Dixon & Vining Hour 1 (010324)

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All right, good morning, everybody. It's been really dark in my life. I don't mean emotionally. I mean, coming into the studio every morning, it's really dark and I'm not used to that. I'm like a 637 AM guy, this 430 stuff. I guess I could get used to it, especially if I came in and talked for four hours and then got to go do whatever I wanted after that. Maybe I should aspire to be a news talk radio show, morning show host in the future.

This is Brian Dawson. I'm back. I was here yesterday with Pastor Rich Lusk of Trinity Presbyterian Church. Today I am joined by my friend. Yesterday I brought in Rich to kind of give us a pastoral approach to the topics of the day, the topics du jour, kind of a theological, cultural, political kind of all that combined. Now I'm bringing on a good friend of mine named Jerick Wilkins. He's going to be co-hosting the four hours with me.

He's a businessman. He's a successful businessman who's also thrown his hat in the ring here in these parts. He ran for Congress against Gary Palmer. And so he knows his way around the political world as well as the business world. And I just like to hear different perspectives on all the crazy stuff that's going on in our state, in our nation, one from a pastor, another from a businessman. And then I will play just the old work in class guy.

given my blue collar opinions here. So, Jeric, thank you so much for taking the time to come in. Oh, dark 30.

It's great to be here. I can tell you I'm like you. I'm normally up around six. So getting up at 430 was a little fun, but that's okay. Nothing that coffee can't cure, but it's an honor to be here. I enjoy talking politics and business and being a part of the conversation, which I think is so critical for today's society. Yeah. Now, and I love talk radio as a medium period. I mean, talk radio. So right now there's a big conversation going on about the decentralization of mass media.

And so you're talking, you know, historically it was ABC, NBC, CBS. Those were the media outlets where you could get news. And then they added CNN and Fox News and like MSNBC, right? And MSNBC is really NBC. And anyway, so it was a very small amount of places where you could get information. And if you think about information flowing through a pipeline and you needed to capture that information and make it say only what you want, the fewer major media outlets there are, the easier it is to capture.

right and create and spend a narrative. Well, news talk radio has always been there to disrupt that. That's one thing I love about this medium. My background is in radio. I was always on the business end. I was never the talent that that will surprise you after my four hours yesterday, right? Well, maybe not so much. There's probably a reason. But I was on the business side of it, worked

Um, with some, some really incredible people in the business, but, um, just, just love radio as a medium. Uh, a lot of talk about, oh, radio's dead. It's not. It's still here. Uh, it's still growing strong. I think you see TV not doing so well, but I think, um, I think radio and specifically news talk radio, uh, is a medium that's here to stay. And it's because I think they've been a reliable source to get the truth out to the people for a very long time. And I think people, uh, appreciate that. And so you everything from,

Um, Rush Limbaugh on down. Uh, it's been, it's been a source for truth and people appreciate it. And, and there's just something different, uh, about local radio on top of that. So yeah, you can go into, you know, the Rush Limbaugh's and all the, the different national hosts, but what I think is so special about this station, uh, is it's local. It's local people talking about what's going on in the state and the nation. Um, it's just a, a really special thing and I'm honored to get to, to, to guest host here.

Well, there's no doubt about it. In fact, Rush Limbaugh is what got me started in politics early in the day, listening to him as a teenager. But I agree, it's local issues that we can talk about, because we have to talk about these, because you're not going to hear it from the normal media. It's clear that we have to address these issues. And you've talked about some of that with your recent podcast on the rise of populism. And I think it's so important for people to realize that we have to get involved with this. We can't depend on special interest.

to have our best interest in mind because they don't what they don't these that's so weird in the politicians say that they do and i'm just i'm so confused here maybe we'll get to the bottom of it by the end of the show here all right well uh... i'm gonna pull up our uh... our show log that i don't know how much uh... help it's gonna do i'm uh... i chase rabbits uh... when i get on here but i want to have something that provides a little bit of structure and i want to set the table for

