Speaker 1: 0:07

Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. It's the Wall Builder Show, taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. And today they're all going to be good topics, or at least topics that end in good stories, Because it's Good News Friday, we're going to get to as much as we can. So very quick intro today, let's go for it, David. What's the first piece of good news?

Speaker 2: 0:24

Well, I want to start with one of the cabinet-level departments, and head over the Department of Homeland Security is Kristi Noem, the former governor of Dakota, and so she's got that department now and under her. We talked yesterday about the fact that in the executive branch are 400 different separate agencies, and so when you look at cabinet level, which is, I think, 17 different people are in the cabinet, that means each of those cabinet level folks has got 20 or 30 agencies under them, and so one of the agencies under Kristi Noem is FEMA, and so FEMA exists to help when there's emergencies and et cetera. And it's interesting that here you've got Kristi Noem, who's over FEMA, and her recommendation to Trump is that we need to get rid of the Federal Emergency Management Agency the way it exists today. And she talked about the way it exists today and what it is, and it's supposed to help people when there's floods, fires, droughts, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, fire, whatever it is, and I'll just you know, I'll throw this out as something we talk about. So when you look at the Constitution the Constitution it has 18 things that the federal government can do. It's contained in 17 clauses, so I often say 17 enumerated powers, but if you look, taking care of emergencies of the states is not one of the federally designated powers, which means it's supposed to be in the hands of the states, and so that's one of those 10th Amendment issues, one of those issues that, if it's not enumerated power by the Constitution, the states get to do it.

Speaker 2: 1:57

And so Kristi Noem has just made the point. Look, this needs to go back to the states. She was a state governor for two terms. She knows what it's like, and when you get the federal government stepping in to handle things the state should be doing, it's going to be more expensive, going to be less good, and what we saw in North Carolina we had all those floods going in North Carolina and the federal FEMA wasn't there for the first what eight to 10 days? And when they got in, they started telling people well, if you see a Trump side in the front yard, don't go survey that house. We don't want to repair that house if it had a Trump side. Now you're having FEMA not helping citizens in emergency if they're not of the right political persuasion, and so everything about it was really bad.

Speaker 2: 2:38

And then we talked even yesterday about how that Doge and Elon Musk, his guys, have gone in and found things really quickly. He found that just I guess it was two weeks ago in that one week that FEMA actually paid $59 million to house illegal immigrants, just in that one week. And this has been going on for weeks and weeks and most of the Biden administration $59 million. No wonder FEMA doesn't have any money to take care of its own people with emergencies.

Speaker 2: 3:08

So you got Kristi Noem talking about it, you've got Elon Musk saying $59 million one week, and now Trump has said, yeah, this thing needs to go away. It needs to go back to the states. This is something that should not be a federal agency, and that's really good news, because not only is it more effective and cheaper, it's also constitutional, and that's a really good thing. To do with FEMA is turn it back to the states. Let them take care of their own people. They've got people on the ground that are going to get there quicker and help people more. It's just. This is a great recommendation coming from Kristi Noem and Trump, and actually Elon Musk, as well, yeah, christian noam and trump, and actually elon musk as well.

Speaker 1: 3:47

Yeah, I thought about two uh specific scenarios whenever she said that. One was I. I think we had tim brooks on I don't know five years ago, six years ago, after a tornado that came through arkansas there, and he was talking about how he couldn't even. He was taking his tractor out helping people move you know stuff, and they wouldn't even let him do it. Uh, because you know, he wasn't the official government person to do it. I was literally there for that storm. Yes, I was there with my good friend.

Speaker 3: 4:07

David.

Speaker 2: 4:08

Pate.

Speaker 3: 4:08

When the storm hit one of the guys from the church. He had several rental properties and power lines were down. Trees fell down, and so we go out that night just to try to help and make sure there's nobody stuck under a tree, something going on. And so we we just do it minimum that night to make sure everybody's good, everybody's clear, watch out for down wires. The next morning you get up and you see the devastation. You're going oh my goodness, but it's it. I mean, it's it's country, arkansas. Right, everybody's got their chainsaw, their atv there. Some guys are on horseback, like tim brooks right, Going around looking. Who can we help? Do we need to pull somebody out? And everybody, just we get to work. Nobody's waiting for anybody. You're going down roads following kind of the track of the tornado because it was so evident where it had gone, and you are just going and seeing who's in this house. Hey, can we help? There's trees down in your yard. It's blocking your driveway. Let us cut this so your car can get out. And we're just going up and down help. And we do this for probably 24 to 48 hours.

