#370 - Paul Renner - Speaker, Florida House of Representatives - Make America Courageous Again

Chris Powers: Paul, thanks for joining me today. 

Paul Renner: Chris, great to be with you and a privilege to be with your audience. 

Chris Powers: It's a privilege. Hopefully I've already made you feel at home in Texas with our pre conversation. 

Paul Renner: Absolutely. And a great cup of coffee. 

Chris Powers: All right. Let's just start with how did losing your first political election actually help you get to become Speaker of the House of Florida? 

Paul Renner: Yeah, well, there's two stories there. The immediate one to your question is we are set up, we have eight year term limits, and each class, two year cycles, so we have freshmen, sophomore, junior, senior, picks who will eventually become the speaker. Had I won that election, I might have been a committee chair of something and whatever, but I would never be sitting here with you today as the Speaker of the Florida House. And so the second part of the answer really is a broader one that I've experienced in life, which is every great thing that's happened to me and to my wife has been preceded by a lot of frustration and disappointment, which is another way of saying when I want to put myself in control and not God in control, he has a way of kind of saying, hold on a second, I got a different plan. And so that was one of those dirt kicking moments that led to that. I can say the same story about our struggle to have kids. It took a long time to do that. We have two wonderful kids. I'm an old dad with a four and a two year old. The house we live in was preceded by a dirt kicking moment where I thought I was in control and wound up better than I could have ever expected. But it wasn't my plan. It was his plan. 

Chris Powers: I love it. All right. We're just going to dive straight into it because we have a lot to cover. I want to talk about reclaiming American institutions and start there. It would appear to me, and I think a lot of people would agree, no matter what side of the aisle you’re on, that the degradation of trust in American institutions is alive and well and growing. So what happened? Like, how did we start losing trust in so much of these huge institutions? 

Paul Renner: I think a lot of it is, if you think about, and I'm going to, obviously, I'm partisan, my pardon me for being partisan here for a moment. But if you think about the media talking about Democrats, we're the party of the working class, we're for the little guy, and now when Republicans are for the little guy and for the working class, it's dangerous populism. But I think the populist moment really is about a loss of confidence specifically in elites, in those that, and we talked a little bit before we got on about the anywheres and the somewheres, but this idea that elites that don't have loyalty to the country, don't have the connectedness in any way, shape, or form other than to this kind of nihilistic, narcissistic viewpoint that seems to be dominant in a lot of our institutions and among a lot of the elites. And so there's a rebellion against those of us who I would say are salt of the earth Americans to say, hold on a second, we're walking away from everything that America stands for, whether that's constitutionally, our free speech, whether that's what it means to be a woman, operating on kids to change their sex when they can't possibly be able to make those decisions at that age, to other ways that they're trying to just completely remake our country by tearing down its core foundations. And I think there's a lot of resistance to that. And right now, they seem to be dominant in those institutions. And that is causing a loss of faith and trust. 

Chris Powers: Do you have any idea how that kind of makes its way to the top, how those values over the years have made it to where they're the decision makers for the country? Do you think they've been campaigning on that platform all along and they finally got there, or is it more of like stay moderate, kind of hide, play well with the group, and as soon as you get a position of power, turn on the switch?

Paul Renner: I think those running for elected office and even now, I mean, the good news is it tells me the country is still a center right country because Kamala Harris has suddenly abandoned everything she's ever stood for and is now positioning herself as a moderate, even as a Republican, it seems like on some days. So, I think that's still true, and that gives me some hope and confidence about where the country is. But I think at the bureaucratic level, I think it's a product of education where, as conservatives, we assume if we live in a community like this, we're here in Dallas-Fort Worth, that our neighbors are pretty conservative. We send our kids to school. They're going to kind of tell good things about the country and how we came about and what freedom means, what the Constitution means, all these things. That's not necessarily the case anymore. And in fact, it's not the case. And a lot of parents in COVID had their jaws drop when they looked and saw what their kids were being taught. So, I think we’ve got a long march as they call it. And I think there is some deliberation among those that are really committed ideologically to this philosophy to work over the long term through our education system. And I think you see therefore people coming out of higher ed, which are our elites, they're going and taking jobs in corporate boardrooms and academia, in all kinds of places that have a much, much different perspective than what we had just 20 years ago. 

Chris Powers: Do you have any idea from your perspective, like what they actually are championing? Is it if you could say, okay, they're championing like get rid of everything that made America America for what? What is the goal here? To have no rules, no laws, everything's just free? Or is there something kind of driving that type of framework of making decisions? 

Paul Renner: Great question. It's hard to know what is behind that mentality, but I do think that America has always been seen by those on the left as a problem, because it's so successful, the freest, strongest, most prosperous country in world history that is not following any of their prescriptions. We are capitalists, not Marxist. We are faith committed, family loving. We have lots of community organizations. If you go back to Tocqueville that noted how unique America was in that respect. When there's a hurricane, we don't wait for somebody from the government to show up. We pitch in and help, whatever the crisis is, or a flood. That's America. It's always been America. And so I think they have struggled with that. But this is a group of people that are committed to control and controlling according to their perspective. And so, America has to be taken down to achieve that goal globally because we really stand in the way of that. 

Chris Powers: Do you think Trump is what flipped the Democratic Party being the party of the elites and the managerial elites and the Republicans being the party of the poor and the middle class? Was it a Trump thing, or did this happen kind of, did Trump come to be because this was already a force of nature? 

Paul Renner: Yeah, I think it's a chicken and the egg, or the egg in reverse. I think what happened is the Republican Party was continuing to say we should have free trade agreements with China that will coax them into the world community. This kind of thing is our jobs are leaving. I think Republicans were probably too cozy and not opposing what every… it's amazing how smart just everyday Americans are, and they get it before the smart, so-called smart people in Washington get it, including the Republican Party. And so I think they were asleep at the wheel to what was happening underneath their noses. And this kind of cultural revolution, this kind of reformulation and tearing down of our core foundations was happening. And a lot of very, very frustrated Americans were saying, what are you going to do about it? We're losing our country here. And Trump was the right guy at the right moment who spoke to that, that feeling and that sense that we're not- it's not 11 a.m. It's 11 p.m. on the clock for our Republican. We have to get somebody in there that can shake things up. And so, he was the right guy at the right moment to do that. 

Chris Powers: Do you have an opinion on whether Washington's more of like a uniparty than they are Republican, Democrat?

