Great. And, of course, I'm calling for libertyandprosperity.com
that meets every Saturday morning from 09:30 to
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I guess to to begin with,
what you have described with our healthcare system
happened,
identical thing happened to me, you know, except
with, you know, a different medical condition
where,
I get a certain test. It's an alarming
test. They say you gotta have a set
up an appointment right away,
with a specialist. I called a specialist and
they say, oh, we have an appointment for
you in,
May or June, two or three months away.
And and of course, you have to personally
advocate for yourself.
And and unfortunately we're boomers
and fortunately we know doctors who are still
in practice and for for fortunately
you know we get through to somebody and
we get what we need. But I really
feel sorry for the younger people who don't
have those personal contacts and let's face it
all those doctors who we have personal contacts
with they're retiring,
you know, they're leaving.
And it is a real crisis
that we have.
I I know I think when they enacted
the Obamacare in 2010 or 2011,
the primary doctor who I had for like
thirty years and and I went to the
guy's father before him.
You know I'd say eight out of 10
of my doctors just retired or went out
of business or joined big practices.
It's horrible what's happened
and you're right.
You know nobody cares now that the government
is paying, now that the government decides who
gets paid, who doesn't get paid,
the interest is in pleasing the government bureaucrats,
not the patients. And it's a very, very
bad thing.
Yes. It is. Yes. It is. And fortunately,
like you said,
I know people who know people, and that
got me in. You know? So
but but you're right. What if you didn't
have that?
I mean, really,
when a doctor tells you you may have
blockage,
this is serious stuff.
You know?
And some clerk in the office
doesn't really realize that it's serious, and the
per the patient needs to be seen. So
it's it's it's very frustrating. Let me tell
you. I was frustrated for a couple of
days. Believe me.
Well, a a lot of people are, and,
unfortunately, that's the new normal.
And when you have any medical condition, you
know, you just have to change the way
you do things that you just can't go
by yourself. You almost have to get
a friend or family member involved,
to be your your advocate. Because sometimes when
you're concerned about your medical condition and the
doctor or nurse is telling you stuff, you're
worried about your condition. You're not not focusing
on on how to see, you know, the
next person or what the procedure is or
what form has to be sold out. So
you almost need an advocate with you at
every step of the health care, process.
And,
again, it it it didn't used to be
that way. It then doesn't have to be
that way, but that's what happens when people
want something for nothing, when people want something
where somebody else is paying for it.
Back in the day, you know, when we
paid our own doctors for everything
except for major medical,
we were spending a lot less money. And
again,
we were the customer. We were the person
in charge. We controlled our health care and
we had a very nice country back then.
So I I don't wanna sit well on
that, but Yeah. I'm I'm but it is
it is a major problem that few people
talk about it until it happens to them.
Then people talk about it, but a lot
of times it's too late. Yeah.
Well May may may meanwhile, other things going
on,
in Egg Harbor Township,
the voters approved
of borrowing 16
rather not $1,636,000,000
dollars
to basically do routine maintenance
on public schools in Egg Harbor Township.
And when I say the voters approved,
the vote was
fourteen
seventy one voted yes
and 857
voted no.
And that's out of 37,520
voters in Egg Harbor Township. Wow.
So you had a total of 2,400
people
turned out to vote in an election
to borrow 36,000,000
And, you have not everyone who who is
registered to vote votes, but normally in Egg
Harbor Township in the local elections, you'll have
about 24,000
people voted.
So only 10%
of the Egg Harbor Township people voted,
on this major borrowing,
that that would
that should never have happened.
But this is exactly the way it was
designed.
By the way, if you divide the the
$36,000,000
by the 1,400
voters, it's almost like each voter got $11,000.
So,
the Egg Harbor Township School Board Members
designed it that way.
They spent a $100,000
roughly to have a special election on March
10. They could have had it on about
November,
but they know knew darn well that if
they had it November with the regular 24,000
people voting, this thing would have been voted
down by a landslide.
But they hired these high paid consultants
who who said, if you want to borrow
this money, you have to do the special
election so that 90% of the voters
won't even know about this thing. And now
you could slip it through.
And and that's the new norm, Ed. So
I I talked about it for the last
two weeks about how awful this was
That,
you know, when you have a condominium,
yeah, you have the the condominium association
has the budget for the roof needing to
be fixed every twenty years. The elevator needing
to be fixed after, you know, at every
twelve years. The place having to be painted
every eight years. And in Florida, if you
don't budget that money and you're on the
condominium board and and a repair needs to
be made, you could go to jail.
