeless encampment. I'm going to offer some commentary and then anywhere you want to go, Brent, three guys here at the bar, the coffee shop or the barbershop, just talking about stuff. Sure. I used to live in Glemore.

we would take when driving to this office building, we would come down Pantops, down Freebridge, hang a left on High Street, and come to downtown Charlottesville. That homeless encampment is incredibly visible

by thousands of thousands of people as they enter, I guess that would be the eastern gateway of the city of Charlottesville. There's the perception and today's world perception is reality. There's taxpayer resources that will provide janitorial services, heroin needle cleanup services, bathroom services, and other upkeep and maintenance services for this homeless encampment.

There is the politics of this where business owners are screaming, this is impacting our bottom lines. We've certainly seen on the downtown mall. Oh, absolutely. I think you may have firsthand perspective. I think you mentioned to me eating at Citizen Burger Bar one time with your family. Oh, yeah. Anywhere you want to go on this, I'm curious of how we got in this position?

How do you solve this position? It's toxic compassion. Oh, go down that road. So it's basically, you know, it's, I think that it all comes on the surface with good intentions. You know, I think it's obviously you want to be compassionate for everyone. You know, obviously, you know, someone who's homeless, you know, they have a whole set of circumstances from maybe genetics or something going on physically to just life circumstances, you know, that could lead them down that path. and coming from a place of, you know, everything has been great in my life. And I've been very lucky.

Had two parents that are still together today. And, you know, everything's gone great for me. So it's hard for me to sit from my high horse and say, you know, these people shouldn't be in that circumstance. But I do see from a policy and government perspective that you don't want to add on more by incentivizing that type of behavior. And I think that that's what they've done. They've allowed them to do, you know, basically what would be illegal for anyone else.

You know, if I were to stand on that street corner and leave all my trash, you know, at the corner of hydraulic and 250, you know, or all the other places, there's so many of them, if I were to leave all my trash there, you know, I would go, you know, I'd have a huge fine. Maybe jail. I don't know how that works, but I'm sure that I wouldn't get away with it. But with these people, they've kind of enabled this whole culture, you know, it incentivizes more people to live like that and go down that path. We obviously have the homeless shelters and things like that. But a lot of the people that are, you know, living these tent communities, they can't get into those homeless shelters because they've either caused problems or they might have drug problems or something like that where they're not letting them in. So I just think it's more from a perspective of how do we fix this. The first thing is to take away the big pile of crap that the flies are landing on basically like it's incentive. And you can't you just can't do that. So I think there could be much better ways. We support the ID program, for example, with the Haven, which is helping anyone to get their driver's license, Social Security card, birth certificate, whatever they need for gainful employment.

We've financed that for many years. And, you know, I think that all charity and all activities that the government does, especially with taxpayer, community taxpayer dollars, I think it should be very, very focused on helping people help themselves, and then helping only the community that cannot help themselves, you know, the ones that are, obviously if you're, you know, disabled and have mental problems, you know, there needs to be some form of social support network for that. but I think that it could be achieved much better with charities and things like that if they would change some of the rules on, you know, what happens with your write-offs and things like that. So it's a deep, deep subject that I think is very hard to, one person to wrap your head around, but I can see clear things that the city is doing to double down on this problem and make it worse.

Janus Boyce Trevillian is watching the program. Carlos Ebenes Franco is watching the program. Jeremy Wilson and Eastern Tennessee. Barbara Becker-Tilly. Spencer Pushard of Buckham County, Vanessa Park Hill of Earleysville. We have folks in West Virginia, Southwestern Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New York, and right now Nevada on the show. Viewers and listeners, put your comments in the feed, and I will relay them live on air to Brent Lillard. I'm Florida.

I'm flabbergasted. Do you, are you, would you share the story of what happened with you while eating? On the downtown mall. Yeah, I was on the downtown mall eating at Citizen Burger with my wife and kids and my parents. And some man comes up screaming. He had had some run in with the manager, I guess, at Citizen Burger. And he was screaming a bunch of profanity and just being really out of control. And it went on for the longest time. And I'm sitting there thinking, you know, thinking, you know, maybe I'm the guy that needs to stand up and do something about this. But I bit my tongue for as long as I could. And eventually I stood up and just started walking towards the guy and told him he to get out of there. And as I was walking towards him, the police officer came up and told me to sit down and, you know, go away basically, because he thought that was going to cause a problem with that. And then he ended up walking the homeless man down the mall and leaving him about a block down the mall where he continued to yell and scream and do all kinds of crazy stuff. That was sad to watch. But then after I did that, I guess one of the managers at Sissonberger came out and gave me a piece of pie or cake.

I think it was a big piece of cake. One of the waitresses came up to me and said, thanks so much. much because, you know, when I stood up and walked towards them is when it all stopped. But it is, it's definitely frustrating to see it happen and be really supported. And I'm a huge proponent of the civil police. I think they're great. They do a wonderful job and they're just all, every one of them that I've met has been a stand-up person. But I think that in general, they face a lot of pressure from the city and in all these different groups that don't allow them to do their job, you know, the way that I think they would all like to do it. So I really blame that. But, but it is really bad. You

you can't go, if you're on the downtown mall, if it's really packed with a lot of people, it's not such a problem because it kind of drowns it out. But if you go down there when it's not a lot of people, you know, it can be, you know, 15, you know, homeless people and maybe three of them are a problem. The rest of them are all super nice and I'll bring my dog down there and talk to all of them. You know, they're all great, you know, but as far as, you know, allowing them to store their stuff there and basically have encampments and just, you know, constantly, you know, be in everyone's face. You know, I think they need to be really hard on the ones that are saying things they're not supposed to say, you know, being aggressive to

people. You know, is it the clapping man that goes down the downtown mall. I've seen so many actions of him, you know, screaming at, you know, 12-year-old girls at the top of his lungs, scaring him half to death. It's just, it's not only dangerous, it's just foolish for the, for the business community and for, you know, anyone that wants to go down there and enjoy it, it really ruins the downtown mall. For the viewers and listeners that are just tuning in, the news broke at about 12.10 p.m. that City Council and City Hall have approved that taxpayer resources, taxpayer money, will be allocated to the homeless encampment on the Rivana Trail by the Rivana River under Freebridge.

Dirty syringes tied to opiate use, there will be now containers and disposal scenarios situated over there. Janitorial services and bathrooms will be provided along with other maintenance and upkeep. It just blows my mind. We could spend an entire show on this, but this guy's got too much to offer to spend just the show on this topic. I think we should also talk about some of the other storylines and trends that are happening locally. How would you characterize the economy locally? Brent? You know, I think the local economy seems good from a retail perspective.