Paul Renner: I've not been there. Don't plan to be there. But my observation is, and look, you want to try to work with people to try to get things done. We do that certainly in the Florida legislature. But I think that goes back to the point we just made, which is getting cozy and going out to the various things that they do in D.C., the different functions that they go to together and being cozy with Hillary Clinton or whatever is just not going to get it done today because we have an urgency that is not apparently felt by those in DC. I think it is now more, I think you've got more people going into office on a mission. Then you get a lot of veterans like me who are going in on a mission to say, hey, we're not going in a good direction, we're not going to have a republic if we don't turn and get back to some of those core foundations and recommit to those because they work. They worked for 250 years. And the thing that none of us can solve in this this podcast is why in the world would you walk away from that? Why would you walk away from a winning formula like the American formula that's done so much for so many people from all over the globe? And we've proven it doesn't matter where you're from. You can come from any country in the world and come here, it works. It works. Freedom works. And why you would walk away from that, the only answer I have is for this kind of control and this kind of power that some of these people want to exert on others. 

Chris Powers: And to your- you kind of described it earlier, those same people, they're not really tied to the country. They look at things more at like a global level. They're tied to all these other leaders around the globe and not just politicians, but business leaders. And it's all kind of that Davos crew type of situation. 

Paul Renner: Yeah. Remember Barack Obama saying, when asked if we were an exceptional country, yeah, we're exceptional like any other country, like Greece, who was on the verge of bankruptcy at the time, I think. And so, that kind of mentality that we're nothing special, that nothing we do here is special, I think, translates into today's elite mindset, and normal Americans rightly reject that and are angry about it and want to put people in charge that respect their values and respect those foundations that have made us so successful and can for the next hundred years. 

Chris Powers: Okay, let's talk, you mentioned being a veteran. Let's kind of talk about your time in the Navy and then your view on our current military and the situation going on with our military today. 

Paul Renner: Yeah, I'm in my 50s now, so growing up at least, I was a big Reagan fan in my early teens and Carter, the military, the morale was horrible. I came in, in the late 80s, and so there was enough time frame with people that were still in the military that knew that time, and it was a horrible time. But my time in the military was fantastic, and you're with young men, and it gives you some confidence in this moment we're in that there's 20-year-old kids out there that are willing to go and fight and die for their country. That still exists. They deserve leadership that's as good as they are. That's what I'll say about that. And so I don't think they have that now. What I saw from the beginning of my career to the end of my career is, and I'll never forget, we're over in- and I was a reservist, I was mobilized, and I was over in Desert Storm as an active duty guy and then 20 years later in Afghanistan as a mobilized reservist. And in the reserves has have all these different things that they put on you on the weekend to do all these different briefs and whatnot, all that goes away when you get activated. Just go do your job. But the one thing, I had to stop everything, I was getting all these emails, people calling from overseas to stop and do the don't ask, don't tell survey. And so this kind of thing where you could just feel and see politics really coming into the military in a way, again, where this elite mindset had come in and and begun to destroy the the warrior class. And we need young men and women who are willing to break things and kill people if necessary to protect our freedoms. And instead, what we're getting is at the highest ranks where if you want to go put on a star now, you've got to be willing to hand salute to values that are totally out of mainstream America, certainly I can tell you out of the mainstream of the officer ranks, as I knew it. But that's slowly but surely being changed. And you see every country, whether it's Cuba or Venezuela, where things have gone in a bad direction towards kind of this leftist tyranny that they have to get in and change the military, change all these institutions so they're no longer able to oppose them. 

Chris Powers: And so that's been going on for how long? 

Paul Renner: I think it's been going on and building for some time, and now you have a lot of instruction in West Point and Annapolis on all manner of things that have no real bearing on the mission of the military. It's not about military history now, it's about teaching the latest trendy topics of wokeness, oppressor oppressed classes, this type of thing, this neo-Marxism that is ascendant is now being brought into our military academies as well, and I think a lot of kids probably, it goes in one ear and out the other. But the shrewd and politically sensitive person that wants to rise up the ranks, again, is going to know that at some point, if I want to continue to advance, I've got to hand salute and tow the line.

Chris Powers: Oh man, that just gives me a sick feeling in my stomach. Okay. Maybe you have an opinion on this. Maybe you don't. You take a situation like Ukraine. I believe Trump when Trump says that had he been president, that would have never happened. But it did happen, and we've shipped them something like, I don't know, $400 billion or something over the last two years, almost $5,000 per citizen. They say that Zelensky is the greatest salesman ever. He just, every time he comes over, he gets another a hundred billion. But if I read like a lower, deeper than that, I'm like, there's a reason why we're giving them $400 billion. Like maybe the American public has no idea how important Ukraine is to world safety, but there's something there that we continue to give money. It's not just… if we were doing that to every country in a war, we would just be handing out trillions of dollars every day. But I don't think we actually know, and I'm not asking you if you know, but if you do and want to share, great. And then you have something like what just happened in North Carolina where there's like very little to no help. It's a $750 per person thing, but it's a loan, you owe it back. It just appears at least optically like, oh wow, we don't actually care about our people at all. We care about people in other countries way more. Is that actually what's going on? Is there levels to this that the common American, me being one of them, has no comprehension of? 

Paul Renner: Yeah, I mean, and just take those two together, the $750 and the lack of rapid response to help people in our own country versus what we've done in Ukraine. And why do they wonder why we're in this populist moment? And it really is just because they're so terrible, and the failed leadership is so bad. And again, that goes back to somewheres and anywheres, and they're more concerned about the world than they are about our own country, and that is a real concern. I don't know a lot about Ukraine other than my big concern there is we have depleted a lot of our own military resources. We are a country that is getting deeper and deeper in debt to the point where we can very easily risk our status as a reserve currency. We could very easily see collapse in our currency, hyperinflation, all the things that happen when a country overspends and overspends for decades and decades. We simply cannot afford to be anywhere we want to be in the world at this point. And one of the takeaways I had from Afghanistan, I went over there thinking, yeah, we can go be the source of democracy around the world. And I came back thinking, no, this is a huge mistake. We need to go in and we can do it with a limited number of troops and go in and go get the people who have the capacity and the intent to hurt the homeland, and that's it. We are not the world's policemen. And we should not be putting our men and women in harm's way because most of the people that came back either died or came back wounded were out doing these kind of policing operations and got hit by IEDs. That should not be the role of our military overseas at all. And so, I think we really have to… and that's where the Uniparty comes in. I think we really need to be very, very circumspect about what is in the true national interest of the United States, and that's it. And we can provide intel support, we can do things in a limited way to help our allies overseas but spending hundreds of billions of dollars in Ukraine I think is just far, far too much, and it's reflective of this moment we're in where now we can't help our own people after a hurricane. 