But in New Jersey, it's normal practice.
And instead of cracking down
on this real misconduct,
the state actually encourages,
school boards and elected officials to let their
buildings run down and then borrow the money.
And then the state actually gives some state
aid to to sweeten the pie.
And and and why do we get in
this situation?
Because everything in New Jersey
is too expensive.
We have all the union rules. We have
all the environmental rules. We have all the
diversity, equity, and inclusion rules. We have all
the lawsuit rules. So it's,
it's crazy, but this is normal.
But as long as we,
you know, instead of dealing with the problem,
while we borrow the money and let our
grandkids,
pay for the problem,
it's not gonna get any better, and we
have to, talk about stuff like this.
You know, you're mentioning this election. I didn't
know about it. I I I this is
the first time hearing about it. You know?
Yeah. And and that's exactly how they designed
it. Yes.
So so, yeah, we're talking about affordability.
Well, these are the things that make things
unaffordable.
The fact that, that we we, you know,
taxes are too high because,
you know, the cost of of building or
repairing everything is too high. And instead of
dealing with the situation as to how we
lower the cost, it's just how do we
borrow the money? How do we get the
federal government to pay for it? How do
we get the state government to pay for
it? How do we get somebody else to
pay for it instead of dealing with the
problem?
And and then speaking of,
of of things that make unaffordable,
we we now have the frivolous lawsuits.
I don't know if you read the article
that, remember back in 07/04/2020
Oh, yes.
The the
George Floyd riots. Yes. Well, two two things
happened in Atlantic City.
First, on Memorial Day, you had an absolute
riot
where about a 100 people
broke into stores,
broke the windows, looted the stores,
went off with the stuff, fought with the
police,
created total chaos. And basically,
the shopping center known as the Walk in
Atlantic City has really never been the same.
And and so,
Marty Small, the mayor,
and worked with the local police at a
heroic job.
They called the neighborhood people. They could they
did interviews. They looked at video. Hours and
hours of, gumshoe detective work. They identified the
95 people who who did that. They had
them arrested
and then suddenly nobody pressed the charges.
Nothing happened.
The cases disappeared,
and,
you know, there was no justice. And, it
had to come from governor Murphy or the
prosecutor at the time because in Trent, you
had the identical thing. You had police cars
set on fire. You had shops looted. You
had windows broken.
Nobody arrested.
Nobody
faced any consequence with that whatsoever.
So, I I'm convinced that even though Atlantic
City Police and Marty Small did a heroic
job,
somebody at the county and state level depressed
those cases.
That was in May 2020.
Now, a couple months later, fourth of July
weekend,
you had a guy called, oh, I'm I'm
I'm trying to think of his name. Steve
Young. Steve
Steve Young
and and six other guys,
they deliberately
wanted to have a confrontation.
They had about, you know, 30 of them.
They they they started to block Atlantic Avenue.
The police were accommodating.
They walked to to try to block the
Albany Avenue bridge coming in. Remember, this is
the busiest
weekend of the year That's right. That you
killed that weekend, you killed the livelihood of
thousands of people That's right. Without Atlantic City
and put 100 you know, people thousand people
out of work. It's the most awful thing
you could do.
And then,
they they got steered away from Albany Avenue.
Then they're gonna block the expressway.
And and they actually went into the expressway.
And only after putting up with them
for, like, two or three hours, the LA
City police arrested them.
And and once again,
somebody stopped them from being prosecuted.
They should have been,
you know, their evidence was overwhelming. They were
blocking traffic. They ignored direct orders.
But for whatever reason, they were not prosecuted.
The cases got dismissed,
and now they have filed papers to sue
Atlantic City for $50,000,000.
Sure.
So
so so this is, you know, why are
taxes too high? Why are everything so affordable?
Why is insurance expensive? Why are,
lawsuits expensive? This is part of it. And
then there's something else that's sort of related
to this.
I've been getting calls from a lot of
merchants
that there's a guy in a wheelchair,
and he has no intention of being a
customer.
But he's going to dozens of small businesses
in and around Atlantic City.
And if his wheelchair
doesn't completely fit
in the door or if there's a bump
or something,
he is,
you know, the the store owners get are
getting these notices a week later from a
lawyer saying if you don't pay us $2,500
in damages,
we're gonna sue you under some disabilities and
accessibility,
statute. And,
and and so he he's shaking down, like,
dozens of businesses,
here in in the Atlantic City area. And
by the way, it's all related
because,
you know, normally,
people don't bring frivolous lawsuits.