You know, GovSmart. We don't do a whole lot of local business, so it's hard to see from, you know, what I do from my main job. But, you know, I think it's probably pretty good as far as, you know, people wanting to go out and, you know, buy things and, you know, use the services that are available and everything, but I do think that the city, you know, could certainly do a better job. You know, I think that ultimately the taxes, when they go up, you know,

whether the Spanberger, all these bills and things are going to pass, and if the tax does go up to 13%, like they've talked about, I think that would be the nail in the coffin. I think that businesses are just going to leave in droves. It'll be big. I'll move my business, you know, very possibly. So, and that's, you know, this

year, hopefully we're going to be a billion in revenue. You know, that's not a good look. Where would you move to? I don't know. I think that the only option would probably be West Virginia or something like that, which I would just hate because I love Charlottesville. I love Madison. I don't want to move my family and everybody's here, all my friends.

So you would move your family too. I would have to. Yeah, I would have to move. Just because if the tax goes up that dramatically, it would be, you know, in my income bracket with the business and everything, it would be just really foolish to stay. And I think that you'll find that with a lot of the big businesses and people that are, like, doing huge things in town,

that why would they stay? you know, it doesn't really make much sense. They're certainly not going to move here. So you're going to get a drain, you know, that's ultimately going to happen. And they just don't think this stuff through. They think short term, you know, everyone is, you know, quick to say, oh, if you've got a lot of money, give it all away, you know, but they forget about you have to have the carrot as the incentive, you know, for people to go do the massive amount of work and risk that it takes to achieve anything in this world.

So I think it's really, you know, I don't have much else to say about the local economy. I just think that a lot of the things they're doing are really foolish. I mean, even something as simple is like the gun ban is going to deter a lot of people from moving here and make a lot of people move out because you're basically overnight going to create a massive amount of criminals. I would expect 5% of the people are going to actually follow the law. You should explain the gun ban here. I wanted to talk about this with you. Yeah, the gun ban. So, you know, and we're, we manufacture firearms.

I'm not sure how it'll affect us from a manufacturing side, but me is just a personal gun enthusiast. I love to shoot. I have an AR, you know, I really enjoy, you know, all that. You know, just the fact that you wouldn't be able to transport it. So that means you can't take it to the range. So you can have it at your house, but you can't take it to the range. You can't use it in any way. You can't sell it.

That's completely ridiculous. And not to mention a blatant violation of the Second Amendment, in my opinion. I think that any argument that it's not a violation of the Second Amendment is ignorant and ridiculous. I generally try to just exit those conversations immediately because it's like you can't win with someone that's going to make an argument that dumb, in my opinion. And I think it's just ridiculous. So I do think, you know, that, I mean, they're doing all kinds of things. They're going to put a gym tax. So, like, going to the gym is going to cost more money.

It means I have to probably charge more for my Grace Charlottesville memberships, which is sad. And, you know, they're going to have a sleeping tax and a dog walking tax. I mean, they're just putting every kind of tax they can think of. And people don't realize the impact of taxation. You know, the states are all competing with each other for who has the most attractive environment. And the reason people are all moving in droves down to Florida. To Florida and Texas. and all these places because it's more, you know, sustainable for business, and you're going to see

that there's way more jobs down there and things will just be a little bit better. But it is, we're also, you know, barreling into the age of AI and automation and robotics and, you know, jobs are going to be threatened anyway. So we've got some real hard times ahead, or maybe, maybe not even hard times, which is very different and a very, you know, mentally challenging time, just trying to figure out how it's all going to go. It's really hard to predict when things are changing as fast as they are. How do you characterize the labor market and the impact of artificial intelligence on the labor market at a countrywide level? I think that it will affect the white-collar jobs first.

Lawyers, doctors, things like that are going to be a thing of the past or at least change roles completely. I think you're going to have to be an elite in your field to basically have a job. New hires and training people, I think it's going to be a thing of the past. I think it's just not going to be efficient compared to your optimist robot that you can buy that can go change its battery every 20 minutes. I just really think that it's going to be a huge impact. I fully expect that the government will have to enable some kind of a universal basic income or something, which I'm totally against. I'm a libertarian and very much into capitalism.

But I think that it will be the only option, you know, as the jobs dry up and as power consolidates, the people that have all the money and all the patents and all the ones that own the data centers are going to basically run the world. And there's a very small, you know, group of bankers that can kind of buy into all that and control it. So I think that we're going to have really interesting times. I think they'll cure aging. I think they will cure every disease, every possible thing, every problem, and basically require no labor out of humans in the long term.

But the human condition is to drive forward and do things and be useful. And when they take that away, I think that's going to leave a void. It's going to be a lot of depression. And I think people are going to be miserable, even though life becomes really easy. and you'll find that first world countries don't necessarily have happier populations than third world countries. I mean, you just people, the happiness is really the difference in what you expect and what you get. And I think that people need to feel valued and like they're doing something. And when the robots are doing it all and you're just kind of sitting around playing video games,

I think people are going to get very depressed. But, you know, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it'll all. No, no, no, I don't think you're wrong. Amazing. I think it's going to be really different times. I don't think you're wrong at all. I play some of the clients that we service at our firm.

firm, you know, are our clients that own, you know, $200, $300 million worth of real estate locally. And I got to know some of these folks and I asked these guys, I won't utilize their name. You know, what's it like to have this kind of wealth, this many buildings? Across the board, they all say you get to this level. It's maybe about keeping score, but it certainly does not create any kind of more happiness. No. Once you get to a certain clip, they've all said this across the board in different conversations. Once you get to a certain clip of earning, and it's, you know, dependent on the amenities you want,

the additional resources provide no happiness, and they provide significant more headache and trouble. Exactly. Like, succinctly, that's what's been said. And there was a meme we've talked about on the show, and I'll throw it to you. Artificial Intelligence, AI, and technology replacing, I think it's going to replace white-collar, jobs without question. Blue collar next. The humans that lose their jobs because of technology,

the meme is that they're going to be on stationary bikes in rooms, rows of 12 stationary bikes, five or six different rows, producing the energy from the kinetic bikes for the AI and the data centers while the data centers run the world in the economy. And that's a terrifying proposition. Yeah, it is. It is. I think it's going to be very different.