Chris Powers: Is there an industrial military complex? 

Paul Renner: Absolutely. Absolutely. 

Chris Powers: So, war is good for business. 

Paul Renner: Sure. Sure it is. Yeah. 

Chris Powers: Did you believe that? Did you know that when you were in the military? Or is it in hindsight that you realized that there was a complex building? 

Paul Renner: You see the bureaucracy. You see, it's amazing to me how inefficient and bloated and the things you see from a spending and procurement standpoint within the military is so bad, so awful. It's just indicative of what you get with government being in charge of everything, and yet we're able to fight wars and win wars. That is because of the soldier, the sailor, the airmen, the Marine, because of that kind of leadership, that on the boots, boots on the ground leadership. My comments earlier about the guy with a star, the people in between there are still heroic. They're still amazing men and women. That's why we win wars because we just say, to heck with the rules, we've got to go out and win this thing and not be stuck in a box. And we open up those rules that are so stringent during peacetime. So, yeah, we've got a great military, but we're depleting it in terms of resources. We're undermining the ethic, the warrior ethic that we need to have in the young men and women that are stepping up to put their lives at risk for us by by teaching them things that undermine their belief in America. Who wants to put their life at risk for a country they don't respect or a country that they hold in contempt. And so this will not work. It is unsustainable, and it has to be corrected very, very soon. Or we will for the first time in my life, I look and say, we could beat Russia with their economy. I don't know where we would be with China. I still think we could beat China, but it's a different game. We've undermined our military to the point that, and our nation's fiscal stability to a point where we would be hard pressed to ramp up and fight on a major war in China and in the Southeast Asia right now. 

Chris Powers: Okay, let's keep going down the China road because that's a big, big deal. One thing you said a second ago was it's not a good plan to just go around lecturing the world on how they should be more like us. There's plenty of things about us that- I wish we had some of the things that other countries had as well, maybe. But this idea, I think it was a meme or something, but it was true, it was like, if China comes to town, at least we get roads, bridges, factories, things like that. When America comes to town, we just get a lecture on how to do better. China's obviously a really big deal. I guess let's just start with, from your perspective, we kind of need each other. And again, I'm not saying one, it's not a game of there's a total outright winner, but it would seem to me if you look at both sides of the equation, no matter our differences, for us to continue, for each superpower to continue staying a superpower, it kind of depends on us getting along to some degree. Is that fair? 

Paul Renner: I think it is fair in the short term. I think in the short term and the midterm, we need to rapidly insure and nearshore our supply chains. We need to strategically undermine China. They have a lot of major weaknesses – a declining population, they’ve got some resource limitations, but they also own a lot of our debt and are funding a lot of our debt. And so we do find ourselves in kind of mutually assured destruction at the moment, but we need to rapidly change that. One of the things I did in my second term as speaker is fund a Center for Freedom in the Americas that's going to be stationed at the Adam Smith Center at FIU in Miami to push back on China's influence in Latin America. Right now, today, you can go and talk to people that deal in international trade. China has better relationships in Latin America than we do, in our own backyard. What happened to the Monroe Doctrine? They have significant interest in the Panama Canal. They're making major, major investments in a big port in Peru. They use this build in road initiative and use debt to induce people into a bait and switch where then they have more control over that infrastructure We could find ourselves in a place where we're put in checkmate in our own backyard because China has, over time, while we're looking at other places, we always seem to be one step behind in terms of our foreign policy, are only able to do one thing at a time. We always have to maintain strong relationships in Latin America. And to your point, it can't be lecturing them on how they do things. It has to be a mutual partnership. But the center is designed to really harness people from the center right leadership over there. So, when a Javier Milei wins in Argentina, he looks around and says, who can help me enact my agenda? There's nobody. So we'll bring those folks in, help train them with private resources, but also the public resources to bring in a lot of the intellectual capital to talk about the benefits of the free market, the benefits of political freedom, the benefits of not going the route that so many countries there have gone like Venezuela that in the longterm are going to challenge America's national security and even challenge it today. So, China's threat is not just in the Southeast, in Southeast Asia. It's actually right in our backyard. 

Chris Powers: And like, again, I just sit here and I'm like, are we just totally taking our eye off the ball for 40 years or is there…? It seems like we've got enough resources, money, smart people to think it's not like it happened in a day. It's happened over 30, 40 years. Are we just looking the other way, or is anybody in America playing chess? Is there something that we're doing that's kind of above and beyond all this? Or is it like, yeah, just come into our backyard, take over, we’re cool? 

Paul Renner: And I think that's the challenge. And I love our country, our republic, but there is a whack-a-mole nature to it where people are focused on whatever they're focused on at this moment, whereas in a tyranny, like a China, and you have one leader there for 30 years, they can be much more strategic and plot and plan their way toward world domination. And so, we have to be just as shrewd and just as nimble and play chess. We're not playing chess. We're playing whack-a-mole. 

Chris Powers: Yeah. What about China, Taiwan? Is that imminent? Is that something that's going to happen? 

Paul Renner: I'm surprised that nothing would happen between now and the November election, but I think people, countries like China smell weakness. There's a reason why Russia went into Crimea during Obama. As JD Vance said the other day, there's no wars. None of this happened under Trump's watch. And there's a reason why it's happened under Biden. I see Harris as an even weaker continuation of the Biden administration. And I think it will invite some really scary propositions. And I'm sure all of your listeners know, but a lot of Americans may not know how important Taiwan is strategically, but in terms of our chip production, it's a big, big deal. And if that falls, it will send a signal if we allow it to fall that will be pretty devastating long term, I think. 

Chris Powers: What about Iran and Israel? 