Those of you who are listening that are just sitting there, how I picture you out there is in the 1950s when, you know, maybe even back farther, there was no TVs and there's just the old wooden radios and you're now sitting huddled around the radio listening to me and Jerick right now. Maybe that's not how it's actually happening. But either way, hope that you stay tuned for the entire show. We've got some very special guests at nine o'clock. I call them Coach Stubberville, but United States Senator

Tommy Tuberville will be joining us. Uh, we're going to be talking about Trump appointments with him. Uh, how's that process going? How does it look? It looked pretty gloom in the beginning. Uh, what's going on? The Pete Hagg Seth, RFK, Tulsi Gabbard, these people, um, you know, I think he is a, um, uh, a top trusted ally for coach Tuberville. I was, excuse me, for Donald, President Donald Trump, coach Tuberville is one of his most trusted allies. Uh, he's up there.

I'm trying to make these appointments a reality and get President Trump's agenda and this mandate that the American people have given him. Coach DeBeville is trying to make that a reality. He's doing a fine job. And so we're going to hear from him. And just because it is still kind of holiday-ish feeling and it's about that time of year, we'll talk to, we'll talk to Coach about some football too. What does he think about all this NIL stuff? What's it done to football? I think that'll be an interesting conversation coming up at eight though before that.

Stephanie Smith of the Alabama Policy Institute, president and CEO there. They've got, man, this has been really impressive. This is outside the box thing that she did. And I just really, really appreciate it. I've been reading about it, looking at it. And it's the Alabama Department of Government Efficiency. So as we're talking about the Trump administration and all these different things, you've got Elon, which we spent a lot of time talking about. Elon and Vivek, Vivek, I don't know.

one of those. But talking about them and they've got the Department of Government Efficiency. Well, Stephanie and her team at the Alabama Policy Institute have come up with the Alabama Department of Government Efficiency. And man, it really gets a very, very deep understanding about what's going on in the state, what needs to happen for us to actually reflect the will of the people and the culture of the state. And I'm going to, we'll get into that. I think Jerick and I are really going to dive into

Um, what, what is that will of the state? There's a huge balance and I'll get into this, um, between business interests in the, in the interests of the working class and how because of the way things have shifted, uh, through the political parties, um, it used to be that the working class was in one party and the big businesses, uh, we're in the other. Well now since the Democrat party has abandoned the working class and gone after, uh, chasing every

um, crazy, uh, you know, peripheral minority they possibly can to get votes, whether it's feminists or LGBTQ or, you know, whatever Marxist, uh, you know, a, a pressed quote unquote class they can go after, uh, to bring together to take down the oppressor, right? That's the whole idea behind Marxism. Um, they, they, they pursued that. And in doing so, they abandoned the working class, which is actually where the power lies.

is the working class. And so as they abandon them, you know, and you remember and sort of, I guess can just dive into it. Maybe we can tee up the conversation with this. Does that sound good? Kind of what my podcast was on, what do you think, Jerry? Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a important part of it. And if we want to start talking about inefficiencies in Alabama government, we could probably fill up eight hours, not four hours. Tell Andrew he doesn't need to come in. We're going to stay here, Steve, where we've got this. We got the whole day.

Good luck with that. Yeah. So, yeah, I'll just lay it out. This was kind of the premise of my podcast that I did recently, and it is historically, if you go back into the 1950s, you know, 60s, 70s in that era, and this is something I learned from my dad. I told you guys my dad, he's kind of my blue collar guy. I look at my dad. My dad is quintessential blue collar. He grew up in West Monroe, Louisiana, the Dawson's Hill from West Monroe, Louisiana, Gloucester, Mississippi. That's on my dad's side of the family.