I think that we're going to be the last. last generation that grew up even remembering what it's like to not have internet. And when we did have internet in the early days, it wasn't what it is today. You're talking millennials. Yeah. Yeah. So just in general, you know, I think that we're the last generation where, you know, we have both experienced full tech where we understand it and we're immersed in it and we help develop it, you know, as a, you know, an age range or whatever. But, you know, I just think, I just think that it's going to be really interesting for like kids like my my kids age they grow up with all this tech chachibouti from the time they can remember they can ask it any question and get a really

thorough answer that's a totally different era you know and i'm going to be curious what effects it has on the brain you know the self-worth all the stuff but it'll also probably lead to really interesting things i'm sure they're all going to be you know super intelligent you know to an extent you know because they're going to have access to so much more information that we've ever had faster. So it'll probably, the brains will adapt. I'm sure it'll do real well with that. But I do see personalities changing. I think people are going to become more and more recluse and unable to talk to people. It's going to basically, you know, be an autism, you know, pandemic. You know, I think that some of that might be evolution to the conditions, you know, because if you look, a lot of the autistic kids are extremely good

with technology. Extremely fast. And they're like, they're really almost evolved for what we do today. like the way that tech works today, whereas 30 years ago it might have been a totally different thing. So I'll be curious how that all evolves too. I'm going to highlight viewers and listeners that are watching the show and comments that are coming in.

Props to you on a number of different pages. I'm going to ask you this question after highlighting the viewers and listeners. What is the rule that your family has, your household with your two boys? We have a three-year-old and a seven-year-old. You have a four-year-old and a six-year-old. I'm curious of what your wife and

and your rule is with screen time and technology. Damien, it's a Damien Underwood. I spent many years helping homeless and spending time in their camps, being homeless myself as a child. This is something I can get behind. Helping others help themselves

as the right path forward. Heather Michelle is watching the program. Brent, you're a great human, very inspiring episode today. Jonathan Martens, Martin's watching the program. Marina Sandler, Eileen Smith. We have seven different states watching the program right now.

All these people. I wish I could give a little pitch about each one of them. Handsome Hank Martin is watching the program. He's got a comment that I'm going to relay. Jerry, if one were to summarize the Charlottesville business and political environment succinctly, it's this. Charlottesville is a progressive university town with a culturally influential but economically constrained city government surrounded by a rapidly growing suburban county that captures

much of the region's business expansion. its economy is anchored by tourism, higher education, health care, and emerging life sciences, but it faces persistent tensions between growth and preservation, activism, and economic competitiveness, planning ambitions, and market realities. Handsome Hank Martin, we appreciate that comment right there. What is the screen time policy in the Lillard House with your two boys? I've heard Gary V say let your kids use the screens because the kids that can use the technology will have a leg up come their time in the workforce.

Then I've heard the C-suite and these major tech companies like Zuckerberg's kids, they don't let their kids use the apps at all. Like literally don't let them use Facebook or Instagram at all. Right. Because they understand the collateral damage associated with social media time. Yeah, social media versus screen time, two very different things. 100%. It's a different level.

But yeah, so our rule, we don't do any screen time during the week unless it's, Mario Kart with Daddy. Okay. So that's the rule. So if it's if it's Mario Kart with mommy and daddy and we're playing all together as a family and that's for very short bursts of time 15 minutes, 20 minutes of time, then that's okay. But in general, we don't let them hang out on their iPads. Both of my boys are obsessed with the iPad and the video games and the YouTube and everything that they can get their hands on. And so right now my oldest is playing the link, you know, on the switch and Donkey Kong and all these things. and he will just sit. I'll walk in after work.

If they are able to play it for some reason, if I were to walk in, they just don't even acknowledge that I'm home. They're so glued to that thing. And so we have to be like, okay, drop it, but all that ends now. So we've established a rule.

Just no screen time during the week, just on the weekends. But we generally tried to give them lots of time to be unrestricted with it so that they can explore it and figure it out and it's definitely worked well. And I have a story from my childhood. I grew up with a father who was very business savvy, very motivated, you know, woke up early,

worked his butt off his whole life, grew up in an area where it was like, you know, he had to wake up early and pick apples and peaches and sell them on the side of the road. So he, you know, money came hard for him, you know, and just very disciplined guy. And so he had a serious problem when computers came out. I was working at a computer store from when I was real young. And I was a huge computer gamer and I would just basically do nothing but sit on that computer I didn't talk to girls as much as I wanted to I was too scared of them and I would just sit on that damn thing for 15 hours a day it was brutal and he eventually had enough of it and established rules like you can't can't do this anymore and he made all these restrictions and and this is of course later in life when I was

in my you know teenage years but he he did restrict it but then I I fought that so hard he wanted me to play a lot less of it and we found a happy medium where it was like, okay, a reasonable amount of screen time, but I'm really glad that he allowed me to keep going with it to a certain extent because that led to my IT career, you know, all my tech businesses and things like that have been highly influenced by the ability to do, you know, computers at a young age. So I'm a big believer in screen time. I just think that it has to be super restricted. You can't have kids that don't receive dopamine from anything but that. You have to combine it with everything else. So we do, of course, you know, I'm Grace

Charlottesville or Coen Grace of Charleston so we do wrestling, moitai and then my favorite of all Jiu-Jitsu and then we have, they do lacrosse and swimming and go-karting and snowboarding, just everything we can do with them. We're constantly throwing stuff at them, just getting them rollerblades right now. You know, go-karting and racing is a big thing. I don't know if I said that, but we try to give them so much to do that is outside of screen time to make sure that they're well-rounded kids. You know, I want them to go outside and play a lot.

I think it's really, really important to have a balance. But I think taking it away altogether is not necessarily the best move for, you know, if you want kids that are tech savvy in a tech world. Comments are coming in extremely quickly. I want to highlight Katie Mullins and her listing on 919 Druitt Avenue. She has an open house. She's a partner of the show, open house this Saturday at 10 a.m. 919 Druid Avenue is in Belmont, $699,000 asking price,

four bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms with a basement walkout apartment that's income producing. Folks, it's a fantastic opportunity on the real estate market at 919, Druid Avenue. Comments are coming in faster than I can keep up. On LinkedIn, John Blair says, in this calendar year alone, the following individuals have moved to Florida due to taxes. Mark Zuckerberg, Sergei Bryn of Google, Larry Page of Google, Howard Schultz of Starbucks fame.

All of these moves are due to taxation policies in California and Washington State. that's in response to what you said about considering the move to West Virginia. If that happens and GoffSmart does go to West Virginia, that will be a significant loss for our community. You have friends that are trying to encourage you to move elsewhere to other states, including... I heard South Carolina is doing some good stuff with taxes, too. Elizabeth Barry Moyer says move to Montana. Oh, yeah. It's a great state.

