Y'all-itics

Joanna Hernandez first poured out her thoughts and emotions to her Instagram followers after a long day at the hospital. She is a traveling nurse and currently working at a south Texas hospital where soon after arriving, she was assigned to the COVID unit. Hernandez speaks candidly about the struggles her patients experience, trying to reassure their worried relatives, and what she did with one el...

  SYNOPSIS: In the weekly jobless report on April 2nd, Texas unemployment claims jumped by more than 275,000. Last week, the number of Texans who filed for unemployment benefits was 150,000. As extraordinary as those numbers are, they only reflect part of the staggering number of jobs in the state that have been lost in recent weeks as the economy grinds to a halt during the Covid-19 pandemic. Not...

Two moms in rural Collin County have come up with an ingenious way to protect doctors and their families from getting sick after long shifts at the hospital. Medical staff don’t just need PPEs right now. They also need RVs. Emily Phillips is married to an ER doctor and got worried that her husband could bring home COVID19 since both she and their 8-year-old son suffer from asthma. So, Emily got on...

Republican Dallas County Commissioner J.J. Koch speaks to us after tens of thousands of people watched a Facebook video in which he admonished Texans to take Covid-19 more seriously. He also lamented that the governor (from his own party) was ‘leading from behind’. Commissioner Koch also breaks down the number of ventilators available, and how Dallas County will likely be the first in Texas to hav...

The economic toll of the Coronavirus is tremendous, and this is just the beginning. Layoffs have already jumped, but Andrew Challenger, Senior VP at outplacement firm Challenger, Christmas, and Gray, says  the official numbers are even reflective of what is really happening---that a lot of smaller businesses are cutting jobs, and those losses are big and have yet to be truly tallied. Additionally,...

The coronavirus outbreak is starting to change our daily lives in dramatic ways. The crisis is, of course, a health and humanitarian one first. But the economics of the outbreak could have a tremendous impact on governments, businesses, and many people. We get the perspective on Main Street from a Texas business owner who is missing out on his most profitable day of the year because of coronavirus...

Where do old voting machines go to die? Turns out, many are being resurrected in Texas. Harris County, for example, is now planning to purchase 2,000 used eSlate machines that Travis County just retired. Harris County told the Jasons that it’s worth the money for extra voting booths before potentially long lines in November like many voters experienced on Super Tuesday. The 2,000 used machines wou...

Huge turnout, long lines, not enough voting machines; Super Tuesday in Texas didn’t quite turnout as planned. Why? The turnout! It’s a good problem to have in a state that is often called a non-voting one. Joining the Jasons for political context on this bonus episode is Deborah Peoples, the chairwoman of the Tarrant County Democratic Party, Vinny Minchillo, a principal at Glass House Strategy adv...

The Jasons discuss the FACTS surrounding COVID-19 and preparations in Texas. They start their conversation with former WFAA-TV reporter Jonathan Betz, who now lives in Beijing, China and is currently under quarantine. To say Jonathan is feeling isolated is understatement. But he’s still getting his deliveries, which is an interesting part of life in Beijing. The Jasons then visit with Dallas Count...

It costs too much. And it’s too complicated. According to a great many voters in 2020, that is the only way to describe our modern health care system. And this is driving their decision-making at the polls. The Jasons jump straight into the deep end in this episode of Y’all-itics, pouring a pint with the CEO of The Texas Academy of Family Physicians in the Medical District. Tom Banning says we hav...

The Jasons take a road trip to Austin to pour a pint with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.  They chose Shiner, of course.  And you have likely never heard the Attorney General like this.  Mr. Paxton says he now has less confidence in the criminal justice system.  He thinks 3 syllable names win elections.  He’s not afraid of the color Purple.  And he shares his thoughts whether he thinks the Pres...

The Latino community in Texas has long been described as a sleeping giant, an electorate with the potential to swing our politics and policies. But based on U.S. Census data, that giant is in a deep sleep. A Texas group is trying to forge a new tradition with Latino Voters where coming of age automatically means voting. And they’re targeting 15-year-old girls to make it happen. In this episode of...

