What you should not have in your garage

Today on the Jimmy Barrett Show:

• What you should not have in your garage

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
What we need is more common sense.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
The.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Breaking down the world's nonsense about how American common sense.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
Will see us through With the common sense of Houston.
I'm just pro common sense for Houston. From Houston dot com.
This is the Jimmy Barrett Show, brought to you by
viewind dot Com. Now here's Jimmy Barrett. Hey, welcome. It's Monday.
It's the first day of summer for school kids. The

(00:35):
kids are out of school now, right, I think they
are a lot of school So there you go. Here's
my question. How many kids do you think you'll see
running around the neighborhood today. It's a trick question because
I don't know about your neighborhood. I never see any
kids running around our neighborhood. The only time I ever

(00:57):
see kids in our neighborhood is when they're getting off
the school bus and walking into their houses. I never
see him outside. Now, granted, I can't see him too
their backyard. Nor do I want to be somebody who's
accused of, you know, peeping over the fence to take
a look at the backyards. But I'd never hear kids outside.
I never see kids outside. It's a very rare thing
to see a kid, especially one that's mowing the grass

(01:20):
or doing some sort of chore outdoors. You know, I
know we get brutally hot, but still, you know, do
we need to get our kids outside blowing a little
stink off? As my dad you say every now and again.
So anyway, we'll wait and see how many kids we
see this summer.

Speaker 4 (01:35):
Now. You know, some of them will participate, like in
swim clubs or things like that, but there's not a
whole lot of them who are doing a whole like
of a lot of outdoors. Here's the other story I saw,
because we're getting into the hot, really hot, humid part
of the year, and this is a story I can
relate to, which is fifteen things you should never store
in your garage. And I have to laugh at some

(01:58):
of these things because I think I could probably find
most of them, at least ten of them, probably in
my garage, because where else would I put them? I mean,
the garage is the is the last place to put
something before you decide you're going to throw it out, right,
at least that's the way it is. At my house.

(02:19):
We have a I call it a two car garage.
I guess it's called a four car garage. It's a
tandem garage. It's it's extra deep. It's a two car
wide garage, but it's extra deep. So theoretically, if you
had four really small cars, you could fit four cars

(02:40):
in there. But then again you're always to be taking
cars out, moving them around and all that stuff to
get to them. And one of our vehicles is a
Chevy Silverado pickup truck, and those things are huge. If
you have one, you know, I mean, you're not parking
that in the garage right in most in most cases,
even if you have an extra long garage, you're probably not,
you know, parking that in there. Certainly to have a
standard two car garage, you're not parking it in there.

(03:04):
So for a lot of people, I have friends like this,
I think, of all of all my friends, I might
be one of the only people who actually has two
cars in his two car garage. Again only because it's
extra deep, so I got lots of space left over
to store stuff. And there's plenty of stuff in there.

(03:24):
There's stuff that made the move from Virginia, that probably
made the move from Michigan. There's stuff in there that
I have. You know, it hasn't seen the light of
day in years. It just gets moved from place to
place in a box, and that's where it sits. And
we've been in that house almost eight years now, and
there are things in there that I haven't even opened

(03:45):
the box. You know, when you get to the point
where you've moved a whole bunch of times, you know,
you get to the point where you don't even want
to look inside the boxes anymore. You just don't. So
here's the list. Fifteen things they say you should never
store in your garage, mainly because you know, especially here
in Texas, the garage is gonna get brutally hot during

(04:05):
the summer months, and there's some things that will not
store well if it's brutally hot. But here's the list
they came up with. Number one on the list pet food.
Why I would say food of any kind, right, any
any kind of food that you don't want stored in
a really hot place. Now, even pet food technically, you know,
it's it's not like you know, fresh foods if you're

(04:27):
talking about kibble. But I certainly wouldn't put any other
kind of pet food out there. Maybe some kibble for
a couple of days, but that's it. Number two wine
for the obvious reason, it gets really hot in the
summer months. Wouldn't matter if it got cold. Can't hurt
wine by getting it cold, but you can't hurt it
by getting it too hot. Now this one, I wasn't
quite sure about blankets and clothing. I've got blankets, but

(04:51):
they're more like moving blankets, you know, the things I
used to cover up the plants. If we're going to
get temperatures around freezing temperatures, I'm sure there's some cloth
thing in there in boxes that it has not been worn.
But the reason why it's in the garage is because
my wife won't throw it away, and it's never gonna
get worn again anyway. Yes, she refuses to throw it away.
Number four paint, I'll vouch for paint. Paint can't get

(05:15):
hurt by the hot weather, but it can get hurt
by the cold weather, although it does. You know, it
gets below fifty. They say you shouldn't paint when the
temperature is below fifty, But I think the paint's fine
as long as the paint doesn't freeze. If the paint freezes,
then you're gonna have some problems. That's more of a
northern problem paint freezing. Number five firewood not sure well,

(05:38):
probably because of the bugs, right, I mean, I'm not
worried about firewood from being combustible, but if it you
know it, chances are good it's got bugs in there,
and so you're bringing a bunch of bugs with it.
Pro Paint tanks was number five on the list. That
you know if they get super hot in your garage.
I suppose there's always the possibilities something that can happen.

