Y'all-itics

Y’all-itics: September 25, 2022 It’s a job no one wanted.  Restoring reliability in the Texas electric grid. Brad Jones took the governor’s call and agreed to be the interim CEO of ERCOT. Over the last year and a half, he has made significant changes to how ERCOT operates and why we have not had any more energy emergencies. The real test, though, will be another winter. That’s when we’ll find out...

Y’all-itics: September 18, 2022 You’ve seen the candidates on the ballot, the ones with the “L” by their name. The Libertarian Party has been around for more than 50-years and they hold only around 350 elected offices across the country. And the party has never broken through with a win in a major nationwide race, or even one here in Texas.  Why then are Texas Republicans trying to kick Libertaria...

Y’all-itics: September 11, 2022   That escalated quickly. In the week since our last podcast, during which we broke the news that Republican Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley would be voting for Democrat Mike Collier in the race for Lieutenant Governor, another prominent Republican has done the same. State Senator Kel Seliger calls Republican incumbent Dan Patrick an “extremist,” and says state le...

Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley said he expects some blowback for what he said in this episode. The veteran Republican and long-time chief elected official in Tarrant County revealed that he will back Democrat Mike Collier instead of Republican Dan Patrick in race for lieutenant governor this November. This is Judge Whitley’s tell-all before he retires from politics at the end of the year. Whitl...

Y’all-itics: August 28, 2022 After nearly 50-years, America is finally returning to the Moon, as Artemis 1 is scheduled to launch Monday, August 29, 2022. The ambitious, 42-day-long mission will be the first time NASA uses Orion, the new spacecraft built to take humans back to the moon. While no astronauts will be on board this mission, it is step one in getting Americans back on the moon by 2024....

Y'all-itics: Tuesday, August 23rd The Jasons don’t often do sequels, but Whitely got a call that two elected officials wanted to give their first-ever news interviews and Y’all-itics responded. In this episode, for the first time, top school board members at Keller ISD and Grapevine Colleyville ISD take questions from a journalist. GCISD Vice President Shannon Braun and KISD President Dr. Charles...

Y’all-itics: August 21, 2022   41 library books have come off the shelves inside one school district in North Texas. Why? Parents challenged why their children should be exposed to them.   Among the titles are “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” and – wait for it – the Bible.  Public school libraries are now the frontlines in the ongoing culture wars.  In this episode of Y’all-itics , a f...

Texas is rolling in it!  A strong economy and soaring inflation have spurred extraordinary tax and fee collections, swelling the state’s coffers by up to $27 Billion more than was budgeted.  So the first question that comes to mind is: How is the surplus going to be spent? Rest assured there will be a Texas-sized wishlist from politicians, especially incumbents who can afford to make big promises...

Y’all-itics: August This episode is about the two most influential men in Texas politics that you’ve likely never heard of. They’re billionaire oil men from West Texas who also preach at their local churches.  Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks are now the focus of a new CNN documentary titled “Deep in the Pockets of Texas.”  In talking to experts and fellow conservatives, veteran Texas journalist Ed Lavan...

SYNOPSIS: This past year has taught us not to take electricity for granted. Better be careful with water, too. Texas needs more of it to keep up with all the residents and businesses moving here. One small town along the Red River is already running low on the resource. The plan for Dallas / Fort Worth alone calls for five new reservoirs. One, proposed in northeast Texas, would flood 66,000 acres...

Y’all-itics: July 24, 2022 It has become one of the most pressing debates in the life of a modern parent: when to allow their children access to social media and once they have it, how best to limit it. A Texas Republican wants to eliminate the guesswork for parents and ban any child under 18 from using social media. And in this episode of Y’all-itics, state Representative Jared Patterson joins th...

The lights…and thankfully the A-C…stayed on in Texas last week. But as the state baked in triple digit temps, the electric grid operator pleaded with Texans on multiple days to hike up the thermostat and conserve power as much as possible, because the state was uncomfortably close to not having enough electricity to meet demand. And it could happen again in the week ahead, with forecasts showing a...

