Broken Systems sit beneath the noble words Peter Vazquez confronts in this hard-hitting broadcast about politics, labor, cost, justice, and America’s fading foundations.
The show opens with a Facebook post by Congressman Joe Morelle invoking civil-rights language around voting rights, while Peter challenges the contradiction of using Selma, equality, and democracy to defend modern redistricting power.
The conversation then widens into May Day, where real worker anxiety is separated from the political machinery that turns labor pain into calls for more government control. Peter honors work, but questions why leaders who claim to defend workers rarely lower taxes, reduce energy costs, fix schools, or make life affordable.
Callers sharpen the hour with frustration over election integrity, political complacency, and the misuse of the word “democracy” in a constitutional republic. From rising gas prices and Albany’s utility-fee hypocrisy to illegal cannabis enforcement and the silence around Epstein victims, the show traces one central warning: ordinary citizens are expected to live under rules the powerful keep bending.
The closing reaches into Scripture, the Constitution, slavery, and Star Wars as reminders that nations fall when they forget their foundations. Peter’s call is direct: be a leader, defend liberty, remember God, country, and family, and refuse to let polished language cover broken systems.
Broken Systems. When the working man fills his gas tank and feels like he is being punished for showing up. It breaks when a family stands in the grocery aisle doing math instead of choosing dinner. It breaks when politicians wrap their ambition in noble words, call it democracy, and expect the rest of us to pretend we do not see the crowbar behind the halo.
Peter Vazquez opens the conversation with a warning: leaders have learned how to use beautiful language to hide broken systems. They say justice while justice waits. They say progress while the lights flicker. They say voting rights while drawing maps. They say compassion while building dependency.
They speak to the people as if the people are children, as if working families cannot see the trick being played right in front of them. BUT can they?
Congressman Joe Morelle’s claim that America is fighting the same voting-rights battle it fought during the civil-rights era of the 1950s and 1960s. Those words are heavy. They reach back toward Selma, toward the Voting Rights Act, toward Americans who paid dearly to force this nation to live up to its own promises.
But this is where the knife turns. The language is civil rights. The machinery is redistricting. The branding is democracy. The product is partisan advantage.
Morelle invokes the moral authority of the civil-rights movement while standing inside a modern political map fight. Hakeem Jeffries and Morelle call it the New York Democracy Project.
Peter calls it what it looks like: power dressed in Sunday clothes. If Republicans change maps, it is called voter suppression. If Democrats pursue their own redistricting strategy, it is called protecting democracy. Same knife, different handle.
Callers Gary and Mike bring the street-level frustration into the conversation. They do not hear polished rhetoric. They hear a system protecting itself. They hear politicians who speak of equality while ignoring election integrity concerns, who talk about the founders while bending the rules to preserve their own seats, who praise democracy while forgetting that America was built as a constitutional republic.
Then the show turns toward May Day, and the conversation cuts even deeper.
Work matters because work is where dignity meets reality. The person who clocks in, pays taxes, drives to the job, buys groceries, supports a family, and tries to hold life together is the person every politician claims to defend.
But May Day is not innocent. It carries a political shadow: labor agitation, socialist movements, class resentment, mass pressure, and the belief that the worker’s future must be negotiated through government control.
Peter does not attack workers. He honors them. His father benefited from union work. His own children work hard. The issue is not the worker asking for dignity. The issue is political movements taking real economic anxiety and converting it into more control, more dependency, more resentment, and more government power.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s Faster Labor Contracts Act becomes part of that question.
If Washington can force bargaining within ten days and allow an outside arbitrator to impose a decision after ninety days, is that still negotiation, or is it managed labor policy from the top down? When politicians say, “When workers win, we all win,” the obvious question remains: who decides what winning means?
The working man does not experience policy in white papers. He experiences it in gas receipts, delayed flights, utility bills, grocery totals, and the long silence after payday when there is still too much month left.
New York’s gas price sits painfully high, and politicians blame foreign conflict while rarely admitting what state taxes, mandates, distribution costs, and energy policies have done to working families.
They treat affordable energy like a sin until the power bill arrives. They blame the war, the market, the other party, the weather, the oil companies, anyone but themselves. Convenient little arrangement, as always.