And they are deep south my and my dad Grew up back when poor people were skinny is always how I like to say it. He had to hunt for food and they had a garden and he Ended up working at Cessna and we'll get into that too Lost his job in 2008 to an h1b visa Eastern Indian that he had to train, but that's neither here nor there so anyway

he's got the blue-collar thing down that's where i'm going with this okay um... that that is my dad and he was a deep south uh... blue-collar guy and him and all of his friends and all of his family and everyone he knew he actually grew up with phil robertson uh... the dot dynasty guys okay so he grew up with phil uh... my grandma betty uh... we call her mamu uh... recently passed but she taught sunday school with miss kay for thirty years

uh... white's very road church of christ in west roegana anyway this is this is my family is my dad uh... but they were all democrats all of them right and if you work the way that it was explained to me by them by my relatives there back in those days if you work for a paycheck and sent your children to public schools that class of people were democrats and at that time the democrats ruled the southern states they would they that's where the power was um... and if you were more uh...

business oriented in the bigger your business and specifically corporations uh... that was what made up the republican party back in those days well kinda as i was outlining uh... prior to this what ended up happening is uh... the the democrat party ended up having a love affair with all these peripheral kind of scattered interests that they thought that they could create a coalition out of without without losing the working class but they ended up losing the working classes they pursued kind of this marxist communist

progressive way of thinking, they abandoned the working class. And another thing that existed for a very brief time period was a lot of big corporations really did prey on the working class. And so trial lawyers and unions existed to protect the working class from profiteering and abuse from corporations to working people. That really did happen. And for a very small time window in history, they existed for an honorable purpose.

But then the trial lawyers and the trade unions got drunk on their own power and it turned into almost mafia-esque situation when you start talking about, you know, especially some of the East Coast.

unions that you hear about, and they kind of abandoned what it was that they were supposed to be doing. And so here's this massive swath of Americans that are without political representation, which would be the working class. And what I define as populism is the combined political force of the working class when they come together. And it's a pretty powerful weapon to be wielded.

Um, so what happened in Alabama and across the South was the Republican party said, Hey, you've been abandoned by your party. You can come into ours. And so the modern Republican party in the South and we'll talk Alabama is you have kind of the chamber of commerce, um, business portion of the party. And then you have the populist, MAGA America first, you know, uh, gun toting Bible believing, you know, that group of people.

Uh, that I very much identify with, uh, the, but both that used to be two separate parties. Now they're in the same party. And so the friction that you see in the state is always between the Democrat party doesn't even exist in our state for any, in any meaningful way. Yeah. Here in Jefferson County, uh, sure, but overall in state politics, at least overtly they don't exist. Yes. And, but I mean there, uh, with the exception of major, uh, you know, metropolis areas like a Birmingham or

uh... mobile or i mean really not you know montgomery mobile mobile and uh... huntsville are actually uh... led by republican mayors and so uh... they in in the party is just a mess but either way and so uh... and then i would say overtly covertly they exist within the republican party which is another faction of the republican party will will get to uh... but uh... so i'm kind of painting this picture and i want to come back to this conversation i want to continue having it uh...

I know we're kind of up against when we need to be going to a break, but I want to put a pin in it that we can come back to thinking about how the friction when you start to get into these elections and these primaries and the type of candidates that you see up against each other. And we want to call them rhinos or we want to call them establishment. What it really is is if you're a working class person and you see these type of politicians that seem like they're just working for special interests, that's your big corporate

politician. And then you see the other guys like a Barry Moore, Tommy Tuberville, and you see them working for you, that would be your more populist representative. So anyway, we're going to come back to that on the other side of this break. Continue having this conversation. Uh, this is the Dixon and Vining show on talk 99.5. We'll be back. All right. And we're back. Talk 99.5. You can call into the show at 205-545-9950. Uh, give us call, join the conversation.

uh... my time got away from you on that last one i just started talking and you know i guess is what my wife feels like all the time jerks just sitting over there looking at me talking i'm gonna bring into the conversation soon i promise so uh... continuing on that conversation uh... about uh... the split in uh... kind of you know that i call it the history of populism uh... in alabama in the south uh... what's happened uh... the working class used to be democrats democrat party abandoned them they've now moved into the republican party now within the republican party you have more chamber of commerce uh...