I mean, I was a lawyer,
for more than fifty years. And and if
somebody comes to me and they said, oh,
this this person hurt my feelings, I I
wanna sue them. I'd say, look, you know,
I'm gonna have to do 10 or $15,000
worth of work
just to get to a trial.
And you're probably gonna lose, but even if
you win, the jury is not gonna give
you more than 2 or $300
for the inconvenience.
So nobody's gonna spend $10,000
in legal fees
to sue for for something where you might
get a couple of $100.
However,
there are certain
special what they call civil rights,
laws
that say if you're in a protected category,
if you're,
disabled,
or if you are a minority, or if
you're a woman, or if you're gay, if
you're Hispanic, if you're transgender, if you fall
into one of these categories
and somebody hurt your feelings,
you are presumed to have,
emotional distress.
And you could sue for triple damages. You
could sue for punitive damages.
And even if you are not successful
and even if the jury only gives you
$50,
your lawyer will get paid a 100%
for doing $20,000
worth of work.
And that's why you see all these ridiculous
cases
where the cities pay $5,000,
$10,000,
$20,000.
Businesses pay this money to settle cases
because if they don't settle the case, it
goes to a trial.
The the person suing them might only get
$50,
but the lawyer is gonna get 30 or
1,000 or $50,000.
So you so, you know, everybody blames the
lawyers. Everybody, blames the frivolous lawsuits.
But the politicians make these laws.
And and I thought it was very interesting
that even though we're doing absolutely nothing about
this in America
and and I remember each time I would
run for public office, I'd talk about,
how these frivolous lawsuits are making everything,
so expensive and no one is doing anything
about it. But my audience yawns and nobody
even cares about it. But in Argentina,
you know, Javier Molay, who's really doing all
the right stuff to turn
Argentina around.
Two weeks ago, he made a a a
major change in the law that makes it
easier to fire bad employees,
easier to deal with all these lawsuits,
where people,
you know, where where where you're not rewarded
for being a victim and you're not being
rewarded for being a lawyer who represents a
victim. So,
you know, instead of, saying, well, everything's unaffordable.
We need a a government program to take
money from someone else and give it to
me. We actually have to talk about how
we,
you know, dealing with the problem.
And,
I I guess, the the final point,
that,
I'm thinking of when we talk about liberty
and prosperity breakfast,
the things that,
you know, that that happened in our open
discussions.
I was at a business association meeting a
couple days ago,
and you had a representative from the,
person who does the,
what they call it the visitvisitatlanticcity.com
or used to be the Atlantic City visitors
bureau.
And he was talking about the great job
we're doing because we're spending $450,000
for an air show, to give a free
air show. And we're doing concerts for $50,000.
And aren't we wonderful? You know, look at
look at, how much,
peep how many people we're bringing to Atlantic
City. And he said the big problem,
with Atlantic City is,
70% of the people who come to Atlantic
City only spend one day in a hotel.
And he said by having all these events,
we're gonna get people to stay longer.
And, of course, at a business association, nobody
asked questions, and everybody said, oh, that's a
great idea.
But when you come to a liberty and
prosperity meeting,
we ask other questions like, where is the
money coming from for the free air show
and for the free concert and for the
billboards on Times Square and all that stuff?
Well, $7,000,000
is is coming from the casinos with CRDA.
That was money the casinos are supposed to
use to fix up their casinos.
And, it's going to have these, free air
shows.
Maybe people are not staying because the casinos
are getting shabby because they don't have the
money to reinvest in their hotels.
But here's something even more important.
When you check into a hotel in Atlanta
City,
and you think you're paying $200 for the
room,
when you check out, you find out you're
paying for double the sales tax, a 13.6%
hotel motel tax.
On top of that, you pay a $3
per night state occupancy tax, a $2 casino
hotel surcharge,
a $2 tourist promotion fee, and then there's
a 45¢
sales tax on the taxes,
plus a $3 tax on free parking.
So do you know any people who come
to Atlantic City and they say, gee, I'm
disgusted with all these ridiculous charges. I'm gonna
stay somewhere else.
So, a lot of times when you have
the
the government says, well, look at all the
tours we're bringing with these programs.
They don't talk about who they're chasing away.
Anyway,
we'll be talking about this, every Saturday morning,
liberty and prosperity,
09:30 to 10:30 at Sal's coal fired,
cafe. And, thank you very much for letting
me just talk for twenty minutes. Okay. Set
it for three hours. Okay. Thanks again, Seth.