The same pattern shows up in Albany. New York botched the rollout of legal cannabis, allowed illegal smoke shops to grow in the confusion, then came back with enforcement after years of chaos.
Two local shops were shut down after officials seized more than $1.3 million in illegal cannabis products. Enforcement may be necessary, but the deeper issue is unequal responsibility. The citizen gets the fine. The small business gets crushed. The state gets to pretend it did not create half the mess.
Then Albany fails to pass a budget and lawmakers consider shielding themselves from utility late fees tied to budget-related pay delays. That is the Vanbōōlzalness Crisis in its purest form: consequences for the public, cushions for the powerful.
The show moves from politics into justice, and Jeffrey Epstein’s shadow returns. Survivors still ask whether victims have standing against the powerful. Laborers ask whether work still has dignity. Families ask why costs keep rising. Citizens ask why laws bend differently depending on who is being protected. The system is not merely inefficient. It is morally selective.
History enters the room like a witness.
The Constitution was designed to limit power because the founders understood human nature. Slavery exposed the contradiction between America’s promises and America’s practices, eventually tearing the nation toward civil war.
Star Wars, of all things, becomes another warning: George Lucas built a modern myth from Rome, Nazi Germany, Vietnam, the Cold War, and the old story of republics surrendering liberty under fear, manipulation, and applause.
Americans recognize tyranny when Darth Vader wears a cape. They struggle to see it when bureaucracy wears a badge, carries a title, or smiles from behind a campaign podium.
That is the burden of this conversation. Not despair. Not cynicism for sport. Not anger without direction. The warning is sharper than that. A country cannot survive if its people forget the difference between compassion and control, democracy and manipulation, justice and performance, work and dependency, liberty and chaos.
Peter closes where the show began: with foundations.
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Cleaned Transcript
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Show Intro:
Look to the left. Look to the right. What do you see? Where are you? In a world that seems to change daily, what will you do next?
Welcome to The Next Steps Show with Peter Vazquez, a starting point for discussion and a little direction. Un poco de dirección.
Peter Vazquez:
Really, when leaders use noble words, we hear that all the time. Leaders use words that sound eloquent. They use noble words to hide broken systems.
When they do that, the working man pays.
Justice ends up waiting on the sidelines somewhere for another politician to speak even more elegant words. The lights flicker in our homes, and in some cases, we cannot turn them on because it is so expensive. Then America is told to call this decline progress.
I started yesterday’s show by saying America is not just fighting over politics anymore. We are fighting over reality itself.
We call it the Vanbōōlzalness Crisis. Some people call it other things. But these people are literally talking to us como somos niños, as if we are children. Worse than that, they are talking to us as if we are too ignorant to understand what they are doing.
But wait a minute. Are we that ignorant to what is going on?
When someone like Congressman Joe Morelle says it is hard to believe we are having the same voting-rights fight America had during the civil-rights era of the 1950s and 1960s, he is talking about centuries of struggle, the founders’ promise of freedom and equality, and the duty to keep fighting.
Those are heavy words coming from him.
It is like much of the left, like those who would dare say that an airline going out of business, with so many people out of jobs, is a win for the buffoon who used to be in the White House.
Lines are open: 585-346-3000. If you are down in the Southern Tier or outside the 585 area code, call toll free at 866-552-1009.
Today’s show is all about you and me. Today’s show is about the nonsense. It is about helping those who are listening see beyond it and helping them find that balance between faith, politics, and entrepreneurship.
Without those three, without that balance, without un poquito de emotional intelligence, that is where we start getting angry about things like me talking Spanish, like some of you have.
“He needs to talk more English.”
No. What we need to do is ensure that we are working together.
What ends up happening is that jokers like Joe Morelle reach back to Selma, Bloody Sunday, and historical facts like that to promote and push an ideological agenda on your back, while having you convinced that he is right.
Morelle and those on the left, look at what is happening in New York City. Hocus Pocus.
He is invoking a moral authority, a moral authority this country used to have and is fighting to maintain. A moral authority that, back in the civil-rights era, did great things for this nation.
But this same guy is participating in a modern partisan redistricting fight.
Equality and freedom coming from someone like Morelle, someone like Chuck Schumer, someone like the mayor of Rochester, or the county executive? Come on, man.