They'll save me a total in my property taxes. Yeah, it's a great state. I have a car problem, so that would definitely help me. This is from Vanessa Parko, who's watching in Earleysville, and she's fascinated by the interview, and she wants your take on where AI leads. She says, sci-fi books and movies have given us some hints, The Matrix, Terminator, for example, other books she's referencing. But please ask Brent, where he thinks artificial intelligence will eventually be the end game.

Yeah, I think, you know, we're approaching the singularity. I think that it's going to be happening so fast that we can't keep up with it. I think the changes will happen, you know, faster than anyone. can keep up with. But I do see, you know, what, you know, when I was a kid, Terminator seems so ridiculous, so way off in the future, you know, that can never happen. But now you're seeing it's almost worse than that. You know, I feel like it's, you know, the automation of the entire system is, you know, pretty, pretty incredible, you know, if it's weaponized. So I do see that, and I see also the Matrix being possible. They're actually, you know, I've heard some things that, I don't know

what's true and what's not, but I've heard some things that that's actually one storyline that the same original author created Terminator and then the Matrix says like one continuous story. But I do see that being possible because I think that just already you're seeing people immersed into the VR world. You know, the VR is getting more and more advanced. You know, we're just over at Luna Labs the other day. They're working on some really cool stuff that's going to kind of bridge the gap between, you know, what seems like virtual reality and what seems like reality.

You know, it's really blending. And eventually you're going to put on your headset and you're going to be, you know, it's going to be manipulating everything from your inner ear to your, you know, you're going to get haptics of all kinds, and then the graphics are going to get better and better. Eventually it will probably tie into your own brain and start to manipulate your brain waves to make you have experiences. So I do think that that's ultimately going to lead to a matrix environment where people are, they check into their pod or whatever, and they choose ignorant bliss, you know, basically like, you know, retreat into your century deprivation tank and enter this whole immersive, experience of bliss and like you know life being amazing um i don't see that humans will avoid that

long term as sad as it is it's really really sad because i think that you know there and there's all these different philosophies from religion to you know to science and deciding like what we are and like why we're here and stuff but i do as i've gotten older i've really gotten the sense of feeling that we're here to play the game of life you know we're here to experience it to do it And if we make it all up and make it all virtual, you know, I think that's ultimately your brain's going to subconsciously know that you're not really having a value and that there's nothing really no point to it. So I think that depression is going to be a real problem in the future. But I do see all work ending, you know, as far as like any need to survive. The question will be how do the hierarchy systems work?

Because like right now you're how much you make and like, you know, it can kind of like filter into like where you fit in the hierarchy. Do you have power? or do you have relationships with people. It's obviously easier if you have money and influence. And so I'll be curious when everyone's on the same level playing field and we all grow up from the machines, what rules change and how that all goes? I have no idea.

I don't think it's going to be great. It's definitely worrisome. I wish that I could just go back in time and read. I want my kids to be able to relive exactly the way I did. I had a great experience from like no technology to lots of technology. I love that whole growth rate. But at a certain point, you know, you're not going to be able to get your head.

head around it and really understand what's happening. It's just going to be all above us. So, yeah, I don't really know where to lead, but I think it will lead somewhere very fast. I think we're going to, on point per usual, I think we're going to be in a world, folks, where very soon, very soon, where men and women are going to choose to marry or partner for life with artificial intelligence as opposed to, like, actual humans. And the rationale will be that they can create the air quotes perfect partner and the perfect partner can be physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. And they will rationalize humans, homo sapiens, that they cannot find the perfect partner themselves because no one is perfect.

That's what makes love special is because you overcome trials and tribulations as a team together. But the rationale will be, I won't have any trials to overcome. It will be nothing but bliss. so they'll choose the AI partner as opposed to the human being partner. That's a terrifying proposition. Barbara Becker-Tilly watching the program. Brent Lillard, she says,

thank you for helping to provide a clear practical understanding of business and economic growth. In Charlottesville, many people view these issues from an idealistic perspective, but your insights highlight the realities of how businesses actually operate in what they need in order to grow. Jeremy Wilson is watching in eastern Tennessee,

and he suggests that you bring your firm to Tennessee, the eastern side of it because of the tax advantages and the economic upside there. Other people are continuing to lobby for Gumpsmart to move to their respective states. I love what's happening here. Susan Bailey Schimp, welcome to the broadcast. You have a boatload of elected officials. We're going to get to that, the elected officials here, in a matter of moments. I'll throw this to you here. We'll segue into a global headline that's undoubtedly impacting us here in Charlottesville. The global headline is this war in Iran.

I posted a couple of nights ago that I saw very little to gain in a boatload to lose from this war on Iran on my social media. And I was surprised to see the response. The response was fairly even on both sides, people in agreement saying that the war in Iran was a lot to lose, very little to gain.

And then on the other side, this is what surprised me, was the comments from viewers and listeners of how Iran has created terror in their lives for years and how they've been fearful of this terroristic country for a very, very long time. I responded, and I always try to keep the responses. Sometimes I slip up and get emotional, but I always try to keep the responses, you know, level-headed. I'm like, dude, Iran's been an enemy of the United States for nearly 50 years. Like, what has changed here? I have a question specifically that I want to ask you.

Why was it an intimate? Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah. So I want to start, warn Iran, anywhere you want to go on that. Yeah, I mean, I think it all starts back. I don't know if it's the late 50s or early 60s when they overthrew the, you know, the leader there. It always starts with that. It always starts with some business reasons, some tax reasons, something to do with, you know, call it the Rothschild central banking system or whatever.

You know, there's a lot of theories on it. But I think that it's clear that if a state does not, or a country does not sponsor, the right type of banking system controlled by the right people who are the ones feeding our two-headed snake political system. I think that it becomes an immediate disaster. So I think they get overthrown, then it creates a power void, and then you get all kinds of people pissed, and they do all kinds of things. I think that we're, you know, all of our scenarios, if you look back to the bin Laden and all these, they were all U.S. created problems. Like, Ben Laden was a U.S. created thing. you know, we have propped him up for the longest time, and then we, you know, decide when the time is right to demonize and, like, you create another war with it.

But I have a lot of opinions about 9-11 and all that, probably a little bit too much for this show. But it's, I do think that there are massive conspiracies going on that people are unable to process because they're so extreme that it sounds crazy. And so, you know, coming from my perspective, you know, I'm a government contractor. I benefit dramatically when the war picks up. Even though I speak out against the war, I think it's a terrible idea. But we make a lot of money selling drone defense and, you know, laser weapons and all kinds of things. And I'm going to ask you about this. Yeah, yeah.