type candidates and then you have the populist candidate. Well, I can tell you that the power of the power is in the hands of the people. And you know this because the Chamber of Commerce candidates have to pretend to be populists to get elected. That's why the power is with the people. And these corporations get their elected officials that they pick and they put a ton of money into their campaigns and into their packs

so that they can make commercials pretending to be populists and putting them out on all of the TVs. And I always joke. I think I told the joke on this yesterday. The guy, you know, every commercial you've ever seen is a guy with the shotgun over his shoulder with the John Deere tractor in the back and the church steeple. He's like, Hey, my name's Bill. I love Jesus babies in the constitution. Like, man, Bill loves Jesus babies in the constitution. I'm voting for Bill.

Well, Bill doesn't really, okay. He gets down to Montgomery and turns out, Bill does not love Jesus babies with a constitution, but these corporations give him money to pretend to be like you so that you'll elect him so he can then go do their bidding, okay? You know that the power is not the other way around because the Barry Moore's of the world and these guys that are like true blue populist conservatives, and I mean, true blue's not the right, the color terminology,

Um, very conservative, uh, principal to the core Christian men who are there doing the right thing. They don't go around like pretending to be chamber of commerce candidates to, to curry favor. The chamber of commerce knows who they are. Right. And again, I'm just saying the chamber of commerce, cause that's just a blanket term. Well, I think you see it too, because they, they actually tell you their beliefs, not what you want to hear. Yeah. And there's times that we need to hear things that we may not necessarily agree with.

And politicians are so afraid to actually tell you the real views on stuff that we run into this problem. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. And so with that, my purpose in saying all this is to give you guys. So I've been, I've been focused on politics, basically my whole life, my family on my mom's side was in politics very heavily. And then just kind of hearing, you know, what growing up with my dad watching,

him kind of live the blue collar life, hearing the blue collar struggles, all of those different things. It's kind of how I formulated these things, but now having lived in Alabama for 10 years, been in Alabama politics for about three and a half years, I begin to pick up and see these patterns and it begins to really explain why things happen. So I want to offer this paradigm, these lenses that you can look through as you start to break down

how politics works in the state and what's going on. That's really my desire is to help you be able to see through some of the fog and the bull stuff that gets thrown at you in these election cycles, which were coming up on a big one in 2026 for the state. So anyway, with that, I think one of the, so as we dive into some of these topics, I think Jerrick is a business owner.

uh... i would be more and and and i would still place your even as a business owner he's not a big corporate chamber commerce business owner he's a successful business owner who employs people uh... and and and allows them to have jobs and that is a good thing and we need to be able to clarify that there's a huge difference

And again, I'm not even against these big corporations in the state. They employ lots of people and give them good benefits. That's all fine. The problem is when, again, there's tension inside of the party because it used to be two parties, the working class and the big corporations. The tension exists because we used to be in two parties because there are competing interests. And so in order for the Republican Party to work the way that it should, each group needs to get things.

But for the last 20 years in the state, the only people that have gotten anything is the big corporations and the business interests. And they'll throw us like a red meat, uh, we say the Pledge of Allegiance in our schools now. Yeah. And like, woo, yeah, conservative. But that's it. Like is nothing substantive. It's not lower taxes. They finally did school choice after they were brow beat nearly to death and the giving us that they didn't want it. They did it kicking and screaming.

There's not anyone who's really going out to, you know, in positions of power in the state that's going out to serve that class of people in the state government is what I'm talking about. So not in the federal delegation, in the state government, people who actually possess real power, that that's what they wake up every day and they're like, you know what, I'm going to serve the working class. It's disproportionate.

want to clarify, I guess, define my terms here. Um, but there's, there's a big difference between what I'm describing as these big corporations and then just normal business owners who kind of find themselves, uh, in the melee. And so when we, uh, come back, we're going to hear a little bit of Derek's perspective as a business owner of what he sees, uh, in the political landscape. And then I think he and I will go back and forth on our perspectives as him as a business owner. Me, uh, well, I mean, I guess I run a business at 18, 19 news. It's a nonprofit.