Paul Renner: So Iran, when I was in Afghanistan, Iran has been the malicious actor in the Middle East for ever since the fall of the Shah, since the hostage crisis back in 1979. And so that's a long time. The IEDs that were sophisticated, and I think I can say this out loud, that were directed toward American servicemen and women that you see now on television ads that are forever disabled by these IEDs were mainly produced by Iran. So Iran was knee deep into Afghanistan to destroy and kill Americans. The idea that we would allow them to continue to harass our military men at bases around the world is just it makes me livid. And the president, if Trump is elected, I would counsel to let them know and give them notice, the next time there's any kind of missile that goes over any military base of any kind, that it will be considered an attack on the US homeland. And we’ve got to take Iran out. I mean, that's international security. And so they will continue to be a malicious actor. Israel is doing the fighting for all of us at the moment. But Iran will continue to plague the world in many ways unless and until they're taken down. And I'm not advocating we invade Iran, but we can do this again by playing chess, being strategic, undermining their economy, undermining their leadership. If you remember when Obama was president, there was this moment when Twitter was out, and all these… I can't remember the name of the revolution, but the people were in uprising, and he did nothing. He could have been strategic about helping the Iranian people take back their country. And the irony is a lot of people feel like in Saudi Arabia, the population is much more hostile to the United States, whereas in Iran, you have still today a lot of people who are educated, pro-Western. We could have an ally there, as we did many, many years ago, that doesn't want that regime. You can help the people there to take back their country without ever putting American troops in harm's way, but you have to play chess. 

Chris Powers: Jumping back over real quick to allies, and I wouldn't say they should be an ally, I don't know enough, but shouldn't, like if you take the Russia situation, did you agree that Trump had somewhat of a relationship with Putin? It's like, know your enemies, keep them close? Or is this blown out of proportion? From your seat, shouldn't we have some type of relationship with them, given how big of a deal that they are, no matter how they position themselves in the world? Or should we be totally not talking to Putin under any circumstance? 

Paul Renner: No, I think we talk to everybody. And we let the people that may have malicious intention know that it's not going to happen on our watch, that kind of thing. I think that's what Trump was able to communicate. And look, the proof is in the pudding. You can look at the four years that he was in office. We wiped out ISIS. We didn't have wars. We really had a period of unprecedented peace and prosperity. And part of that is being scared, having your enemies be scared of you. And nobody's scared of Joe Biden. Nobody's scared of Kamala Harris. And nobody's scared of these people that we've been talking about who have this kind of globalist perspective, who are more concerned about what happens at Davos than what's happening in the Taiwan Straits or here in our own backyard with China making inroads in Latin America. 

Chris Powers: What's your take on immigration right now? 

Paul Renner: It's a crisis, and when we talk about what's deliberate and what's incompetence, we have, and the data just came out about the number of murderers, the number of rapists, this is a golden moment for every criminal actor out there that wants to bring fentanyl into our country, that wants to traffic children and women, both for the sex trade as well as labor. To not be able to recognize that is really something, but it's going to cause long-term damage to the United States because those people will be out and about in my community and yours, and it's got to stop, or we won't have a country. 

Chris Powers: Do you think there's a real plan to get all these folks out, like it's actually feasible?

Paul Renner: I don't really think it's feasible at some point. I think you have to start at the top and go from the worst on down, people that, again, we just mentioned, I can't remember all the data, but a couple hundred thousand of these folks that have criminal records already. Those people need to be on the express train out of the country. We have to stop the flow, first of all, I think first and foremost. And then you deal with how you try to repatriate people back into their homes. Part of it, frankly, is, and this is not to say that we shouldn't be grabbing them and sending them back home. We should. But part of it is not letting countries like China continue to have influence in Latin America to stand by while Maduro steals an election, while the Sandinistas are in power, Ortega's in power in Nicaragua and these other places, Lula in Brazil. We're going to have continued immigration while countries are being destroyed in our own backyard because they're looking for a better life. And a lot of those people are looking for a better life. But a lot of them are bad actors. Some of them are out and out terrorists. They're not all coming from Latin America. Many are coming from China, from Iran, from places that we know seek to harm us. And yet we're allowing it to happen. 

Chris Powers: Okay. Our buddy Lucas sent me a couple questions. Is it possible to be a true public servant and lead at the highest levels of the US political system? 

Paul Renner: Absolutely. 

Chris Powers: One word answer? 

Paul Renner: Yeah, I mean absolutely it is. People, and this is a disappointment, but you look how we've come from our founding fathers that pledged their fortunes, their lives, their sacred honor to fight for freedom to a place where you have a lot of people in office that are there purely for ambition, that are there to try to pad their own checkbook, but you do have a lot of really good men and women. And I do believe, we talked about this before we went live, that in a time of decline in our country, you have a lot of people that are stepping into the gap. And I serve with a lot of really, really good men and women, really principled people. And I believe to be a great leader, you have to have integrity, you have to have principles, and you have to have courage, all three of those things. And we can name other criteria, but I think if you lack any one of those, you can be a good leader, but you'll never be a great leader. And so I've seen a lot of that in my time in office. And so I'm not cynical about all politicians. And I do think especially post 9/11, you see a lot of veterans coming in at the national level. We've got a lot of great ones, Cory Mills and others, Mike Walz, that are there in Florida. You have them here in Texas. But people that have said, I'm not going to let my country go down the tubes and are stepping up, and so you can be a principal leader, you can win, I feel like I've proven that over the last two years, in doing things that people say you can't get done. There is a low level of expectations in the political process that is disappointing, but you got to go in there and look at the problems that are there and fix the problems and don't wait. We have term limits. And so I think it creates some urgency. But these places that don't have term limits like DC, it seems like problems never have to get solved. Go in there like today's your last day in office, and go in there and solve big problems. And it may not be perfect. It may not be everything that you or I would want to solve that problem, but get it 80% right and people will stand back and applaud. This can be done. It's not hard. We've shown it in Florida, and Texas is a great role model for how you can see success, but we've done it in a big, big way through COVID, through the hardest times. We'll do it through this hurricane that's coming this week. But it can be done and absolutely you can serve in office and still maintain the highest level of ideals, the highest level of principles, and the highest level of courage. And you need courage in politics. 

Chris Powers: How many things do you think you can get fixed? Like, given your term limits, are you kind of, it's kind of like, okay, I got two or three per term limit I'm going to get done? Or do you think about it that way? It's like, I only have so much time. There's only so much I can work on, so I'm going to focus on X number of things. Or like, how do you think about the problems to fix? There's a million of them. Obviously, you have to work on things you're passionate about, but also that your constituents are, too. Like, how do you think about using your time during those term limits? 