So we sell basically defensive, defense-related products that shoot down drones and jam the radars of drones and things like that. It can be very, very profitable. And, you know, I'm of a company, you know, if we're very lucky, you know, this year, I'm really hoping this year, in the next few years to hit to a billion dollars in annual sales. We're definitely growing, but we are a tiny, tiny, tiny drop in the bucket, just a crumb from the dinner table when you talk about like the Lockheed Martins, North of Grummans, the Raytheons of the world, that are much larger, have much more to gain and lose. And so they, you know, lobby and, you know, they control a lot about what's going on. So it makes logical sense. I've been able to make

small changes or even major changes in our IT sector for law and things like that by using lobbyists and going and speaking to Congress. And I've learned how malleable the system is. You can make changes. You can actually go in and do things with very little money. And if you have billions of dollars, you can basically own the whole thing. I mean, you can do whatever you want. So it's very complex, but I think that there's a lot of special interest that keep it all going. and I'm on the side where I benefit from that, but politically I totally disagree with it all. Daniel Kaufman watching the program,

the owner of Public Fish and Oyster and Blackout Chop House, John Shave, the doctor, watching the program. He's the owner of Pro-Ranata Brewery, Albert Graves watching the program. Don Gathers the activists watching the program. Ty Cooper watching the program. A lot of the Charlottesville Police Department watching the program. Matt Neese, Andre Xavier, just to name a few.

Okay, this is a very straightforward question. question here. This is the stuff that I think about at night. The kids are asleep, my wife's asleep. I go to bed way later than everybody else in my house. And I'm just constantly thinking about stuff. I'm reading stuff on social media, you know, whatever it is. What is the primary motive or driver of the war in Iran, the United States? I think banking interests. I think the U.S. dollar, the World Reserve currency, we have to prop that up. They violated the Bretton Woods agreement many years ago and went off of the gold standard, which was the whole reason that we had the World Reserve Currency established with the United States. I think that all wars have been a

result of that. I think that there are very, very powerful banking interests that rely on debt, and you're always going to get debt. You're not going to get a balanced budget because that doesn't benefit the people feeding the snake that runs the country, you know, in my opinion. So it's all very, very complex, but I think it is pure money, you know, oil interests, competing interests with China and Russia, you know, I think that it is, it's purely financial. I think it has absolutely nothing to do with safety at all. I think it's just made up, you know, points to, you know, basically make it all happen. That's the smoke and mirrors, the safety, to create nationalism or mom fear and dad fear to back the administration and its efforts to invade Iran.

Yeah. And now we have a safety issue. Yeah. You know, now that we go down this road. Yeah. Now we have a safety issue. It's like whenever you, you know, whether or not we did it or someone else did it, but, you know, blowing up the schools or whatever the heck happens. So much propaganda. Everything on the internet has to be like quadruple guest, whether it's on, you know, my feeds that I'm getting that are supporting my side.

I'll dig into them and three quarters of them will be totally BS when you dig through. Same with the other side. It's all just crap and with the AI. And now it's so much easier to make content, so much easier to fake things. And so I think that we're the era of fraud and lies is going to. to be upon us. I think that we're going to really have a problem with that over the years. We kill the Ayatola. People champion the killing of the Ayatollah. I immediately say the replacement of the Ayatollah is the Ayatollah son, who's a much nastier human being. The Ayatollah himself,

it's a more terroristic inclined environment with the son in charge than the father. I mean, talk about extreme. You kill his dad. What do you think is going to happen next? So I think that, you know, I can't imagine if I'm in that position and they think, oh, you know, this guy's so evil. And then they kill my dad and then I take over and then I'm going to be nice and docile and I'm going to play ball. I don't think so. And it's going to be a completely different thing. And they benefit from that. The people that are pulling the strings for this love it.

Every single bomb that drops on the other side is more ammo to push this all thing forward. So, yeah, I don't see into it. It's just one, you know, it's just digging the whole deeper. You know, why would it ever change? You own a government contracting firm, and you've said on the show a couple minutes ago that the firm does benefit with war. Big time, yeah. Big time.

Okay, I'm curious about this. There's a talk on the national news stations that the, and help me understand this, the weaponry reserves for the United States is being depleted, and that Iran is fighting the war with the cheapest, arms possible drones. And help me understand, because this is up your alley here. Yeah, drones are the big thing now. Okay.

So what Iran is using is like, costs pennies or very little money. What the United States is using is extremely expensive. And there's a depletion of reserves for the arms, the weaponry, the arsenal of the United States with what's happening here. This is really up your alley here. Can you help us understand? And you're switching more to the high energy, you know, like, like laser weapons and things like that for shooting down the drones.

They're obviously smaller and doesn't require as much. But they, you know, the problem with the drones is the numbers. You know, there's just so many of them. They're so small. They're so hard to detect. And they're just all over the place. So even like in Dubai, they were just flying around at a buddy that was visiting me that got stuck in Dubai when the airports got shut down.

And there was just drones flying into buildings and all kinds of things happening. It's just absolutely terrifying. So I'm a big believer that we need to defend against those drones. Now that we actually have a threat of that happening on a regular basis, you know, we're going to need to support the defensive systems to shoot those down. But yeah, I don't see any end to it. I think it's just going to get worse and worse. And I don't know about the U.S. depleting weapons and whatnot.

You know, there's, again, there's so much propaganda for so many different reasons that are talked about. And so I think that ultimately that can all be remade. And I think that's the goal at the end of the days. You know, a lot of the people pulling the strings are making a lot of money off that. So, so I'll throw this to you. This is another element that surprised me from here. I highlighted the seven dead American soldiers so far, seven. That we know about.

That we know about. Right. I said seven American soldiers have died. And as I've gotten older, I've been more, I guess the emotional intelligence has developed more because I start seeing life through the eyes of our sons. My wife and I's two boys. And I think every parent's worst nightmare is outliving your children. Yeah. I just couldn't imagine that.

I mean, that's like our boys are our hearts walking out. of our bodies. 100%. I pray to God that I die first. Yeah. 100%. 100%. And like I'm even getting emotional about this now.

Like seven U.S. soldiers died and their parents and their wives, their husbands, their kids are now having to deal with this. Right. And seven is a very small number compared to what could happen. Well, well the response that,

and that's where I'm going to go. And the response to this is like, what about the 30,000 or the, whatever the number is Iranians that have been killed by this, this terroristic regime. And I, this is the toughest question I think I've ever asked you. How do you look at seven American, seven dead Americans in this war versus the 30,000

Iranians that have been slaughtered over the last 50 years by this regime? Like, from my standpoint, and I'll probably catch a lot of flag. When you say this regime, you mean the Iranian regime or the Israeli regime? Right, right. All the above. Yeah. Okay. So I'll catch flag for this.