Speaker 3: 5:11

It was somewhere in that gap before the first individual showed up from the government. They pull up in this vehicle. They have this white big truck, they have on this vest. They get out and they say, okay, we need everybody to leave, leave y'all clear the scene. And we're like who are you? Right you showed up and you're not here with the crew, you're not helping, what are you doing?

Speaker 3: 5:31

And they said, yeah, nobody can. Nobody can do any work anymore. And we all look at him. Like you know, he's got a, either like he's cyclops with one eye in the center of his head or like he's got two heads. Something is wrong with this person and he starts giving us a rundown. And this is. I actually had to leave to go to an event, so I left. And this is where Tim Brooks had to deal with these people, as they're telling them they can't even on their own estate, on their own property. They couldn't even do some basic things like tree removal, whatever it might be, because now it's all under control of the federal government and FEMA, which is just absolutely insane.

Speaker 1: 6:10

I did not remember that you were there, tim. I have told that story so many times about Tim Brooks because it is such a perfect example. And then the other one I thought of was North Carolina, because we saw the failure of FEMA with all that. And then you saw all these churches and all these ministries and our friend Steve Maxwell at CDF. I mean I don't know how many truckloads of help he sent in and got other businesses to help him with Helicopters. They sent in, helicopter fuel they sent in and then all of a sudden, I think Congress announced $20 billion. This was back like October, november I can't remember when this was before. Biden was helping him much at all, but Congress essentially found $20 billion help and when I heard that number I thought are you kidding me? Most of that's going to be wasted. Can you imagine if the taxpayers had been able to keep that $20 billion for themselves, how many more truckloads and how many more helicopters and how much faster it could have got there if you just had FEMA out of the picture completely? Which is exactly what you were saying, david, which is what Kristi Noem was talking about.

Speaker 1: 7:08

And I think the failure of government over the last few years is really helping people to see or, as we talked about yesterday in our foundations program, all the waste and all the doges uncovering. It's helping people to see what. David, you wrote about this in 2008, I believe it was in the Obama-McCain election because pastors were saying, well, I just want the government to take care of the poor, and you were pointing out, no, no, no, the church and individuals are supposed to take care of the poor. And you use that study that shows twice as much money gets to the person in need when you let private churches and philanthropic groups and individuals do it, and so I think that people just couldn't see that for so long, and now they're seeing how bad it is when government does it and they're waking up and realizing. You know what? We don't need government to do all this. We need to ask our neighbors and be a part of the solution ourselves. So, really, really a piece of good news.

Speaker 3: 7:58

Okay, tim, your first piece of good news today. Well, this kind of follows along the same theme. This is dealing with OPM. It says 75,000 workers took Trump and Musk government buyout. For those that might not remember, President Trump offered federal employees a buyout, which, in this buyout, they were offered eight months of pay and full benefits, Eight months If they would submit a resignation. Right, If they would quit, go find a new job, we will pay you eight months to leave, which is an amazing bonus. And again, all the benefits incredible. And they had 75,000 people take them up on this.

Speaker 3: 8:37

Now, when I first saw that, I thought that is a huge number. But, dad, I remember yesterday you were talking about like 3 million people that work for the federal government. So 75,000, not that big this number. On this article it identified it was 3.75% of the nation's 2 million federal employees. Now this is employees that are part of the United States Office of Personnel Management, so the OPM. And so maybe with contract and whoever else, that number could be a lot bigger. And so maybe with contract and whoever else, that number could be a lot bigger up to that 3 million, because online it's kind of an agreed upon number. It's a little over 3 million people that work for the federal government, but this was identifying that. It looks like 2 million people that work for OPM or something around that, and again, I don't know how all these numbers are broken down, but 75,000 does seem like a very big number, until you realize Trump was trying to get 5% to 10% and this was 3.75%, which, as we're talking about, even so much of the waste and the fraud and the abuse happening.