It's a lot different than what what Jerick does. Jerick operates at a much higher level than I do. So this is the Dixon and Vining Show, Talk 1995. We'll be back. All right. Welcome back. Dixon and Vining Show, Talk 1995. If you'd like to join the conversation, that number is 205-545-995-0. So that's 545-9950. Give us a call. Join the conversation. We'd love to have you be a part of it.

Jerick, I'm going to hand it over to you. I've talked for the first 30 minutes of the show incessantly. I guess that's why, you know, if you can fill four hours, you have to be able to do that. But I want to hear your perspective kind of as far as you hear what I've been saying about, you know, political representation for the working class, the power really lies there. One of the problems I think is that the working class also doesn't pay as much attention to politics.

is the people who own businesses do, because if you own a business and the government makes a decision, it can really hurt you and affect you in a very serious way. And then I think kind of the more working class people, they don't have that pressure, so they're not paying as much of attention. There's just a lot of dynamics to this thing that I'm talking about, but from your perspective, we're gonna hear from you, your perspective on government representation as a business owner, and then we're gonna go through some of the topics of the day, each one be visas and get our different perspectives on that.

up until about eight o'clock when we bring Stephanie on. So I'll leave it to you, Jerk. Yeah, absolutely. And you've touched on a couple of key components. And first of all, I do think there's a lot of political apathy in the state, in our country. And you see that in the primary elections. We have people who will show up to vote in the general elections, but in a state that is predominantly Republican like ours, these decisions are made on primary day, not on general election day, in most cases. 100%.

So we've got to figure out how we can get people more engaged in the process. Now, when you talk about the balance between the working class and business owners, and as it relates to government, here's the thing I see. I don't see these things as mutually exclusive. In both cases, less government is better for both. We want less regulation. We want less taxes. These are things that are going to help us. And that's why I was encouraged to hear what Alabama Policy Institute was doing with their

Alabama does. In fact, I'd recently wrote an article talking about some of the inefficiencies in state government. I mean, you look at the fact that we have a $445 million.

budget for the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs. I'm like, really? And how they've squandered so much of our resources and the rollout of broadband internet for rural communities. It's just inefficiencies all over the place. So when we look at state government, I think some of the best things we could do is reduce regulations and reduce taxes. And I saw that even just in the last few months, like a lot of us as I renewed the vehicle registrations on our cars,

And I fact you go back and you look at it that you pay taxes when you earn the money to buy the vehicle, then you pay taxes when you buy it in sales tax. And then on top of it, we're going to hit up with ad valorem tax on top of it. I mean, my goodness, less taxes would be great for the working class, great for business owners, and great to improve overall freedom in our state. And you see that's one of the reasons we're seeing the rise of populism, and we can talk through a historical perspective on that.

We saw what happened during the Reagan era in the effects of less government there and reduced taxes. And then we saw the move of the Tea Party in recent years, which led us to MAGA. And at the same time, that's where we're at. And making America great and pushing America first philosophy is good for everyone, because when we do more and we're more prosperous, then we can't help others. I mean, I look at the fact that my wife and I, we get very involved in

missions and philanthropic work, not because we have to, because that's what we're supposed to do. But if we don't have the resources to do it, then that's a problem. So we've got to reduce some of those impacts on it. 100%. That's good. And I also want to, there's a couple of other things I want to point out on that populist conversation. That's the history of populism in Alabama. So working class populism, what do I mean by populism? I'm talking about

uh... the basically the combined political force of the working class that's what i mean i say populism and uh... the rise of populism on the national stage that we've seen really started in twenty sixteen uh... historically there is two strategies for the republican party to win so all of your like carl rove political consultants and number crunchers and everybody looking at statistics data and everything else there was uh... to to pass to victory

And one was a little bit riskier than the other. And the neocons, the neoconservatives, the Carl Robes, the George H.W., George W., John McCain, Mitt Romney. I always say it's like the same person. It's Mitt McDoll. But that whole apparatus that has completely sold the working class up the river, that group of people, they felt the most effective way for Republicans to stay in power