That is the Vanbōōlzalness. Noble language used to sanitize political muscle. That is what it does. That is very Washington. That is very Albany. That is like putting a halo on a crowbar and calling it progress.
The question is whether politicians are protecting you, or whether they are protecting their seats.
I know the answer to that. I think you do too.
Some of us choose to say, “Wait a minute. He is giving us a little bit over here, so we have to give him the whole house.”
No.
Morelle puts this Facebook post out there. I am going to repeat these words because you have to hear the nonsense. This is the rhetoric:
“It is hard to believe we are having the same fight for voting rights that we had in the civil-rights era of the 1950s and 1960s.”
Mira, I triple-dog dare anybody who supports this nonsense to call this show.
He says, “Through centuries of struggle, countless Americans have strived to make real our founders’ promise of freedom and equality. We will not stop that fight now.”
That sounds righteous.
The Voting Rights Act was signed into law in August of 1965. The National Archives calls it the most significant federal-state voting-rights change since Reconstruction. It was designed to enforce the 15th Amendment and confront discriminatory voting practices that kept Black Americans from the voting booth.
But the hypocrisy is what these people do. The hypocrisy walks in wearing church shoes, and we look at those church shoes and say, “Qué lindo.”
This congressman, and those who sit with him, because it is not just him. We have it at the state and local levels. We have it at the federal level.
Listen, he is not just giving some history lesson, saying, “My gosh, we are still struggling.” He is also one of the Democratic leaders helping to push New York’s response to the national redistricting war.
The guy even opposes the SAVE Act.
News 10 NBC here locally reported that Joe Morelle and Hakeem Jeffries announced the New York Democracy Project. Mira, piensa eso. The New York Democracy Project.
Pay attention to those words.
It is a redistricting initiative.
What does democracy mean again? Maybe somebody can call and remind us. Tell me, in your opinion, what does democracy mean?
Is the United States a democracy? I do not think so.
They plan to travel to Albany and throughout the state to talk about redrawing New York’s districts. The kicker is that they say they are redrawing New York’s districts to ensure minorities, people of color, and the disenfranchised are represented.
They love those words.
No one wants to sit there and say, “Wait a minute. Why are people disenfranchised? Why do they not have IDs in a time when you need ID to buy medicine or soda, or to drive a car, which most people do?”
You name it, you cannot go to the store without ID for many things.
The New York Democracy Project is framed as a response to the redistricting efforts of Florida and the Supreme Court ruling involving Louisiana’s majority-Black district.
This is interesting. It really is.
To me, that sounds like a contradiction. The same politicians saying we are reliving the civil-rights voting battle of the 1950s and 1960s are also tied to the partisan effort to maintain control in New York State. Not control for red or Black people. Simply to maintain control.
Gary, thank you for calling The Next Steps Show.
Gary:
Hello, Peter.
Peter:
Hello.
Gary:
Great topic today. I think it all comes down to looking at what you are being told and what you are seeing, and then using your common sense to figure out who is full of it.
Our politicians have become so complacent because they knew that no matter what they did, they could not be unelected if they were playing games with the right people.
Now that all of that is being exposed, this is a desperate bunch of people on both sides of the aisle in some cases, and probably many cases, because they have all been involved in this.
Here is a good example. If you look at the things that have been exposed recently, whether it is the voter fraud, the election rolls being polluted with algorithms and illegal numbers, the stuff from Venezuela, the fraud in Medicare, Medicaid, and Feed the Kids programs all over the country, it does not just pop up here and there. It is part of a structure that was built on purpose.
When you look at all of that, and you realize that the Trump administration is systematically taking a wrecking ball to the whole operation, whether it is NGOs, foundations, the Rockefeller Fund, or all these big-name people, they have turned us into debt slaves.
At some point, the globalists got married up with the Democrat Party and enough RINOs who would go along with it. They decided, when John Kennedy was going to recognize the scam, the bamboozle, that it was easier to kill the golden goose slowly and take what they could from it to keep it under control.
If the rest of the world gets wind of how successful you can be with liberty, freedom, and people having incentive to do better, that will ruin the globalist plan of control.
Peter:
That is quite a bit, Gary. But you know what gets me? These people you are referring to, all of them, including Joe and even the ones close to home, quote individuals who pushed for true freedom, like Frederick Douglass. They use their words, and we are buying it.