Y’all-itics: July 10, 2022 In their official party platform, Texas Republicans now call homosexuality “an abnormal lifestyle choice.” The party goes even further and states that it opposes any criminal or civil penalties against “those who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction, or belief in traditional values.” And the Texas GOP still refused to allow Log Cabin Republicans, which represent...

Think you’re paying a lot for gas this July 4th holiday? As hard as it is to believe, you should actually enjoy it now, because you’ll likely be buying $6 gas by the time the next federal holiday rolls around. Many experts believe these skyrocketing gas prices will only accelerate the electric vehicle (EV) revolution. But that could lead to huge problems in Texas. Experts says the power grid in ou...

Y’all-itics: June 26, 2022 Chaos. If the public ever sees the body cam images, security footage and documents related to the massacre at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, state Senator Roland Gutierrez thinks that’s all you’ll find. But so far, the Democrat from San Antonio, whose district includes Uvalde, says he’s been stonewalled at every turn in his attempts to obtain those records. In fact, the Sena...

Emergency Y’all-itics: June 24, 2022 Abortion is now illegal in Texas. Our state never repealed any pre-Roe anti-abortion statues, so the moment the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, those became immediately enforceable again. And thanks to our state’s “trigger law,” in 30-days, the penalty will become even more severe, jumping from a misdemeanor to a felony. But this is only the beginning...

Already this summer, Texans have been asked to conserve energy, just to make sure we have enough power. We’ve already climbed above 100 more than once, and we’re barely halfway through June. And we still haven’t recovered from the devastating winter storm of 2021 that led to the catastrophic failure of Texas’ power grid and hundreds of deaths. So, we had a simple question here at Y’all-itics. Will...

Y’all-itics early release: June 12, 2022 That is the state of public education in America today. School safety is under such threat, many educators say it is all they think about. And after the Uvalde tragedy, it certainly has the attention of students, parents, teachers, lawmakers and just about every Texan there is. While Democrats push gun control, Republicans push the “hardening” of schools. C...

Rural Texas counties that are inland and politically conservative have received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid that Congress set aside for populated coastal communities that are often underserved. Federal lawmakers had never set aside billions of dollars just to help Texas communities hit hardest by Hurricane Harvey prevent another disaster. But a federal investigation revealed tha...

Imagine if you get your COVID-19 vaccine through a patch. No needles or syringes. And the patch stays stable at room temperature for months making it easier to ship to low and middle income nations. This is the future of COVID vaccine research and some of the best work in the world is being done inside a lab at the University of Texas at Austin. Their interest piqued, the Jasons called up lead sci...

Extremes are now more extreme. Record highs and lows are constantly being broken. And the water is already starting to rise along our coast. Scientists say it’s not longer a projection. It is now reality in Texas. The United Nations released an alarming report on climate change earlier this year. And the lead author is from the University of Texas. So naturally, Y’all-itics called her up. And Cami...

Some of the fallout from Russian’s invasion of Ukraine is now only 250-miles away. But it’s not in Texas. It’s above our heads, up in space. The Russian Federation is threatening to abandon the International Space Station. And it’s a threat NASA must take seriously. Russia is one of five international partners on the ISS, along with NASA, the European Space Agency, Japan and Canada. And all four p...

Tens of thousands of criminal cases are backing up in courtrooms all across Texas. Dallas County Commissioners say their county is at the point of crisis due to the backlog… and they’re blaming judges. In fact, John Wiley Price says if you average all 17 felony criminal judges, they’re only holding around 12 trials a year. That’s half a normal year. And Commissioners are so frustrated, they are ab...

If you visited downtown Dallas 20-years ago after 5pm, you would have found yourself in the middle of a dead zone. But over the next two decades, downtown Dallas added 20+ acres of parks, a feat no other downtown can match. Four priority parks are the centerpiece of this effort: West End Square, Pacific Plaza, Harwood Park and Carpenter Park, which celebrates its grand opening this week. In this e...

Doesn’t it just seem worse this year? Many of us are still in sticker shock over our property appraisals, so this episode is all about how to reduce the amount of property taxes you pay. Turns out, your odds of winning that protest might be greater this year than ever before with half of the houses in Texas potentially overvalued. Wheeler is back for this one as the Jasons call up Chandler Crouch,...