Speaker 3: 9:34

The more people you hire and the more layers you have in your bureaucracy. When you have more layers of management and more layers all the way down to the people who are actually doing the work, there are more opportunities for waste and fraud to happen, and so seeing that 75,000 workers took up Trump on this is very encouraging to me, and it did raise an interesting question in my mind of how many of these were people that maybe were Trump supporters and right, was there a balance? Were these all people that hated Trump or were there some like you know what? I agree we should shrink this. Let me get out of the way. I'll go private and and do something private.

Speaker 3: 10:23

I'm just curious if, if there would be a way to find a breakdown, although we know probably the vast majority of people that work in federal government are probably aligned on the Democrat side, and the article highlights again. Another thing I think is interesting is that unions were telling the federal workers not to take the deal. They cautioned employees. This is too much of an unusual offer. Don't trust it, which it just seems like okay. So you want the waste and the fraud, the abuse.

Speaker 3: 10:51

You want the bureaucracy to be there. The government is, and this is part of what the article says. It raises concerns over whether funding needed to pay these 75,000 people their eight months worth of benefits and salary If that will be there, because if not, it could violate the Anti-Deficiency Act, which bars the government from spending beyond what is dictated in its budget and requires it to use federal funding as intended. So this is just one of those interesting things as we might talk about. Right, Is there going to be a government shutdown, and would Democrats want that to happen? Would that be better or worse for Republicans, for Trump?

Speaker 3: 11:38

But this is where there could be maybe even some of those unintended consequences, side effects that if there is a government shutdown, if there's not a budget deal, that is done, then it could even impact the 75,000. But as these unions were trying to block what was going on, also good news a federal judge rejected a union call to block the program, finding they did not have standing to sue, meaning the president can offer you a bonus for your resignation, totally legal, doesn't violate any statutes. Overall, I think this is really good news that we do have a president trying to shrink the federal government and he is making progress, making headwinds. Just this alone 75,000 individuals that have agreed to this deal is already really good news.

Speaker 2: 12:28

And I'm going to jump on that and say I think the good news is still, with what's yet to come and I was thinking about this I don't know how much these folks got in the buyout, but they get the eight months and they're also not required to show up and work anymore, so they can take the whatever months they have left and not have to work in that time and go get a different job. And so you look at it and we know that the average government employee gets 161% more than the average American employee. So these guys are already getting paid higher. I don't know what it is. Let's say they get 200 to 250,000 a year.

Speaker 2: 13:02

I don't know if that's reasonable or not, but that's higher than the average American's going to work and you know 1.61 times more. So let's say they get 200,000 a year. But what he's done here, that's a lot of money. 75,000 people are going to get a $200,000 buy. But what he's done is some of those folks could be working for the next 10, 15, 20 years. What he's done is he's just saved you 200,000 a year on that person for the next 10, 15 years, because they're going to disappear and nobody's going to notice that the government services are any different than what they have been.

Speaker 2: 13:35

We've got a 75,000, 3.75% buy down of the employee staff. You're not going to notice any difference in services. But what you've done is you've taken 10, 15, 20 years of that annual amount and reduced it. He has saved untold billions of dollars by doing that.

Speaker 3: 13:51

And dad, I'm looking this up. As you were saying it, it looks like the average is about 100,000 to 120,000 is the average for a federal employee, but you're talking about that's the average for 3 million people. So you're definitely going to have some that are well above the average and some that are below the average, but the average is 100 to 120,000, which certainly is far beyond and above what the average American makes.

Speaker 1: 14:17

Yeah, david, I was thinking the exact same thing when they first started talking about this, like why would you give anybody that much of a payout, especially federal workers that have been working from home, and we all probably imagine not doing a whole lot of work. But I think the exact same way is the best way to get to the end result, which is they're off the payroll in eight months and you know they're the money spent now, but they wouldn't have been off the payroll at the end of the year. I do have some posts saying that Clinton and Gore I do remember them saying the era of big government is over. Remember how that was a big thing with them. And apparently they cut three or four hundred thousand federal jobs in their effort to shrink the size of the federal government. So it's kind of interesting if that's.

Speaker 1: 15:01

If that's true, we'll look. When we're on the break here We'll see. But if that's true, what hypocrites the Democrat Party are to be acting like. You know Donald Trump's so evil for getting rid of 75,000 jobs. If Bill Clinton and Al Gore got rid of you know what would it be four or five times that. Anyway, quick break, we'll be back. We've got more good news for you when we return here on the Wallblower Show.