Gary, I appreciate the call.
Ladies and gentlemen, the language is civil rights. The machinery is elections or election rigging. The branding is democracy. The product is partisan advantage.
Mira, soy yo, Peter Vazquez, right here on The Next Steps Show on the Voice of Liberty.
Ladies and gentlemen, pick up that phone and give us a call. I will be right back after these messages.
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Peter:
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. Soy yo, Peter Vazquez, still here, excited, privileged, and honored to have a conversation with you.
Since I am privileged, does that make it Puerto Rican privilege? I will have to think about that for a second.
Shout out to our sponsors, Youth for Christ Rochester, YFCRochester.org. Reverend Michael Hennessy, thank you for your leadership in an area that needs God.
God, country, and family all day, every day.
Hectic Foods, HecticFoods.com. Charles, you are rocking it and keeping it hectic. Check out the website because they have some things going on that you definitely want to be part of.
I know many of you listening love animals just like I do. You love puppies and kitty cats and gerbils and hamsters and elephants and tigers and really anything that walks around with four legs, or maybe two, that is a pet or not.
As conservatives, we should absolutely take good care of all of God’s creation, and that includes animals.
This Saturday, May 9, from 2 to 6, there is going to be a Susie Q Dog Rescue 20th anniversary event. Check them out: Susie Q Dog Rescue. That is Saturday, May 9, from 2 to 6 at Rising Storm Brewing Company, 5750 South Lima Road in Avon.
Support it. It is a good cause.
If you are listening and thinking about writing a check to some politician, how about writing a check to Susie Q? Or instead, or maybe in addition, if you can afford it.
I will tell you what: the only dogs in this world that can use your help are not the politicians.
Politicians do stuff like this: New York Democracy Project. They try to make you believe they are doing something good for you.
Have you asked yourself over the break whether the United States is a democracy? Why would majority rule make sense? I thought we were a representative government.
Remember the names behind this project: Congressman Joe Morelle and Hakeem Jeffries. Traitors, maybe? Anti-American, un poquito, based on their policies?
I do not know these guys personally, so this is not about them personally. It is about what they are calling leadership.
Remember, como dije, the language is civil rights. The machinery is elections, or redistricting in this case. The branding is democracy.
You rule because you are louder. There is no word anywhere in what they do about being representative.
This is not simply Democrat or Republican. These guys just happen to be leftists.
Because there are some Republicans out there that I kind of want to punch in the nose. I mean with a big soft cushiony pillow, because violence is never good.
This is why I say that. Joe Morelle says the SAVE Act, the SAVE America Act, and the MEGA Act are the latest tools in the Republican election takeover toolkit.
That is their mantra. That is being perpetuated by many on the left.
They are okay with illegal aliens. They are okay with ensuring that your child, because that is who they are influencing, becomes a victim of their democracy.
Morelle says Democrats would use every tool to stop what he calls voter suppression.
When they use words like “every tool available,” like Gary mentioned, and like my guest last week confirmed when we talked about how Venezuela, China, Russia, and several others played a role, watch what Trump is doing. He is very intentional. You can follow his map. You know where he is going next and why.
The SAVE America Act is something Morelle and every legislator should get behind.
These jokers on the left will not even say MEGA in its full descriptive form: Make Elections Great Again. They will not say that. Just like they will not use certain words.
We all know how they work with words. Equity. Same knife, different handle.
That is why you have to pay attention. That is why you need to tell people about The Next Steps Show. That is why you need to encourage businesses and those that have something to share to sponsor The Next Steps Show.
We are pretty much worldwide right now. More than one country. I know we are on the West Coast. We are in Texas, Arizona, you name it.
The reason I share that is not to toot my own horn. It is because everything we have been talking about here locally, including jokers like Morelle, creates a movement. That is how we ended up with Mamdani or Katie over in New York City and Seattle, Washington, respectively.
That kind of mentality, the Vanbōōlzalness Crisis, leads to things like May Day.
Bob mentioned it yesterday. It leads to things like May Day.
It is interesting because May Day, I have to admit this because it is funny to me, but at the same time, I probably should have known. When I heard that term for the first time, I thought, “What the heckola is this?”