Paul Renner: I mean, I went around the state before I became speaker. And so just for everybody's benefit, we have two years. We have our last two years as speaker. And that's only really two 60 day sessions. So we're a part time legislature that's preceded by some committee weeks. But the bills don't hit the House floor except for that 60 day session. It's got to get over to the Senate. It's got to all match up, and the governor's got to sign it. So there's this real narrow filter that takes place. And so it's like a horse race, more like the Kentucky Derby, if you want to make a sports analogy. And if you're not whipping the horse on that bill to get it across the finish line, it's not going to happen. But we got a lot done. I mean, we tackled universal school choice that even people, the proponents said we’d never get to, full universality, with every parent in Florida that has a kid K-12 gets around eight thousand dollars to send their kid to the school of their choice. They can do this as a homeschool parent as well. It's unleashed a lot of growth in our classical schools as well. We took on tour reform, which we did 10 different things in tour reform, any one of which people would have said you're never going to get it done. And if we had gotten one thing done, they'd say, hey, that's a Super Bowl championship ring, high five, because we were deemed a litigation hellhole. Texas had solved that many years ago. And when I was out here with some of your colleagues, we were kind of trash talking a little bit. We got a better governor. We did this. And somebody said, what about your litigation climate? The guys from Texas, and we kind of got quiet. Because we've had a horrible litigation climate when you talk about property insurance, terrible property insurance rates, one of the worst auto insurance rates in the country. Now, Florida's A plus, A plus, whoa, whoa, whoa, we're F minus in these areas. And it's because we were a litigation hellhole as designated by people that track that kind of thing. And so we came in not with small ball. We just said, what are the solutions? Not some solutions, not like, oh, let's get this one thing done, and then we'll work on the next thing because it may be tough or it may end our political careers. We said, what can be done? And so I sat down with staff. We pulled all the levers we could in a way that I thought was responsible so that litigants who have legitimate claims can still move forward with those claims. But we solved all the things that were outliers. We brought Florida back in the middle of the pack on multiple different things that in total was monumental to fix, and we're already seeing the benefits of that. This hurricane may do some damage to our property insurance market depending on where it hits, but our auto insurance rates are going to really see some benefit there. And then we did the same thing on social media as the third one I'd mentioned, which is I'm looking at this crisis, and I will tell you honestly that I didn't even think about this in my first year. I would have told you, yeah, kids are on too much, but what's the big deal? And I started doing some reading, and some of the stuff's hard to read, kids taking their own lives, you've got a third of high school women who in the last year have contemplated taking their own lives. 57% over the last year have had persistent loneliness and hopelessness. This is a tragedy. It's a generational, unlicensed experiment we're running on our kids that are getting addicted to this stuff and really getting down a really, really dark path. Sexual predators, the place that's dangerous now is not in a city park while you look the other way or a mall, while that can be dangerous, it's when you're at home in bed, you think you're safe, your kids are tucked away in bed, but they're on their phone, thinking they're talking to a 15 year old girl which is really a 50 year old man who's trying to lure them out of the house. And so, we have this kind of thing that we have to look and say, okay, what are we going to do? We're going to do some labeling, we're going to do something around the edges, or are we going to go all in and say we don't let kids drive at 16, we don't want them to get married at 16, they don't have the judgment to know when something is dangerous for them. And so we have to set some ground rules for them and say, hey, 16 and under, we got to just keep you offline for that period of time. So, we went big, and we settled in a place with some parental requirements in the 14 to 16 year range, but that has started a conversation where I got on an interview with kind of the 60 Minutes of Australia. Now Australia is looking at doing just the same thing in Australia. So you have to look at problems and say, if we know the fix, do the fix. Don't do part of the fix. Don't wait years down the road. Don’t try to… The worst thing you can do is collect campaign dollars off of it and continue to leave the problem in place. A lot of people say, could we cure some of these diseases? Could we cure some of these things? Do people really want to fix these problems? We need to fix the problems that are in front of us because our time is short. And I tell people in term limits, you don't know that you have another day on this earth, number one, but treat every session like it's your last session with urgency. And if there's a thing that you want to champion, we have guys that lost kids with rare genetic diseases that are coming in and have already done things in their first session. Representative Anderson did that in Florida. Now we have something that's exciting in that area. If you've got something you want to champion, go in there and don't take no for an answer. I'm excited to say that I am not walking away cynical about the state of Florida politics because we've got good men and women that are solving problems every single session. It's amazing what we get done. We don't get engaged or try to avoid the petty politics. Only by doing that can you get real results, and people accept that, or are expecting that, and they're cynical because they see DC is so dysfunctional. But we're actually getting things done in Florida. 

Chris Powers: I freaking love you man. You get me pumped up. What's it like to work with DeSantis? 

Paul Renner: He's a get it done guy. 

Chris Powers: He's awesome. 

Paul Renner: He's a get it done guy. And you look at the hurricanes, and there's a story about this bridge, and like well, Governor, it's going to take… this bridge was wiped out, and it was separating an island, Pine Island, and there were some guys that lived on the island that did this kind of work. They said, Governor, we can get this done in days. So he said, do it. This goes right back, he's a military guy like me, you want to go by all the rules and everything else, you want to fix people's problems. People are literally unable to get to their homes, they're stranded, and these guys fixed it in three days. And it would have been done a little bit faster but for some bureaucratic interference I think at the local level. And so he's a get it done guy. And again, people appreciate that and even people across the aisle. I'm a staunch conservative guy, I'm a Republican. People like DeSantis that would not vote for him on a lot of different issues, but because he's solving problems, because he's strong in these hurricanes, Democrats have said, hey, he keeps me safe. All this stuff, all this garbage that happened in a post George Floyd and all this defund the police, we nipped that in the bud when it came to Florida. You didn't see that happen. You don't see that happen in Florida. He's removed some prosecutors where they want to go in and say, we're just not going to prosecute these kind of crimes or these kind of people. No. I was a former prosecutor. You go in there and you exercise mercy where mercy is warranted, certainly. But you don't let people who have a bad criminal record get back on the street because you're following some trendy policy that we can't put bail requirements on people. Bail requirements are there to make sure people are safe, that you don't have a bad guy go back out in the community and recommit offenses, and that's exactly what happened, for example, with Monique Worrell in Orlando. And if you look at the data, if you just look at it objectively, she needed to be removed, and she was removed, and now she's running on the ballot again. And I hope the people of Orlando have enough common sense to actually want to keep their communities safe to not reelect her. 

Chris Powers: Isn't that the number one obligation of government? 

