Hidden Power Narratives exposes what lives beneath clean headlines. Bill Conroy follows the money behind Venezuela, drug strikes, and geopolitical pressure disguised as enforcement. Tim and Deb Smith bring the focus home, proving local journalism still preserves memory, accountability, and civic pride. Power hides in abstraction, but truth survives where people pay attention and communities speak.
Truth dies in the gap between slogans and outcomes, so Peter Vazquez goes digging. Investigative journalist Bill Conroy follows the money behind Venezuela, drug strikes, and the geopolitics hiding under a clean narrative. Then Tim and Deb Smith prove local news still breathes, turning Greater Rochester stories into civic pride and charity. Watch power. Keep your community awake.
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Have you ever dreamt of sharing your unique voice, stories, or expertise with the world through a podcast? Perhaps you're bubbling with ideas but uncertain about where to begin? The journey from idea to launch can be daunting, but that's where we come in. Dive Into the World of Podcasting with Next Steps Radio PODCAST Network! Visit NextStepsRoc.com or call Peter at (585) 880-7580.
The Next Steps Show – Cleaned Transcript
Host: Peter Vazquez
Opening Reflection
Peter Vazquez opens with a warning. The gap between slogans and outcomes is where truth disappears, trust collapses, and power hides. The program is framed as a place for discernment, not slogans, and for asking questions before accepting narratives.
Segment One: Venezuela, Drugs, and Geopolitics
Peter introduces Bill Conroy, a veteran investigative journalist and author with decades of experience reporting on the drug war, finance, and corruption across the United States, Mexico, and Latin America.
Bill Conroy explains that Venezuela is often presented to Americans through a simplified narrative. Drug boats are targeted, and the public is told this is about stopping narcotics. He argues that this framing is misleading. Venezuela is not a major producer of drugs and interdiction at sea barely affects cartel profits. Cocaine production is vast and renewable, and seizures represent only a fraction of what moves through global routes.
Bill explains that the real story is money. Drug trafficking survives because profits are laundered through financial systems that face minimal consequences. Every time a cartel leader is removed, multiple successors emerge. The drug war fragments power but never dismantles the system because financial channels remain open.
He describes the current activity near Venezuela as an on ramp rather than a destination. From his perspective, the underlying objective is geopolitical pressure tied to energy corridors and foreign influence. China, Russia, and Iran have deep investments in Venezuelan oil infrastructure, and control of that energy supply has strategic implications far beyond narcotics enforcement.
Peter presses the distinction between public justification and underlying objectives. Bill acknowledges election interference exists globally through cyber activity, but emphasizes that Venezuela’s central importance is oil, energy leverage, and great power competition.
Segment Two: The Importance of Local Journalism
Peter shifts the focus closer to home, arguing that national narratives often distract from what is happening in local communities. He introduces Tim Smith and Deb Smith, community journalists, authors, and publishers of Royally Regaling Greater Rochester Taking Stock of the ROC.
Tim and Deb describe their work documenting people, places, and institutions across Monroe County and surrounding regions. Their journalism is intentionally non ideological and focused on civic memory, local history, and community pride. They explain how local newspapers continue to serve towns, villages, and small businesses that would otherwise go unnoticed.
They recount traveling across the region collecting stories and signatures for charity fundraising, turning local storytelling into service. Their work supports organizations such as animal welfare groups and public broadcasting through auctioned signed books and memorabilia.
Segment Three: Community, Education, and Relationships
Tim shares stories from years of teaching and journalism, including a long running series that paired a special needs student with local businesses to learn interviewing, writing, and collaboration. The project strengthened community ties while giving the student confidence, purpose, and recognition.
Deb emphasizes that when local news disappears, accountability weakens and shared reference points vanish. Decisions still happen in town halls, school boards, and zoning meetings, even if no one is watching. Local journalism keeps those spaces visible.
They also share a deeply personal story of helping a former student with terminal cancer fulfill a final wish to attend a Tom Petty concert. The effort brought together educators, venues, and community connections, illustrating the lasting power of relationships built through service and attention.
Closing Reflection
Peter concludes by tying both conversations together. Whether discussing global power or neighborhood stories, the lesson is the same. Power thrives in abstraction and silence. Truth survives through attention, verification, and community engagement.
Listeners are encouraged to remain discerning, support local institutions, and refuse to surrender their voice. Liberty endures when people choose responsibility over slogans.
End of Transcript
We have a rather unique backstory, much of it rooted in upstate New York. We met on the very first day of high school, brought together by the merger of two neighboring school districts. We dated all four years, then went our separate ways to different colleges. As fate would have it, we did not see each other again for nearly forty years.
When Tim’s mother passed away, Deb heard the news through the grapevine in Virginia Beach, where she was teaching. She sent a sympathy card. Tim wrote back. One thing led to another, and by the end of that school year, Tim drove to Virginia Beach to bring Deb back home to New York.
What Deb remembers most from that period was checking her mailbox at school each day and finding an envelope from Tim. Inside each was an original letter Deb had written to him forty years earlier. Tim had saved every one. His favorite line about that chapter of the story is simple: “It took me a long time to play those cards.” Some of the best things in life are worth waiting for.
We became engaged on Deb’s mother’s birthday, December 4, and were married on Tim’s mother’s birthday, June 12. Because we both have Native American ancestry, our ceremony was held at the Ganondagan Historic Site and performed by a Native American leader there. A former student of Tim’s also presided over the ceremony.
So how did we get into writing? As fate would have it, we live right next door to the newspaper office in our town. After hearing our story, the publisher, Chris Carosa, suggested we write about our background and share it with the c… Read More
Investigative journalist and author on power and corruption
Bill Conroy is a journalist shaped by long roads, border towns, and questions most narratives prefer unanswered. Armed with a master’s degree in Mass Communications and Journalism from Marquette University, he has spent more than forty years moving between newsrooms and front lines, serving as a reporter, editor in chief, and independent correspondent across the United States and Mexico.
His work follows the money, the silences, and the spaces where power hides behind policy. Along the way, his reporting has become part of the historical record, cited in more than thirty five books examining corruption, crime, and national security.
Conroy is the author of The Great Pretense, Dispatches from the House of Death, and Borderline Security, books that peel back the machinery of the drug war and expose the cost of institutional deception. His journalism is not written for comfort, but for clarity, accountability, and the long memory truth demands.