That was definitely one of those WTF moments.
May Day.
The day does begin with work because work is where dignity meets reality.
We can talk about everything. We can talk about courts and budgets and immigration. We can talk about redistricting, abortion or anti-abortion. We can talk about energy and elections. We all do.
But everything starts with the person who gets up, clocks in to work, pays his or her taxes, fills the gas tank, buys groceries, and wonders why honest labor feels less and less secure.
Let us look at Rochester’s May Day rallies.
I think they deserve a critical eye. It is one of those warm and fuzzy things. I have asked three or four people, and they do not really know what it is.
Like everything from the left, and some from the right too, to be fair, May Day is never just about work or workers.
Nor is paying your electric bill anymore. Nor is going grocery shopping anymore. Nor are simple do-it-yourself projects.
Things like May Day and all this rhetoric from all these jokers who are bamboozling you into believing these are righteous causes carry a long political shadow. May Day is tied to labor agitation, socialist movements, class struggles, and the belief that the worker’s future must be negotiated through mass pressure and government intervention.
Now hang on. This is not some bash on unions. Not at all.
The union did great things for my daddy. It is doing great things for a couple of my kids. But not because the union is doing it, but because my kids are working hard.
That does not mean every worker at the rallies is radical, by the way. Remember that.
Mira, soy yo, Peter Vazquez, aquí, waiting for you to give us a call. Soy yo. The Next Steps Show, WYSL, WLEA, Voice of Liberty. I will be back in a couple minutes.
Station Break:
Peter Vazquez and The Next Steps Show on the Voice of Liberty.
Peter:
Do you hear that, ladies and gentlemen? I think that is a politician calling here. Listen.
No, I think we hurt their feelings. They are crying.
Do not worry about it, little politician. We will rub your head later. Not at the next election, though. I promise you that.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to The Next Steps Show. Lines are open: 585-346-3000. Toll free: 866-552-1009.
I have a caller. I am going to go to you here real quick, Mike.
But I was watching the news, and the news was reporting on how this one local agency was having a baby shower-type thing for expectant mothers.
I thought, “Wow, a lot of these pregnancy agencies, pro-life agencies, do that all the time, even before the baby is born. Establishing hope.”
Then I started looking at the agencies that put that together. Vanbōōlzalness. Every single one of those agencies promotes abortion like it is the next best thing to sliced cheese and will tell the victim, “Mira, you want to do this because it is better for you.”
Mike, thank you for calling The Next Steps Show, papa.
Mike:
Hey, Peter, how is it going?
This is my opinion. Joe Morelle is a stump-sucking bum. He just will not admit it to the people of New York. He has been sucking on the teat of New York. He has never had a real job.
When he is ready to leave Congress, he is walking out with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of benefits. We all know that he shuffled money and did the illegal stock trading that you and I would be arrested for, with insider information, and he is quietly walking away a millionaire.
As far as all those May Day people, they are all communists. Read up on it. The Communist Party. People are blind enough not to see that they are communists. They actually showed you the flag. They flew the flag. The Democratic Workers Association. There are communists.
Peter:
To me, the Bible talks about Satan presenting himself not as an individual with two horns, flames, and something scary, but as one of the most beautiful sights you will see, with a gift of gab unlike any other. You have heard that, correct?
Mike:
Correct. Although, too, we are fighting another religious war. We have the queen of New York, who thinks she is something. She is run by Zionists. Then you have Mamdani, who is straight-up Islamic, who is going to follow the Quran, and all the other people are going right along with them.
In the voter district thing, this is a big sham. We have already done that. How do you think Morelle got there? This has already been gerrymandered. How many real Republican districts are here, considering that we have states that have zero Republican representation but have a Republican population?
Peter:
New York is kind of one of them.
Mike:
Democracy is not representative of the public. Democracy means 51 percent. That is one sheep and two wolves, and the wolves are figuring out what they are having for lunch.
Peter:
It could be two wolves. You are 100 percent correct.
The thing is, Mike, it does not take two wolves anymore. It literally takes just one wolf with a pretty smile, kind of like we see in Mamdani, kind of like we see in Hocus Pocus.
Mike, I appreciate the call, sir. I truly do.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mike’s line is open. 585-346-3000. Toll free: 866-552-1009.