Uh, they felt and they look at the Hispanic population and this is 100% accurate. Their assumption was, but it's just, I don't think and it proved to be not true. Um, the Hispanic population by their very nature is right wing. Now they come over here. When the, when they come over here illegally, they're going to be prone at least for the first 10 or so years, uh, to vote Democrat because they know that there's advantages, uh, that the Democrats are going to give them.

uh... because of you know them coming over here legally or whatever but by their very nature they are right wing and what i mean by that is their family oriented their hard workers their entrepreneurial you know this is uh... so that the philosophy that the the bush is in the carlos said okay we're gonna go peel off uh... we're gonna pander to them and we're gonna peel off enough of them to be able to put us over the top okay and that was their strategy george uh... george uh... w bush speak spanish

His brothers actually married to a Hispanic woman and his son is noticeably Hispanic, and they tried to use that to their ability to be able to win over enough Hispanics as this huge increase in Hispanic population in America came to be. Well, the other strategy that was taken by the Paleo conservatives, the not Neo-conservatives, the not Carl Rove types, was they call it the Rust Belt strategy or the Southern strategy.

Okay, and it is what I just described took place around 2010 in Alabama is when all of the working class people that used to be Democrats, they all came over to the Republican Party and the South went from being deep blue to deep red almost overnight. And it wasn't really overnight. There was a lot of work that happened and everything else. And in that, and we could maybe have this conversation, a bunch of Democrats slipped in like actual ones, philosophically Democrat, not conservative. That really happened.

Yeah, can you tell? But with that, so the move that Donald Trump took was the populist move. This was the, okay, I want to talk about illegal immigration. I want to talk about the border. And I want to talk about how the working class is being screwed in this country. And I want to offer them real political representation specifically in the Rust Belt. And so you're talking a little bit Minnesota, mainly

Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, those states, those Rust Belt states that are full of all kinds of Godfearing, hardworking, working class people who send their kids to the public schools, go to church on Sunday, true blue people and they are conservative for the most part, but they're voting Democrat because of the unions and everything else and that's what they tell them to do.

Well, and we've seen the attacks on unions even in our state, and it's terrible because they don't have the best interests of workers at heart at all. It's a political mindset that they bring to the state, and we saw that with recent attacks on coming into the Mercedes plant and even others that they're attempting to. And that would be terrible for Alabama, because you look at the fact over the last few decades since the 1990s, Alabama has seen great

growth and success in large part because of automotive. And automotive moved to Alabama because we don't have unions. And companies today have to pay employees well. They have to provide the benefits. They're not needed like they were in the 1800s when they had seven-year-olds working 15 hours a day. I mean, it's crazy stuff back then.

So it's important for us to know that we've got to be economic prosperity is good for workers. It's good for everyone. Less government's going to accomplish these things. And it's all positive. That's one of the things I love about President Trump is he's a businessman. He knows how to get things done. And we need someone to come in and break things because you look at the mess that we have in this country right now and the neocons are the ones that put us here because they came with the mantra that government was the answer to our problems. Yeah.

And I'm going to tell you today, government is not the answer to our problems. Yeah. Government both stayed in nationals, never found a problem that didn't think it could solve.

with enough of a tax payer money that's right just how much do you need to fix this problem more could you give me a round figure uh... more but round like that like that's the answer is always more how much to fix education just more just give us more uh... and you look at the fact that we talk about education that's one of the huge inefficiencies in the state we keep throwing through throwing money at it we talk about the surpluses we have then they're using gambling as an excuse to try to get more money

Well, money is not the answer to our problems. Uh, in fact, we need to return the money to the taxpayers and not keep sending it to Montgomery, uh, for them to tell us how we need to spend it. Uh, because they're very inefficient in how they do it. I can tell you, you and I know how to spend our money much better than they do and we can have a huge impact locally on our families and our lives with it ourselves. Yeah. And when the government is giving mass sums of money to give away, you don't think they're going to, you know,

do contracts and do different things that are going to help them secure their power. They understand they're like, oh, I've got my hands on all this cash. How can I distribute it in such a way to where some of it makes its way back to make sure that I get elected, whether that's through donations or favor or whatever. And that's another thing that's always happening when the government is giving money to get solve problems. It's also, well, that's power for that politician to be able to use that so that they can stay where they are. And so anyway,

I think when we come back, we will talk H1B. I think Jerick and I have similar perspectives, but different enough to make the conversation interesting. And again, I've not ran a business as big as Jerick's with the success that he has. I've done, you know, done well at 18, 19 news. It's a nonprofit media venture.