I'm an American. proud American. Like, it's about Americans first. Certainly our taxpayer dollars. Even if it's seven. Our taxpayer dollars should be spent on America first. Yeah, the fact that the number seven is being marginalized is just terrifying to me. I'm like, we should be about these Americans, these seven Americans, and everyone's like, oh, but there's these 30,000 folks that have been slaughtered. I'm like, we're Americans here.

Like, where do you want to go with this? How do you look at it? Yeah, I don't, I'm not an expert on the Iranian politics and like who's been slaughtered and why and what's been going on. you know, it could go 100 different ways, but, you know, to me, it's just more about where our tax dollars should be spent. You know, does Congress support this? Do the actual voting base support this? And the answer, I think, is overwhelmingly no. I think that if it were to go for a vote in Congress, even though Congress is owned by certain organizations that highly benefit from all this, I think even then it would be hard for it to pass. You know, I think it's much easier when you can do it with an executive order and claim, you know, whatever War Powers Act. You know, and this has been going on for years. It's not like Trump's the first person to do.

do it. You know, this is going on with the Democrats too. So I think that in general, we've established that the politicians can play the game at great flexibility, you know, without it being hammered down to these are the laws. This is the way our country works. You know, if we're going to, you know, do a massive bombing operation in another country, maybe we should consider that war and follow the Constitution and make sure that we do it the right way. But, you know, I think that that ship has totally sailed, and I'd be, you know, curious if they can ever get the cat back in the bag. Comments are coming in extremely quickly.

Philip Dow watching the program right now. Mark Hunt watching the program. Viewers and listeners, I'm going to respond to your comments or offer your comments to Brent in two minutes on the show here. Gas prices. Let's localize this to Charlottesville. A couple of Fridays ago was $2.79 at the Tiger Fuel on Ivy Road,

as I'm heading into town. 3.49, I believe, this morning. And the expectation is that gas is going to pop another 30 to 40 cents, potentially by the weekend or early next week. We should be next week, at least the crystal ballers, the prognosticators, are saying, at $4 gas. At least. At least.

I expected to keep climbing. Okay. Talk to us about gas impact here. Anybody want to go. Gas obviously, you know, affords everything. Every product is, you know, made from some, you know, way of the, you know, the gas had to be involved in order to make every product and bring everything everywhere. I mean, it's like, it's tied into everything.

everything. So, you know, it's just more inflation. You know, at the end of the day, the real inflation is the creating of the money. So, the, you know, monetary inflation is the creating of the money. And then the price inflation is when the prices go up. Generally, politicians only talk about price inflation, and then they manipulate the price inflation with the indexes and things that they, you know, they just start changing the rules, basically, to make it appear like there's less inflation than there is. But if you were to look at it in gold, for example, or any precious metals, I think you'd find that the inflation's quite, significant. I think we're just at the beginning of the hockey stick. And, you know, I don't,

I don't see them cutting back on the money printing or the debt. And I think that the money printing will ultimately lead to more inflation. So the question is, like, how long from now to we have a $100 gallon of gas? And then the average McDonald's worker makes $200 grand a year. You know, like, we're going to, that's where we're going to go. And what it does is just, it de-incentivizes saving and smart money tactics. You know, it basically makes everyone blow their money like as they get it and I've kind of evolved my life to where I see how much my you know grandparents had at a point and how long it took them to make that and how quickly that became nothing and so that makes me go buy the Porsche you know when I see it you know and honestly like

my some of my buying habits with cars and things have worked out really well I'm turning around two years later and some of the cars are more than they're worth because inflation's propping up you know having the money in the bank is a terrible idea the stock market's very manipulative You can't have any luck with that unless you just get lucky. I mean, it's purely a luck game. It's not, you can't really be smarter than the computers that are making trillions of decisions every second. You know, it's really, really, especially with AI and, you know, and all that. I think it's just a very, very tilted system that you get certain people that know how to play the game and do really well.

And then there's the rest of us that don't, don't figure it out. So I don't see anything good happening with the cost of gasoline or the cost of everything. I think the housing, you and I were talking about the housing the other day. You know, my house we bought four and a half years ago and it's already gone up like 40% or something like that in value. You should talk about, you don't have to give, unless you want to do the numbers. You don't have to get the numbers. Perhaps you do. The impact of assessments that you saw.

Yeah, that's what I mean. So the assessment has gone up close to 40% on my house just in four or five years. That's insane. You know, my actual mortgage check is much, much higher now than it was before. My wife just brought it up the other day. She pulled out the thing. It's like, God, it's so much more expensive. I'm like, welcome to taxes.

Just because they decide, you know, and I'm a big believer that unrealized gains should never be taxed, whether it's stock or whatever it has. I mean, if that were the case, you know, then how do you determine anyone's worth? You know, it's really, really complicated. I think it should always be realized gains that get taxed, but it's just another scheme, you know, that they put together to get everybody's money. The authoritarian want to make rules for everyone. They want to have as much control as they can.

So people that generally flock to those positions, you know, have those same attributes. So it's, I've been told very firmly by my wife that if I go into politics that I'm going to find a new wife. She's watching the program right now. I see her. I don't expect to go down that rabbit hole myself. But I do think that it's unfortunate. It attracts the wrong type of people generally. And, you know, those that could actually make the biggest impact wouldn't get the support financially needed, you know, from the particular groups that you need to have support up to have any chance. Jessica giving you the heart over here on the program.

She's watching the show. I think Patty's your mom. She's giving you some props. Libby Tatum. Kelly Pierapon, watching the program. 11 states on the show right now. Viewers and listeners, put your comments on the feed and we'll relay them live on air.

Do you want to touch on the Erica Kirk Western Namoral High School? Erica Kirk, all set the stage. You take it. Co-founder of TPUSS. the late Charlie Kirk's wife, honored by Donald Trump in the state of the union. I said on the show late last week that the most divisive person,

either noteworthy, or what was the opposite of noteworthy that we determined? Either most noteworthy or whatever the opposite of the most noteworthy is, is in the world today besides Donald Trump, or excuse me, in the United States today. Infamous. Either the most noteworthy or infamous person in the United States today

besides Donald Trump, I think is probably Erica Kirk. She's certainly up there. Up there. If you think of one that's more curious, to trust your opinion, Erica Kirk is scheduled to speak at Western Amaral High School on April 2nd. The T.P. USA student chapter at Western Amoral High School in Crozee is the largest chapter in the entire country at their last, meeting, 700 students showed up to their last meeting, which is roughly 53% of the student body.