Paul Renner: Number one, public safety. Before there were congresses and parliaments and all this other stuff, there was the county sheriff, and people need to be safe. You can't function with a business. You can't, your kids can't learn and study and do their homework if bullets are flying outside. Your property values go down. It drives everything. You have to have safety, and it is the number one reason why we have government is to protect lives and property and to enforce the rule of law, and it's there that freedom begins. And you have to have that, and the problem is with government being something that people want to do everything in every aspect of life. We have siphoned away the monies we should be spending on public safety to chase whatever pet project people want. And that is a mistake. And so in Florida, I am proud to say we've really done a lot in terms of making sure that our police are valued, that they're paid well. We've done things on pension to make sure they're taken care of because they're out there covering our backside every single day. We need to have their back. 

Chris Powers: You have an opinion on Disney? 

Paul Renner: Yeah, I do have an opinion. They walked into this thing. And so this is a bill, so everybody knows, that somebody, one of our Democrat members called it the Don't Say Gay bill. And like in a nanosecond, AOC and Joe Biden himself was tweeting out that it was causing people not to be able to talk about their sexual orientation in school, which is total garbage. I mean, these guys are complete liars, first and foremost, and they're willing to just completely like big lies, not political shading, but I mean just flat out lies. This was a flat out lie. And Disney went right into that issue. What the bill did is you had a young girl in Tallahassee who was having this gender confusion, and the school decided, you know what we're going to do, we're going to give you a set of clothes. You're a girl, we're going to give you boy clothes, give you a boy name, and we're going to do all these things and set this whole life up for you and never tell your parents about it. And that's not right. And so, what the bill said is if you're going to have a process or policy for a kid, you have to give notice to the parent. It had nothing to do with whether you're gay or not or whether you could talk to your friends. You can run down to the school with a megaphone and tell everybody you're gay under that bill. But nonetheless Disney jumped into that and made a big stink about it. And unfortunately, this is a good example of where courage is needed. You can have integrity. You can say you have principles, but unless you got the stones, if I can say that, to just stand up, to stand up and just say, no, go stand in the corner. So you had Bob Chaypek who was apparently a Republican guy, CEO of Disney, business-oriented guy. Hey, our job is basically to, like every business, to make a product or a service better than the other guys and to do it at the best price possible. And you win and everybody wins because they get a better- it's a rising boat, and not get involved in every single social issue that some leftist activist on your board wants. Well, he listened to those people who didn't want him there to begin with, and it cost him his job in the end. Had he just said, sit down and be quiet, we're here to entertain people, Democrat people, Republican people, independent people. A business should be marketing. If I ran a business, I'm selling something, I'm selling to everybody. I'm not trying to discriminate against everybody, and they're in the business of coming to a place where you should be able to forget about all your problems and live in the Magic Kingdom for a day with your kids and have a good time and not be assaulted or have these crazy out of the mainstream ideas where now we're not going to talk about princes and princesses anymore. I mean, so they kind of bought into this from California. My understanding from people on the inside, it wasn't coming from the guys in Florida. It wasn't coming from the theme parks in Florida. Now we've come back around and made peace for the moment, but it was a big mistake politically for them, and it was all because of a lack of courage. There was no reason in the world for Disney to get involved in that. They were counseled not to get involved by their people in Florida, and they took the bait. The CEO did not stand up with courage and just say that's not the business we're in. We're not getting involved in this kind of legislation, and they didn't do that, and what transpired is what transpired. But it opened the door to looking and saying, look, when Walt Disney came in, it was like, what do you want? What do you want us to sign? We basically gave him a blank check so they could do their own nuclear plant without any consent from the local government, and they could do all kinds of things that any business, your business or any business has to go through the gauntlet and the painfulness of going through a county commission or a city council, just death by a thousand cuts, he doesn’t have to do that. They got like their own government. And so that needed to be drawn back in. And we did that and I think in a proper way. So they now have their own governing entity. They're not in charge of it anymore. And I think we landed in a good spot. But look, they stepped in it. That bill was a really, really good bill to protect parental rights and protect children. And one of the things I'm proudest about, I didn't mention, but during our time is that we protected children and defended childhood, to let kids be kids on a number of fronts, whether it's transgender surgeries, whether it's social media, whether it's helping moms and dads raise kids by getting rid of our taxes on baby wipes and strollers and baby diapers, this kind of thing, is we really invested in children because children right now are really up against it. They've got a lot of things going on right now, and we need to support them. And we did that over the last two years in Florida to make sure that we're protecting our kids. 

Chris Powers: I think, on that note of courage, like make America courageous again, I think you're starting to see it. It seemed to be a period of time with the woke agenda where any conservative had no voice to say anything. When the stance of the other party is like the moral high ground and everything is done from like a moral standpoint, there is no way to kind of argue against it. And now it feels like in this, especially this election, and maybe it was like Elon Musk and Donald Trump that kind of gave the world permission to start fighting back. And now you've seen a lot of these big corporations get rid of their DEI departments and all these crazy activists committees that they've had. Toyota announced the other day they're getting rid of theirs. And you've kind of said you had a CEO of Disney that probably knew the right thing to do and for one reason or another couldn't pull the trigger, and it caused a lot of chaos that nobody really wants except for maybe a few people. At the end of the day, the saddest part of it all is you're pleasing a very few, a very small handful of people and it causes a lot of chaos and destruction along the way. 

Paul Renner: Yeah, I would say, I mentioned the three things I think make a good leader, integrity, principles, and courage, we've got a lot of people that have integrity and principles, at least in Florida, and I'm proud of that. But you've seen over and over again on my side of the aisle, on the Republican side of the aisle, you get these protests and people come in and say you can't have the world- the All-Star game in Atlanta if you don't- if you want to have voter ID and make people prove that they are who they say they are when they go to vote, I mean this kind of crazy stuff. I think courage is what we're lacking, and I think that's why Donald Trump got elected in 2016. For all of his tweets and all of the things that make people kind of wince, he's got courage. I mean, that's what I love about him. And he's willing to just tell the other side, no. We're not doing that. And so courage begets courage. I remind our members, all you have to do, one guy has to step out and do it, and then it's a lot easier for the second guy to come in and the second person and third person, the fourth person, and then it becomes a movement. And so, in this moment, certainly, if we love our country, we love our states, we love our communities, it's time for people that may have been comfortable, but they're very disturbed about what's happening, it's time for you to get engaged in the political process. It's time for you to step out, encourage, and you alone can make things happen. One person can make things happen in this country still today. 

Chris Powers: All right, you said the hot button voter ID. Is there any good argument for why you don't want it and why there's only half of Washington is adamant that people shouldn't have to show ID? Is there any legitimate excuse besides total just manipulation of the system of why somebody could sit here and make an argument with me why voter ID would not be used that you've heard that you're like, okay, I can kind of see that point? 