We do very well, but it's just it's different. And so love to get into this conversation on the other side of the break on H1B's. What does it mean for America? What are the different philosophies? And we're going to touch on that when we come back. This is Talk 99.5 Dixon and Binding Show. We'll be back. And we are back. It is not even seven o'clock. I'm still kind of waking up, but waking up with you. There it is. That's if I had a morning show, that would be my slogan, waking up with you.

as long as there's enough coffee. That's right. We've got an IV drip in the studio of pure caffeine. So we're going to continue having this conversation of different perspectives on political representation for the working class and also for the business. And I want to differentiate, there's a big difference between a business owner and big corporations and their political interests are often different.

And one of the things I've noticed is a lot of these associations and unions, whatever you want to call them, that promise to be for the small business, you know, in small business, I mean, you could be up to, you know, 200 employees and still be considered a small business when you compare yourself like a UAB and Alabama Power Blue Cross Blue Shield regions. And these major organizations that employ tons of people and thankful that they employ these people, again,

They have their place, but man, they wield a much bigger stick when it comes to political representation. And so whether it's the NFIB, whether it's the Business Council of Alabama, which is the state chamber of commerce, what always ends up happening is they make promises to all of them. This is my opinion. Let me just throw that out there.

of what I've seen and heard from people that I talk to. All of the dues-paying members in these organizations pay their dues, and then they pool that money together, and then they go work for a few major corporations. And this is a lot of these associations, whether you're in agriculture rather than the individual farmer who gets the representation. It's the big Tyson chicken and the big beef factories, whatever.

Well, part of the reason on that too is just like we talked about with political apathy on the primaries. This also is the case with some of these organizations because the big companies, they've got a full-time person that all they get to do is go to all of these meetings and guess what? Their voice gets heard. Well, if you're a small business owner, you realize that, guess what? You don't have 50 people to do the same thing. You're a lot of times doing three or four jobs. So when there's a meeting coming up for representation, you're not gonna be there.

to have your voice heard. So it's important for us to get involved with these organizations as well because the big companies are going to be there no matter what. Yeah. No, it would be nice to see an organization that actually did real representation for small businesses and the small business. I mean, not huge corporations. Anyway, so with that, um, but let's, let's talk H1B. We've been threatening to do that since the beginning of the show. Um,

Obviously there was a huge dust up over the weekend. I talked to Rich Lusk about this yesterday. Um, we had an interesting conversation kind of, you know, coming from what does it mean to be American? You know, what does the Bible say about nationhood? Then had the H1B conversation. Um, now you and I had a phone call kind of prepping for the show a couple of days ago. Um, you know, as you see, and just if you, if you didn't tune in yesterday and you haven't been paying attention to the dust up on, uh, the Twitter's,

uh... that happened over the holidays uh... there there was uh...

Obviously the America First Movement is swelling and it's going and illegal immigration. We're going to round up all the illegals. We're going to throw them out. You know, there's all this. But then Vivek and Elon with the Department of Government of Efficiency started kind of promoting H-1B visas as high skilled legal immigration and the working class populist people on Twitter

went to war with Elon and it lasted for days and it was insane. And it just shows that there's a huge differing view between working class Americans who feel like they've been getting screwed by corporations who want cheap labor versus the corporations who are like, my God, I can't find anybody to work for me that's qualified. And so there's this tension. And so I want to have that conversation with Derek. What are your thoughts on this whole saga?