SYNOPSIS: Election 2020 is already off to a wild start. The Iowa Democratic Party couldn’t report an accurate count of vote totals on caucus night. So, disappointed Democrats boarded planes and flew to New Hampshire without knowing who won this famed first contest. The screwup raises the question of whether the caucuses matter anymore. The Jasons were in Iowa to witness all the confusion firsthand...

Under-counting the census by 1% could cost Texas $300 million a year. In Rio Grande City, former Mayor Reuben Villareal estimates the 2010 census was under-counted by 15-20% in his city, alone. Despite this year’s census not having a citizenship question, Villareal expects the expensive silence to be deafening in border communities where rhetoric about immigration, the wall, and deportations has c...

What happened outside Amarillo made national news, turned out to be a little embarrassing for the state and highlighted a problem facing law enforcement in Texas today. Hemp is legal. Marijuana is not. But the plants look and smell exactly alike. In Amarillo this month, prosecutors had to drop charges after lab tests showed 3,300 pounds of ‘marijuana’ that a man was stopped with was actually ‘hemp...

He calls himself the Desert Diplomat. Few Texans have as clear of an understanding of what’s happening in the Middle East as Robert Jordan. The SMU professor is a former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and sat down to have a pint with the Jasons. Turns out, it’s not just Iran we should be wary of these days. Keep your eye on Saudi Arabia. It’s really a frenemy of ours, Jordan said. This Texan succ...

A small-town Texas police chief said something recently that caught the attention of the Jasons. Immigration rhetoric is making our communities less safe, he wrote in an op-ed. Make no mistake, this lawman isn’t taking sides. He’s advocating for keeping all criminals off the streets – regardless of their immigration status. You might know some of it. That fiery rhetoric drives undocumented immigra...

Dallas is more than 7,200 miles away from the Baghdad airport where a U.S. airstrike killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. Those miles disappear when you consider how Middle East tension has a real impact on your money. In this special episode, a personal finance advisor tells the Jasons why now is the time to invest in some stocks, even as the market takes a hit on fears of a worsening conflic...

The president promised to replace NAFTA. Democrats finally got what they wanted and this new deal is now called the USMCA – or United States Mexico Canada Agreement. As we move into the new year, both sides say Texas will benefit big time from it. How so? That’s what this episode of Y'all-itics is about. We also tracked down a phone number for the original U.S. negotiator on NAFTA in the early 199...

Can’t we all just get along? On last week’s episode, we heard about Better Angels. The group is trying to close the political polarization gap, bridge the divide and get people on the left and right to start talking again. We think the group is on to something. So, in this episode, we’re pouring a pint with two people who have gone through the program – a conservative and a moderate. They’re far a...

Before you go home for the holidays you need to listen to this episode. Politics often creeps into the conversation around the family dinner table this time of year. The rhetoric and divisiveness has gotten so bad that some folks have stopped talking to family members and close friends because of their political beliefs. A non-profit is quietly helping to close the political polarization gap, brid...

Forget battleground states; 2020 will be decided by battleground counties. Collin County Democrats don’t mind being the underdog. But Republicans there admit 2020 is no joke. Collin County used to be reliably red but the GOP has seen cracks in support there over the last few election cycles. Now, after recent Democratic victories in Kentucky, Louisiana and Virginia, Collin County Democrats say the...

This isn’t something politicos wants to talk about. Black women are taken for granted by candidates and campaigns. That’s not just a bold statement – black women in Texas say this has been a political reality for too long. That's the topic we're talking about with Tracy Scott, the founder & CEO of The Black Women’s PAC, on this episode of Y’allitics. Black women, like all voters, want politici...

On this episode of Y’all-itics, we go out to the farm. The Texas economy has done well over the past decade. Farmers have not. They know all about economic downturns, but their income today is half of what it was six years ago. Crops just aren’t selling for what they were. Then came the trade war with China and the tit-for-tat tariffs. Now, a difficult situation is a little more desperate. But whe...

Get ready for the "Year of the Text Message." In 2020, political campaigns are coming to your mobile phone. In elections past, campaigns have spent millions of dollars on television and radio ads, campaign signs and billboards to reach voters. The 2020 cycle will be different. In this episode, we discover how much a campaign will pay for your cell phone number and what they’re going to d...