Speaker 3: 15:27

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Speaker 1: 16:26

Welcome back. Thanks for staying with us here on the Wall Builder Show. It's Good News Friday. We're getting to as many of those pieces of good news as we can. And, yes, in that very short 60-second break we quickly did a little fact check and apparently the person that ran that for Bill Clinton back then was named Elaine Carmark, if I'm pronouncing that right, named Elaine Carmark, if I'm pronouncing that right and she claims that they eliminated 426,200 federal rolls between January 93 and September 2000. So, guys, I mean, you know it's not like you know, balancing the budget and actually trying to have the right number of people to accomplish the task instead of four times that many is a new idea. It's just the first time it's happened in 30 years. And it just so happens it was a Democrat that was doing it 30 years ago, but you're not going to hear that out of the Democrats. All right, David, what's your next piece of good?

Speaker 2: 17:14

news. I deal with the vice president, jd Vance, and I have been real curious about JD Vance and how he was going to perform or what he was going to allow to be done. You go all the way back to John Adams, the first vice president, and he said being vice president is not worth a warm bucket of spit. So that was his analysis, because vice president really doesn't do anything. And so my curiosity was is Vance going to do anything? Is he going to be allowed to do anything? Is he going to take it on his own initiative? Because oftentimes what you see is the vice president carries water for the president on certain initiatives the president's doing, but he doesn't kind of get off the reservation and go do things on his own or carry messages on his own or anything else. And so I guess the first real big international presence of Vance was last week when he was over in Germany, and it was at an annual meeting they've had since the end of World War II. So World War II ends in 1945.

Speaker 2: 18:18

Germany has now been taken out of the scene and all the other European nations get together and so they call this the Munich Security Conference, and so every year they have this. It's where all the European nations come together and they say, all right, what does it look like for Europe? What do we need to be doing for Europe? What do we need to watch in Europe? And Vance spoke there, as you know. That's reasonable to imagine.

Speaker 2: 18:43

If you remember back, trump in his first term started making all the European nations start paying more to NATO because the US was carrying so much of the economic burden of what Europe was doing defending Europe and he made them pay their own way, and so he's still making that happen. And so there's America has a big presence in Europe and we have had, because of what we've done, we still have, because of international stuff, even as we see Trump wade in to end that war that's going over on the eastern side of Europe with Russia and Ukraine. So Vance gets into and he really took on the Europeans and he called them out and he actually criticized them openly, so much so that some of the national leaders were booing him during his speech and contradicting him publicly and openly during his speech. And so what he did was he challenged Europe.

Speaker 3: 19:33

Now, just out of curiosity, because I know where you're going to go with this. But if they publicly criticized him, I would like to turn them in to the authorities over there. Because if you're going to publicly, criticize somebody, I mean they don't look highly on not to interrupt, because I feel like I know where you're going.

Speaker 1: 19:54

Isn't that hate speech? Is that what you're saying?

Speaker 3: 19:56

Yeah, I don't mean to derail the main point you're about to make.

Speaker 2: 20:00

I just see some ironic hypocrisy, uh, in what happened anyway, I know not to digress, I turn it back to you it's interesting because, tim, the point you made actually I hadn't thought of it proves the point that vance was trying to make on how intolerant they become a free speech and how really militaristic they become and trying to limit things that criticize them.

Speaker 2: 20:23

And so he was talking to them about their heritage, and Europe used to be a place of freedom and so much of the freedom we have in America came out of the good guys in Europe that were trying to have freedom in Europe, and so he talked about how that Europe used to protect religious expression.

Speaker 2: 20:39

Europe used to be a very religious-oriented continent. They were for free speech and all these democratic ideals that we've had, and so Vance really took them on and went directly after them and he noted that in Europe now they have gone into the wokeness and they're arresting conservatives, arresting conservative voices. They're investigating them, they're prosecuting them, they're finding them. If they have the wrong view on abortion or immigration, or if they express something on social media, they're getting arrested and fined and jailed. I saw just this week a guy in Scotland stood outside an abortion clinic and prayed silently, and I saw the video and the cops went to him and said are you praying silently? He said, yes, I am, and he got arrested because he admitted he was praying silently but he was doing it outside an abortion clinic.

Speaker 3: 21:29

I think that re-aired this week. I think it actually was something that happened, not this week earlier.