Well, when you look at the immigration system in our country as a whole, it needs reform period. There's over 185 different classes of visa. It makes up tens of thousands of pages of code. The only thing longer in law in this country than our immigration code is the tax code. So you can tell there's an issue there. And when I heard the story that you told as it was very personal with the H-1B visa and your dad,

That rubbed me the wrong way, because that's not how it's intended. I can tell you, as a business owner, we all have to hire people, and it's challenging. I think the H-1B visa was designed for the purpose of filling those roles that couldn't be filled, not to replace American workers. I think that if we're going to have the H-1B visas, we could do some reforms with it.

But I also understand the need of workers to have that. What I can tell you in researching this issue with 85,000 annual cap and 160 million American workers, I don't think that's where we need to be spending our attention fighting right now. What I am more concerned about when it comes to immigration is the DV, the diversity visa. We're giving 55,000 people a visa every year that these end up turning into permanent residence. H1B are three-year terms. These are permanent residents end up becoming citizens. And guess what?

They're coming over here, and they're on our welfare system. They're getting all this extra funding from the government. And the only reason they're coming here is because there's a program that says we don't have enough diverse people from here, like the 8,000 people from Russia. We apparently don't have enough Russians in this country, so we want to bring more of them over. And when has Russia ever qualified as a diversity thing on the intersectional code?

in the program and it's crazy and then on top of it that we're given a permanent status and we're paying them so i'm a lot more concerned about uh... some of the other aspects of our immigration system then that then the h1 b visa clearly we can we could should put some protections in there i think that it would be a simple fix if we said that the h1 b visa is to fill open positions not positions that are currently uh...

occupied by Americans, but you guys touched on it even yesterday when we talked about the bigger issue is the fact that we've got to do something with our education system and make sure that we have talented people here. This country was built on immigration. I'm absolutely in favor of legal immigration. Look, we brought Albert Einstein over. We wouldn't have the nuclear program that we had in this country if it wasn't for immigration.

So there's a place for it, but clearly we've got to go through and make some reforms to it. But I do agree that the first thing we have to do is secure that border. We've got to stop the component of illegals coming into this country. And then we do should go back and look at reforming our full immigration system. And I think too, and this is a conversation I had and it's a dangerous conversation to have. And apparently that's kind of where I live is on the line of getting canceled every day.

But I think that as we look at immigration, another factor that should go into it, and again, we're not allowed to have these conversations. You're not allowed to say these things, but there needs to be some level of cultural compatibility when we're looking at immigration. And again, so on one hand, you have someone moving to America from England. That's probably the easiest form or maybe Canada, okay? Like England or Canada or something like that. These people for all intents and purposes are almost unrecognizably different from an American. They speak the same language, have the same culture, and heritage,

background, primary religion, you know, all of the things that would make it easy to assimilate. And then on the other side of the spectrum, you have like Haitians, probably the hardest, getting them to assimilate, because I believe immigration without assimilation is invasion. Correct. I'll say that again, immigration without assimilation is invasion. And so therefore we have to put a absolute premium on assimilation

And if you're going to put a premium on assimilation, you have to look at compatibility. And if you look at compatibility, you're going to get called racist. And it's like, it's not about race. It has literally to do with language, religion, like all of that. There's all kinds of things that go into it that because, and again, this gets to the point where I don't think, you know, we've been lied to and told that diversity is our strength. And I think that's absolutely not true. I think that

A nation has to, there has to be some type of a monoculture in a nation for it to be distinct and useful. You know, when they talked about a melting pot, they were talking about, you know, Italian Catholics and, you know, Scottish Presbyterians or something. They weren't, they weren't talking about bringing people in from the everywhere, all over Muslims and everything else. And so anyway, again, like I said, I'm going to

bump up right against the uh... brine's never gonna have a job everywhere and i think you're correct too because i mean you look at the fact our country we are a judio christian country that's where foundation principles come from uh... and and that's what it should be about yeah all right more on the other side this is the dixon vining show talk ninety nine five we will be back

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