Paul Renner: I don't think there is one. I've never heard a single good idea. It really does beg the question, why do you want to do that and not be able to know whether this person is even legally in the country, whether they live in the state or not. You have these people that have, the states that have same day voter registration in Wisconsin - I don’t know Wisconsin is one of those, it may be, but you have people in some of these swing states where people from another state can come over and register for the day or whatever. I mean, you can't have a system like that. And Florida got so embarrassed in 2000 with the hanging chads and everything. And every single year we've done election reforms to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat. It's all about balance. And nobody's saying we want to stop people from voting. No, no, no. I want everybody that wants to vote to get-  they're supposed to be able to vote, to have a chance to vote. We have early voting in Florida. We have a month before. If you want to vote in Florida, you can vote in Florida. It is really easy. But we're not going to let people come in that aren't who they say they are or aren't allowed to vote in the state of Florida or are ineligible to vote. So we have tough rules there. We also have now through the governor's leadership and our efforts in the legislature, a mechanism by which we can look at whether people are cheating. We've seen, and I think it's going to be when this is coming out.

Chris Powers: It’s coming out six days before the election. 

Paul Renner: Oh, well, I can say this because it better come out six days before that. But we're looking at some of these amendments on pot and abortion. And we know that one of the things I did as judiciary chair is make sure these citizen initiatives do not allow people to be paid by the petition because it induces fraud. The more the more money I make, the more signatures I get, the more money I make. Well, let me just sit down with a voter registration list and just start signing some names. And we've seen in the case of both pot and abortion, same company, that these guys were told to go in and cheat, basically. And so they have filed fraudulent petitions to get on the ballot. We don't know whether there's going to be enough to make a difference on that or not. We just have to go in and beat it at the ballot box at this point. But that's going to come to light here pretty soon, that, I, as somebody that's against both of those amendments, may have signed a petition to put it on the ballot because some guy got paid to do it by the petition. And so, we have these kinds of things happening that have to be reigned in. And so we are reigning them in in Florida. And you look at what happens on election night, Florida will report out the winner by nine o'clock at night. Whereas you got Arizona that took weeks and weeks, that waited to do their absentee ballots the night of, and then, oh, we found another stack somewhere, and that just undermines people's confidence. Even if it wouldn't have made a difference, a true difference in the outcome, people lose confidence if it takes you three weeks in the United States of America. Look, you've got a job. You're the supervisor of elections. You've got two years to do something on, to count stuff on one night, for God's sakes. I mean, can't you figure that out and make it happen? Just it boggles the mind. And the governor, to his credit, has removed some supervisors for that reason, too. 

Chris Powers: I'm no conspiracy theorist, but it doesn't sound very logical to me. Okay, let's talk about Florida just a little specifically really quick. We have to talk about property insurance or my real estate folks are going to go crazy. How is this going to get handled long-term? Even as we sit right now, there's a hurricane headed towards Florida. There was one a week ago. But there's always a hurricane at some point. What's the long-term plan here? 

Paul Renner: Well look, I think you have to, any problem you have to look at what are the problems I can fix, like life, what are the problems that are within my control and what problems are not within my control. You and I cannot stop Hurricane Milton from hitting Florida, and it's going to hit Florida somewhere. We don't know where yet and how strong, but it's going to be bad. We know that. I can't stop that. What we can do is we can look at where we can control. And so, two weeks after I became speaker, we had a special session we convened to take care of business that should have been taken care of a decade ago in our property insurance market. It goes back to that litigation issue. We had, and it wasn't hurricanes, it was roof claims. Everybody's getting a free roof, and it was epidemic. That was wrecking the insurance market where people were losing billions and billions of dollars and people were running away from Florida like it was the plague. We came in and reformed the litigation climate. We've already seen, and that's a big ship to turn, but we've already seen some rates come in now that are flat where we were seeing double digit year after year after year, flat or even some companies… 

Chris Powers: We were sub in Orlando. We went down. 

Paul Renner: Yeah, some have even come down a little bit. We have to see what happens obviously in the hurricanes, but it wasn't hurricanes that was driving that. It was fraudulent claims. It was insurance as a way to get my house fixed and not after a true incident like a hurricane. The other area where we can do something is in mitigation. I think this is an important next frontier where there's probably no limit to what we can do. So, we set up a program called My Safe Florida Home, which allows people that have homes under a certain value right now to get an inspection. They have to have skin in the game, but up to $10,000, the state will match in a grant program to do windows, to harden your garage doors, to do roof tie downs, whatever you can do with the existing structure. Obviously, it's a lot easier with new construction, but to go in and do this and harden your homes, the reports I've gotten is that has yielded roughly $1,000 decrease in premiums for those that have participated in that program. It is continually oversubscribed. So, we came in and put like an extra 230 million dollars just in this last year in there; it's already gone. We added condos in a pilot program to let condo owners get involved in this as well. We had the Surfside collapse, all of that, and so we want to make sure those folks are hardened as well. And so, I think that's the next frontier. Technology, I'm a big believer if you look at David Malthus back in the 19th century, he said we're all going to starve to death because we can't feed everybody. We can feed people the world over now because of our technology, our innovations in our agriculture. The same thing I believe, the free market and innovators, entrepreneurs are going to be able to fix this problem with greater construction materials, stronger construction materials, smarter way to build homes. We have to do all of those things as we move forward. I can't change the climate. I can't change what happens with hurricanes. But what we can do is we can harden these homes, we can build smarter, and we can fix our litigation climate, which we've done, and we're seeing progress. 

Chris Powers: I love it. Okay, what is- we'll have two questions here. We'll start with what keeps you up at night about the future of America. But we’ll follow that up with what gets you excited about the future of America? As we sit right now, I'm sure it's a combination of a lot of things that we've covered. What keeps you up right now about some of the issues swirling around the country? 

Paul Renner: Well, I'm going to take my politician hat off and put my faith hat on and say the decline of faith in America is what keeps me up at night. And your phone ringing. 

Chris Powers: That's what makes a podcast a podcast. This is real life, baby. This is on the spot. 