What say you?
The problem begins when political movements take real economic anxiety and turn it into a case for more what? Some would say federal dollars, state dollars.
No. That is not what they are doing.
They are taking real economic anxiety and turning it into a case for more federal and state control. More union pressure. More class resentment. More push for dependency on the very government systems that helped make life unaffordable to begin with.
Ladies and gentlemen, you cannot all be sheep.
Someone said to me, “Peter, there is going to be a civil war in this country.”
I do not know. I do know this: there is not going to be a country if we continue to allow this language, if we continue to allow the Vanbōōlzalness Crisis to get in your cabeza.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand stepped into this May Day conversation in Brighton. Of course, she did not sit there and say, “How can I make taxes less? How can I make things make more sense for the working man and woman?”
Nope. She was there urging passage of the Faster Labor Contracts Act.
Let me say that slower: the Faster Labor Contracts Act.
That bill would require companies to start collective-bargaining negotiations within 10 days of union certification.
You are probably thinking, “Peter, so what? That is good, right? Employers are bad. They have to be regulated.”
But if no agreement is reached within 90 days, a neutral third party would step in and make a final decision.
Gillibrand says this: “The right to organize and collectively bargain is at the very core of the American dream. When workers win, we all win.”
No doubt.
But let me ask this, ladies and gentlemen, and those of you who work in unions: when Washington, Albany, or any municipality whatsoever forces the timeline and allows an outside arbitrator to impose the outcome, is that truly bargaining?
Or is that managed labor policy from the top down?
It is a simple question. Somebody has to have an answer.
Help me understand. Help your neighbor understand.
The working man does not experience policy on white paper. Tú y yo sabemos eso.
A working man does not have time to read that white paper. He experiences it in the gas receipt, the grocery bill, and the delayed flights.
Wait. Most of these people in Albany and Washington have their own plane.
New York’s regular gas price was $4.46 per gallon. It is the same as the national average, and that national price jumped 35 cents in the last week.
Absolutely horrendous.
I am feeling it. I drive an hour and 15 minutes to work every day, not to mention the other things I do. I know gas hurts.
Schumer says, and so does Hocus Pocus, so does Mamdani, so does Mayor Evans, and so does the guy who is running the county. I always forget his name. He is so irrelevant.
The county clerk tries to say it too.
It is Trump’s fault. It is his reckless war of choice in Iran. It is going against these nations that have vowed to destroy us. They say families in the Rochester-Finger Lakes are paying the price at the pump and beyond.
That is the rhetoric. The sound bite.
No doubt, foreign-policy pressure is real. I am going to say this again out loud: that is your fault and my fault.
Why? Because we have allowed New York to get where it is. We have said, “Yes, we will budge on this, and we will budge on that.”
Listen, I am all about compromise. But when the only options we have at election time are worse, worser, and worstest, that is on you. That is on the party leaders.
The foreign-policy pressure is absolutely real.
But our New York families know this too: state taxes. New York state taxes. These politicians are not mentioning those. Environmental mandates. Refinery constrictions. Distribution costs.
Have you looked at your electric bill lately? Look at the second or third page where they talk about distribution and use. Yes, it is there.
There is a political class that treats energy as a sin until the power bill arrives.
We will be right back, right here on WYSL and WLEA, Voice of Liberty, with Peter Vazquez and The Next Steps Show.
Remember, lines are open: 585-346-3000 or 866-552-1009. I will be right back.
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Station Break:
Peter Vazquez and The Next Steps Show on the Voice of Liberty.
Peter:
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen.
Shout out to Youth for Christ. Go to their website, YFCRochester.org. While you are there, there are tabs up top. One of them says volunteer. One of them says donate.
There is also other information there, and I really want you to get involved. You get motivated when you are there.
Click that volunteer button. Tell Mike you want to volunteer to help mentor children who have not seen a strong adult in their lives. Give them good advice. You could save a life simply by helping them.
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Interesting politics these days.
Let me ask a question: do politicians live under the same rules they use to govern us?
I wonder that.
I want to share a couple local stories together.
Freedom is free. Now, freedom without boundaries, without rule of law, is chaos. That is not freedom. That is probably more like democracy, majority rules, than it is freedom.