Speaker 3: 21:33

Nonetheless, it is very clear indication of the hostility of what is happening over in Europe with so much of. They don't understand how much they're embracing a communist, marxist ideology, and some might say it's socialism. But I mean, all those are so intertwined. On some level they are very different, but they have very common grounds Nonetheless. Intolerance is certainly something that is prevalent in it and it's something that we are seeing all over Europe and specifically in One Direction.

Speaker 3: 22:04

And some of them, for just if they're retweeting something right, if they're just sharing a meme, it maybe is not even something they're expressing they thought, oh, this is funny, I'm going to share it. It's not going to be long before you can't even like what's there. And what's ironic is there are people over in Germany, for example, that are saying how sad it is right now that half of their country is afraid to share their political position. It's because of all the hate online. No, maybe it's because you're arresting people for sharing their opinion online. Maybe that's what it is, but they don't see that the hypocrisy of what they're saying that people are scared to post their beliefs online and you're saying is because that there's too much hate online, as opposed to the fact you're arresting people for sharing their view If it doesn't align with what you are defining as good speech and whatever Orwellian state you're in, which is what JDD Vance was making the point of in the first place.

Speaker 2: 23:00

And the part that absolutely shocked me is I had no clue that the European Union right now has censorship mandates on social media if it comes from the United States, and so they're literally not allowing free speech from the United States and criticism of the European Union to even be posted in Europe, and that's.

Speaker 2: 23:21

I mean, that's that's back to the Hitler kind of days and that's back to the Stalinist kind of days, and so Vance took him on about it, and what I thought was really, really interesting was German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Speaker 2: 23:34

He disputed Vance's statement publicly, saying it's very clear that the new American administration holds a worldview that's different from ours in Europe. And Boris Prestorius, who's their defense minister, he stood in the speech and kept interrupting Vance with cries of no, no, that's wrong. And so these guys are so woke and so, out there, they make our college professors over here look pretty conservative, I guess, when you look at what they're doing, because they literally are shutting it down. But I was so proud of Vance for getting out there and taking a stance, and I guess I got to say that for Trump too, because he didn't rein him in, he supported it and he acted like Vance had done it on its own, and I'm just really glad to see a vice president with that kind of boldness on something this big, taking on the wokeness and being willing to be criticized for it, not backing down.

Speaker 1: 24:23

Likely a sign of even more good things to come from Vice President Vance Tim. We've got a few minutes left. You've got a quick Good News Friday to close us out with today.

Speaker 3: 24:30

Yeah, this one. The title of the article says Doge makes cuts to education department's research arm totaling more than $900 million and going through a breakdown. What they identified, among other things, is they canceled 89 Institute for Education Sciences multi-year contracts, totaling $900 million, and 29 contracts related to diversity, equity and inclusion, training and education, totaling $101 million. Of course, people are losing their minds that they would be stopping these and actually there's levels of irony.

Speaker 3: 25:06

There's a Democrat senator who actually argued that we will lose education because we're not funding these basic things. She said every kid deserves a great public education and that can't happen without these. She said nonpartisan research and data to understand what's working, what needs to be fixed. But she was saying it in regard to what they were cutting and the idea that we need all of this work that's happening for this nearly one billion dollars in spending, is crazy, but certainly when you understand what President Trump has said.

Speaker 3: 25:38

That repeatedly he's acknowledged he wants to dismantle the Department of Education and he also, through an executive order, noted that any schools or education agencies that maintain DEI programs they would no longer be eligible for federal funding. So he's been very, very clear on this and, as even other people pointed out, neil McCluskey, I think, is, how you would say, his last name. He's director of Cato Institute Center for Educational Freedom and he had previously said that all of the Department of Education functions that are important could easily be absorbed by other federal agencies. So anybody that really cares about some of these functions the ones that are working can still be utilized. But to remove the waste is always really good news, and now it looks like nearly a billion dollars is being removed from waste in the Department of Education and that's great news.

Speaker 1: 26:29

So much good news today, guys. I know we've got a lot more. We will get to it next week. Don't miss our interviews early in the week. And then Foundations of Freedom Thursday, again next week, and Good News Friday as well. But there's a lot more at our website. Be sure to visit that. Wallbuildersshow. Thanks so much for listening to the Wall Builder Show.