Paul Renner: It's my chief of staff telling me how much worse the hurricane is right now as it's coming across the Gulf. That's what keeps me up at night because, look, I mean, I fundamentally believe that we're designed for a purpose with a manual, and when you operate a piece of machinery or anything else against its design, things break, things go horribly bad. And I think you're seeing in America things go horribly bad by decline of faith and decline of morals in the country. So that's one of the things that keeps me up at night. More secularly, it would be the massive expansion of our debt with nobody apparently on either side of the aisle having any interest in fixing entitlements. It's a hot button that will get you unelected. And again, it goes back to what I said before is if you know that's coming, if you see that you're on a boat that's going down, is about to go down Niagara Falls, you should veer off before it's too late. And we can see this. This is not like- it's like a hurricane. The one nice thing about hurricanes, we know it's coming. If you're in an evacuation zone, you need to leave or you could lose your life. In the case of our country, if we're headed towards fiscal collapse, we need to do something now. If we do something now, it will be less painful than if we wait until we have a collapse, we lose our status as a reserve currency, we have hyperinflation like other countries have had that have continued to spend and spend and borrow. That keeps me up at night. Those two things principally. But on the positive side, look, I look at Florida, there's so much to be happy about. We have record reserves. We're AAA credit rated by all the credit rating agencies. We continue to send money back to our citizens every year in tax relief. We are growing by leaps and bounds. We’re number one rated in education in the country. There's just a lot. And it's all based upon a very simple American formula. It's not a Florida formula. It doesn't belong to us. It's the same thing you see in Texas, in Tennessee, and other states. You just look at where people are voting with their feet. Where is capital moving? Where are people moving? And it's states that are embracing freedom. It is not a complicated formula. But you have to, what I've learned as a conservative, whether it's higher education, you can take a private Christian school and if you just leave it alone and let it just operate on autopilot, it will lose its mission. It will lose its way. You have to be intentional. You have to be purposeful. And never take your eye off the ball, or this phenomenon that we've talked about on this podcast, which goes back to the Garden of Eden, I think, will continue to worm its way in and undermine and distort what is our design and purpose, which is human thriving. And we can have this wonderful life in this part of our life before the afterlife if we embrace freedom. It's a great system we've set up with checks and balances. We figured it out in America about how to really take the hot mess of humanity and set some guardrails where we can all thrive. We can live life as we see fit and prosper and raise our families as we see fit and respect each other and respect free speech and really, really thrive in all aspects. Why in God's name would we want to abandon any of those principles for what has never ever worked anywhere it has ever been tried? And again, I'm a history major, but you can look in Venezuela, you can look at Cuba, you can look at Nicaragua, China, Russia, go down the list. It has never ever worked. And this idea that, well, it just was poorly implemented. I mean, at what point do you just say this does not work? And it leads to poverty, prison and death everywhere it's tried.

Chris Powers: Well, we're going to a men's retreat here soon and we're going to be talking about the concept of time and how to get the most out of your time. So, I'll kind of end it on two things. One, your term’s coming up, where are you going to focus your energy and time going forward? Because I would imagine you're going to stay dedicated to, in some capacity, whether it's in private or public sector, to making sure America stays on track. So that's my first question. What does the future look like for you? 

Paul Renner: Yeah, we talked about institutions, and I think we have a lot of institutions to reclaim. And so, I want to stay in the fight, whatever that looks like, and help reclaim those institutions. I don't want people listening to this to be despondent because you look at a group like the Federalist Society that over a period of 30 or 40 years basically beat the left at their own game and reclaimed that institution. It can be done, but that was very, very purposeful, very deliberate, very sustained. We need that same kind of sustained effort in K-12 education, higher education, the media, and now in the boardroom, pushing back on ESG and making sure that businesses can be businesses and just deliver a great product at a great price. So, helping to reclaim our institutions. As I said, I'm an old dad, I've got a four-year-old and a two-year-old. I feel a sense of urgency about that. And so whatever it takes and wherever that places me, that's where I'll be. And as Christians, we're called to be obedient, not to win, whether we win or lose in the end. A lot of great, great leaders spent their whole life and you would look at it at the end point when they died and say that they were not successful because everything they had hoped to do was not done, but they still stand out for their remarkable leadership. And again, as I said, begetting courage. When one man or one woman steps out in courage, it creates a crowd. 

Chris Powers: The second is, and I think I fall in this camp a lot of times, maybe Johnny you feel this way, you sometimes feel like the system is so big there's just nothing I can do about it. My vote doesn't matter. I'm just one cog in a big wheel. There's so many forces that be. What can just like the average American do besides vote, which is important, but like on a day-to-day basis to kind of get this back on track? We've talked about courage, but even if they had courage, it's like courage to do what? If I was to ask you like, how should I spend, if the 90,000 people that listen to this episode could all go do one thing, what would they do? 

Paul Renner: Well, if you have generalized concerns, I'd say get involved in the political process. And if you have never thought about running for office, maybe you should. There's something for everybody. Maybe you should be the finance chair. Maybe you should do something else for that and find good candidates because we need to first start by recruiting good candidates in the political process. If you're in one of these institutions, we need to reclaim, figure out a way to help reclaim it. If there's a single issue that matters to you a lot and that bugs you every night and you say, why aren't we doing A, B and C, go do A, B and C and find others that are like minded to do that. I'll be speaking later this week on classical education, which is in a special moment right now. And I think there's some amazing, I toured a Christian classical school back home in St. Augustine that is just extraordinary for what they're learning. If that's an area where you can make a difference and change an entire generation, we can win, but it requires people of faith, people of principle to step out and go beyond their comfort zone is what I would say. And so don't just say I'm just a mom or I'm just a, I'm a small business guy. I know what I know. I don't know anything about that. Figure it out. There's a place for you to plug in, and it may be multiple places, but you should absolutely be involved in helping to reclaim your institutions. If you're a churchgoer and a person of faith, be more involved in your church and get your neighbors involved in the things that you care about. But democracy in our republic doesn't- we talk about self-government, it's not self-executing, it's not autonomous, it requires us to step out. One of the things that Tocqueville mentions in Democracy in America is how extraordinary Americans are. We solve our own problems. And that's the America I love. In a lot of other countries, in Europe, they have this expectation that the government's supposed to fix problems. And like I said, they get into a jam and they're waiting for some government agent to show up and fix their situation. We organize associations around problems and go fix problems. And so do that. If there's not an organization in your area that addresses the problem you're concerned about, create one. And if there is one, get involved in it and make it better through your efforts. 

Chris Powers: Paul, thanks for joining me today. 

Paul Renner: Thanks, Chris. Enjoyed it. 

Chris Powers: This was awesome.