Here in New York State, the state passed the recreational marijuana law a few years ago. Of course, like everything, they botched the rollout.
The Henrietta supervisor recently reported that tax dollars really are not adding up and all this other stuff.
But what gets me is that, for about two and a half years, it was legal in New York State without access, because there were no shops.
A local news report said the Office of Cannabis Management reported that a store called Unique Smoke Shop in Rochester and Mr. Starlight Smoke Shop in Chili were shut down after officials seized more than $1.3 million worth of what the state says were illegal cannabis products.
Kudos. I am not opposed to that.
But what we are discussing is not the enforcement. It is not illegal operators undermining licensed businesses or avoiding taxes. It is not whether they are selling untested products.
Let us look at another story real quick so we can bring it together.
Albany lawmakers failed to pass a budget. I can tell you I know a few elected officials who did not get paid there for a little bit. But Albany officials are proposing a bill that would shield themselves from utility late fees during a budget-related pay delay.
That is Vanbōōlzalness Crisis, ladies and gentlemen.
The moral problem, like I said, is not enforcement. We know we have to enforce.
But how did we go two and a half years letting these non-licensed stores continue, only for the state suddenly to say, “Wait a minute, now you are a problem”?
The moral problem is unequal enforcement.
A society can absolutely survive with strict rules. Pero caramba, those rules have to be fair.
Otherwise, what we have is not commerce. It is not capitalism. It is another government control of an industry, whether you agree with that industry or not.
Whatever happened to the times when someone could say, “I have something good to sell. I am going to put my fruits and vegetables out on the street”?
Anyway, how about justice?
Jeffrey Epstein never seems to go away. I have not heard a lot of politicians here in New York, aside from when Trump was not releasing files and they said, “You have to release it, you have to release it,” say, “We have to change the laws to protect those who were victims.”
They just do not.
Laborers ask whether work still has dignity. Epstein survivors ask whether victims still have standing against the powerful.
That is bizarre to me.
Time flies when you are having fun, and I always have fun at lunchtime. I really do. Talking, joking, having a little hectic conversation with you all.
Let us look at something a little different as we move toward the end of this show.
Every nation is governed first by its memory. Laws matter. Budgets matter. Elections matter. But under all of it is a story that people tell about themselves.
History.com’s constitutional overview explains that the Constitution established a national government, fundamental laws, and basic rights, and that it created three branches with checks and balances so no single branch had too much power.
I think that was great.
The Articles of Confederation proved too weak to hold the young country together. We continue to grow through togetherness, through God, country, and family.
The same website explains that slavery fueled colonial economies in the 17th and 18th centuries. Although the Declaration of Independence promised liberty, we know that at that time it did not end slavery.
That moved us toward a civil war and moved us toward a time when we did come together, North and South, and said this is the nation that we want. A nation where God, country, and family prevail.
It is interesting when you look at some of our favorite movies. I read a quote somewhere that said if you do not learn or teach about history, history repeats itself, or something along those lines.
That is true. I am not a history buff.
But did you know that George Lucas, the guy who did Star Wars, built that modern myth out of real historical collapses?
Call it what it is, but you can see a trend when you pay attention.
I like movies. I am not much about TV shows.
George Lucas, for Star Wars, drew from Nazi Germany, ancient Rome, Vietnam, the Cold War, mythology, and American political anxiety.
The fall of the Republic into the Empire is an old story of liberty surrendering under fear, manipulation, and applause.
Folklore matters because every civilization passes down either courage or cowardice, gratitude or grievance, duty or dependency.
So why do Americans recognize tyranny when Darth Vader wears a cape, but excuse it when bureaucracy wears a badge or a title called elected official?
What does slavery teach about proclaiming liberty? In today’s modern political scene, we are becoming a victimhood-driven nation.
If the Constitution teaches about limiting power before power begins to call itself compassion, how is Joe Morelle still in office? Or half these jokers who have been there?
I saw another meme on social media that said President Trump was considering instituting term limits. That would remove most of our elected officials.
That is so true.
Proverbs 22:28 says, “Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.”
Let me leave you with Psalm 11:3: “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?”
Be a leader.
Be a leader. Be a leader.
God bless these United States of America, and do not let a second go by where you are not a voice for libertad.