Now, the naysayers will say, of those 700 that showed up for the meeting, they were just there for the pizza and the free donuts. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure a lot of them were protesting. Yeah. Or protesting. But the flip side of the argument is every student club is driving show up numbers through donuts and

pizza and candy or whatever. Every club is doing this. They had 700 kids show up there. The April 2nd. Eric Kirk that I'm going to pass it to you is scheduled for lunchtime. So the kids are not missing class. Now the Almore County School Board in a meeting this Thursday, which is tomorrow night, is changing the rules of student clubs.

Who can speak and when? No surprise. The fundraising dollars is now going to have to go into an Almore County controlled bank account and not the bank accounts of chapter of student clubs anymore. Basically ripping, castrating the autonomy and influence and decisions. decision-making of student clubs, the Amore County School Board. TPSA's national, the national organization is sending hundreds of people to politic and protest the school board meeting tomorrow night.

We literally have a Horton's Nest that's happening tomorrow night tied to Almore County Public Schools. It's amazing. Anywhere you want to go on this topic. My general opinion is that I think that schools and politics should never mix. I think that there's no circumstance where teachers should be giving their opinions to the kids. they all have different opinions and which, you know, teacher the kid likes the most will quickly influence, you know, how he believes, or he or she believes, you know, kids are too, you know, even at an 18 years old, you don't have enough life experience to really make an educated

decision on what these rules do and like what the actual effect is. So I think that the, the kids are being used, uh, as like cannon fodder for the people that want to get something done. And I don't think, I think the kids truly believe that they're involved in these things and that they're really helping, but they don't realize the manipulation that's at their political pawns. They're political pawns. And I think that no matter what side you're on, you know, I have a lot of opinions about the Turning Point USA and, you know, where that has gone after the death of Charlie.

I was a big fan of Charlie, even though I disagreed with a lot of what he said. I agreed with most of what he said. I disagree with a lot as well. I think that in general schools should avoid like the plague anything having to do with politics. All of these protests, it's all just a major distraction to, and the kids' love. of it because they get to get out of school. If I was in school back and that's all I cared about. I'd be the most politically, I would just pick

something and advocate for it so that I could get out of school. Skip algebra class. Yeah, why would you want to go to algebra class where you can go protest on the street, you know, with your buddies and it's crazy? So I think in general, like regardless of what side you're on, I think that schools in politics shouldn't mix. That's why my kids are in private school. I would never send them to public

school here. Never. If it was my last dime to avoid public school, I would. I went to public school. in Madison County, you know, much smaller town, a lot different. You know, a lot of the teachers I have are the same teachers my parents had. You know, it was a great school for a very small town. But even then, it's just like the way that things have gone lately. You know, politics and kids didn't mix as much back then. It wasn't like we were, you know, being used by the hordes, you know, to make whatever happens. So I think that, you know, I'll leave it there. I think my opinion is that

the schools should not have anything to do with politics. The teacher should. should be banned as a matter of school policy in their employment contracts, they should not be allowed to even talk about politics, in my opinion. So that's just how I feel about it. What do you think about the changing of the rules from the school board? Totally ridiculous. Just typical. It's just like the redistricting of the voters. I think that they complain about it when it hurts them, and then they support it when it helps them. And it's just very, very disingenuous and dishonest. I think that it's really ridiculous. So if they're going to allow the students to all leave and protest a, you know, what is really at the end of the day a lawful government organization,

whether you support it or not. And there's a lot of lawful government organizations that I support and don't. You're talking about ICE. Like if they're allowed to protest a federal entity that's doing federal work, if they're allowed to go out and leave school for that, then they should be able to go to the Turning Point USA meeting. However, I think that all of it should be thrown out. I think that the kids should be left to learn in school, you know, not play games with politics. that they can do that on Facebook. Comments are coming in so fast here. This question's come in from, I think it's Janice Boyce Trevillian,

and she wants to know what level of security clearance do you have? I prefer not to talk about that. Okay, yeah, totally fair. That question's come in. This comment's from Conan Owen, who is an entrepreneur locally owned SurSpeedy of Central Virginia. Gas prices are temporary. I still don't understand why they are up if we have access to it. Venezuelan crude oil no longer going to China and the U.S. is producing at record levels.

That's his comment on what we're talking about here. If you are viewers and listeners not following what's happening with Almar County Public Schools, get ready for tomorrow night, the school board meeting where elected officials are about to literally change the playbook of set rules that have been around for decades when it comes to student clubs. Student clubs in Amar County Public Schools, if they do any sort of, fundraising moving forward. That money will now not go to the student club. Instead, we'll go to an Almore County Public School Controlled Bank account. The school board members and the Almore

County administration will be able to dissolve clubs as they see fit. We'll be able to dictate the pace and tempo of agenda for school clubs, speakers for school clubs, limit school clubs to when they can actually meet with other kids. They will require a constitution or some kind of declaration document formed and presented to ACPS before the club is able to meet again? I mean, it is absolutely wild what's happening. This sounds like the definition to me of totalitarianism with Almar County Public Schools and its school board, and it's happening tomorrow night at the school board meeting. Comments, this one for you, do you want to talk at all about, we've talked redistricting

already. this comments come in from Richmond. Can he highlight other elements of overreach that he is seeing and explain why he's concerned about that overreach? Jennifer and Shortpump. Yeah, I mean, like the school thing, you know, what was the big, oh, they made a rule that in order to talk about the January 6th insurrection, you know, that it had to be spun as that.

It can only be talked about in that way. I think that's really telling you. They're really just trying to make sure that all liberal messages get out and all conservative messages are suppressed. And that's what I'm seeing that's clearly happening. So I think that these systems should have no control over any of that. They certainly shouldn't be cherry picking, you know, which projects they allow based on political affiliation.

I think that's crazy. But it's clearly going that direction. And that's where we've established that as the rule now. You know, it's not the exception. It's just the rule that everyone's going to maximize whatever the way that they can play the game. They're going to do it. I'm going to play a video here shortly to close the show.

we're an hour and change in. Time is flying here. I'm having fun with Brent Lillard. The video I'm going to show is of a farm owner in Buckingham County who's speaking in the public comment portion of a recent Buckingham County, Virginia supervisors meeting. In Buckingham County, they're pursuing data centers. I'm going to get your take on data centers. And then Judah will go to the video.

And this video, I'll set the stage. There's a small farm owner that says, if you allow this data center to come to Buckingham County, then Buckingham County is basically going to eminent domain some of her land. The land is going to be directly in the middle of her farm, and it's going to be the area where the underground infrastructure for the data center is installed or is buried. I guess buried is the better word.

And then Dominion Energy is going to have an easement. Easement rights to that small track of land that she's going to get. had pennies on the dollar, very little money for, not even market value. And remember, all they're buying is a small channel of dirt in the middle of her farm. Not the actual farb, but they're giving her the value of just the small channel and not the effing collateral damage that goes with this. The headache that goes with this. This is crazy what's happening here. And then this woman in three minutes is on the cusp of tears. She's basically said her family has bled, sweat, and cried to just to get to this point of owning the dirt.

Right. Like basically sacrifice everything in their life to maintain this little small acreage. This is far from wealthy person. And you'll see it here in about two minutes. Data centers, anywhere you want to go, Brent. Yeah, I think that data centers, that's going to be the new thing, especially for rural communities. AI is, you know, getting very big.

I think it's going to be the biggest thing. This stuff will be powering our whole world. And I think that the small towns have to kind of decide. do you want to keep it out, but you're going to definitely reduce jobs and income and all these things, you know, by that. I'm not a big fan of eminent domain. I think it's kind of silly unless it's a very extreme circumstance where it has to be done. And if it does have to be done, I think they should have to give three to five times what the property's worth in order to do that because you can't factor in sentimental, you know, value and just like, you know, whatever else.

The opportunity costs of getting there. It's really, yeah, it's not fair to just give it that whatever it costs, it's not fair. The government has enough money to pay overrate for it, and I think that's the only thing that would be fair, but I feel really bad for this lady. You know, what you're telling me, you know, it sounds awful. I'd be absolutely furious if I were her. But I think that

data centers are going to be a reality whether people like it or not. I know Madison, where I'm from is having a lot of, you know, pressure to do that. And they mitigate that, I think, by controlling water rights, and there's all these different games that people, you know, community members and, you know, the government

at play to get the outcome they want. But I do think that data centers are going to be here to stay. They're going to get larger and more powerful. I think that energy is going to be the biggest market. Whether it's nuclear power or something new they come up with, I think that energy is going to be the key to the whole thing. They take a ridiculous amount of energy. Also, certain computer components are very hard to come by.

Like, they've bought up all the memory in my world. We sell a lot of computers. You can't get a laptop with memory in it anymore. They're like the cost of memory is skyrocketed because they're buying all that up. So there's just a lot that's going to change in order to support this, the massive, massive, massive infrastructure that has to come into play to support all the AI. So I think that it's probably good for Buckingham to have the data center, I would imagine, but not good for the person that has their land taken.

They should be getting a serious premium for that. Like a real premium, like three times of what's worth. It should be almost enough that everyone is happy when it comes to take your land. Yeah, and instead they're getting the value for a small little tunnel of land. That's in the middle of the land. Right, that's crazy. This is just, it's just, this is, and we're going to play the video. Do you have that ready to go?

We'll end with that. Anything else? I sincerely like, appreciate you. You're extremely well read. You have opinions. You back them up with what you've read. Frankly, from a talk show standpoint, you're the type of guest that we want to have all the time.

Because you have a lot to say. I love it. You have a lot to say. This is very entertaining for me. so you can bring me here whenever you want to. We enjoyed as well. His name is Brent Lillard, community stakeholder. Thank you for joining us on the show. Thank you so much.

It's our pleasure. We'll close the show. Viewers, this is three and a half minutes of your time that you have to watch. This is a Buckingham County resident that literally is speaking before the Buckingham County Board of Supervisors about eminent domain tied to data centers and a small track of land that is going to be taken from her to bury data center, underground infrastructure, and then Dominion Energy will have access rights to this small track of land in perpetuity. That's for freaking forever. This is so disheartening, and you can hear it in her voice. Judah, why don't we close with this, and then we'll go to the out in three, two, one.

Amy Crawford, I'm a Buckingham resident and a small farm owner operator. I deeply love our home in this community, and I'm here to speak out against the Valley Link Joshua Falls, the Yate transmission line project. Valley Link is being deliberately evasive about this process. Our letter was dated February 12th and received March 4th. They said in their March 5th, 2026 webinar that they sent notification letters to 150 households across the nine impacted counties, some of which they admitted were situated 10 to 15 miles from a proposed transmission site.

ValleyLink did not notify all households if a proposed route goes directly through their property. ValleyLink is banking on rural folks being ignorant and ambivalent. They are not behaving transparently, and so I'm here to speak about what's actually going on. You can tell they're not here to listen to us because they hauled butt out that door as soon as they could. They don't care about community engagement, and they don't care about what we think and what we have to say. This proposed line is 765 kivol. The power line structures are 160 feet tall. As somebody else mentioned, that's 14 stories, taller than the Statue of Liberty.

The towers will be placed along the route every quarter mile and the corridor requires a cleared right away of 200 feet. This line destroys our skyline, our forests, our wetlands, our farmlands, our tranquility, our property values and our rights. Dominion Energy will seize right away on 2,800. acres of our rural land perpetually and restrict what we're permitted to do with our property. Do you know how they install these 160 feet tall power structures with helicopters that will buzz over our homes 12 hours a day and semi-trucks that will be barreling up and down our country

roads for months? And who's going to pay for the damage to the roads? Us. One of these proposed routes does in fact go directly through our property, directly through our small farm. It cuts off and goes through several acres of our land and it will destroy everything we have worked so hard to build. They will clear trees from our woods, causing irreparable harm to wildlife and native plant species. Wildlife breeding grounds and feeding grounds will be destroyed and the right-of-way clearing and maintenance will encourage invasive plant species. Right-of-way maintenance involves chemical control of vegetation that will impact our well water, our

farm animals and undo all our efforts to ensure our flower farm is chemical and pesticide free. It will decimate our beehives. 700 kilovolts a minute will cause significant, rapid negative impacts to beehives within one week. This is more than a hundred times that. In fact, it's recommended that beehives not be placed within 23 miles of the 765 kilowolte line. The constant hum of the lines, electromagnetic fields, and stray voltage puts our farm animals and pets. Can I just say my one last thing? This line brings zero benefit to our community. It doesn't create jobs or revenue. It doesn't improve anything for us. Dominion and Valley Link plan to rape and steal our land because they think we're stupid and not paying attention. They think we and our land are disposable and they intend for us to be collateral damage and building a monstrous massive extension cord running through rural Virginia and service to billionaires and their data centers in northern Virginia.

Thank you.