(06:01):
Number seven important documents or paperwork. Paper does not do well.
Is really bruttle in that kind of environment. So you
wouldn't want you wouldn't want to store important documents or
paperwork there. You wouldn't want to store money in your garage.
Number eight photographs, Yeah, they don't do well. Number nine books.

(06:22):
I'm not sure why books made the list. I guess
same thing. It's a paper product. Number ten electronics. I
don't think there's any electronics in my garage that you
ever will be using again. I've just I might have
an old flat screen from a computer or something. I
know I have an old flat screen from a computer,
just needs to get thrown out. Number eleven artwork that

(06:42):
makes sense number twelve for some unknown reasons, stuffed animals
number thirteen, pillows, number fourteen chemicals, and number fifteen easily
flammable items. If I were to ask you, by the way,
what is in your garage, how many of you would
be able to say at least one car. This goes

(07:04):
back to what I was saying in the beginning of
all this, which is, seems like everybody I know, you know,
their garage is just full of their stuff, and by
the time they're done putting their stuff in there, there's
no room for any cars or a truck. They're all
out in the driveway. I'm guessing that's true for a
lot of folks. All right, quick little break. We are
back with more in a moment, Jimmy Barrett Show here

(07:25):
on the AM nine fifty KPRC. I think I called
the stack segment here government waste, fraud and wasted abuse

(07:48):
and that kind of stuff. I saw that Congress is
looking to codify DOGE. In other words, even though Elon
Musk is gone, they want to codify a DOGE department,
actually create that and have that becoming a reciprocal part
of the government where we always have a dozed department
that's always looking for waste, and there's plenty of waste
to be found. I think we can all agree on that.

(08:11):
Here's an area of waste that you may have heard
about over the weekend, and that is from the Egg
Department Secretary Brooke Rowlands announcing that they have arrested or
had arrested at least one USDA employee and then five
others in connection with sixty six million dollars worth of

(08:35):
food stamp fraud. Sixty six million dollars that's taxpayer money
to the tune of sixty six million. I have no
idea how long of a period of time we're talking
about that this was going on, but I know the
food stamp program is massive, but even as massive as

(08:55):
it is, it would take some time to mass sixty
six million dollars worth of fraud. Here is the agg
secretary on Fox of the weekend talking about it.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
This is a new day.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
And President Trump promises he was traveling across the country
over the last few years that it would not be
the government that we know, the government certainly that under
Joe Biden exponentially grew and alongside that, including the fraud
and waste and abuse, and so at USDA, we are
hyper focused, hyper focused on rooting out that waste, fraud,

(09:27):
and abuse. And to your point, yesterday was if not
the largest, one of the largest stings and moving forward
and finding that fraud I think almost seventy million dollars
that is no longer going to be allowed here in
Washington and with these programs like the food stamp program.
So we're going to move forward, obviously in partnership with
the FBI, with the Department of Justice. Of course our

(09:49):
team at USDA. This is not the one and only.
There are going to be many more to come, and
we're going to make sure that we're delivering on our
promises to the taxpayers. Well, the food stamp program is
one of the largest government programs across the federal government,
and obviously I've talked on this show and other shows
that it's time for real effective change part of that

(10:10):
two hundred billion dollar annual program. The best sort of
estimate is between twenty to thirty percent of that is fraud, waste,
and abuse. The sixty six million that was announced yesterday
on behalf of USDA and the others that were part
of that, again, it's just the tip of the spear
and the way that works, Maria. The EBT cards is

(10:31):
what USDA, the government uses to provide that supplemental nutrition assistance,
which is the food stamps, and that it's a fairly
easy thing to do. We're trying to lock it down
right now to ensure that it doesn't keep happening.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
But when you've got employees.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
That you know, basically don't follow the law, then we've
got to fix it.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
And that's what we're doing.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
There's going to be real consequences for breaking the law
across America's federal government with President Trump.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
But this is just one of many more to come.

Speaker 4 (10:59):
Think of that, it's a two hundred billion dollar a
year program. Did you think it was that? I never
dreamed it was that much. We we spend two hundred
billion dollars a year on food stamps on supplemental food.
How easy is it to get food stamps? Yeah? I've

(11:19):
never bothered. I guess to take a look at what
the qualifying is. How do you how do you qualify
for food stamps? Yeah? I should look that up. You know,
how uh, you know, how difficult is it to qualify
for food stamps? Let me see if I can find
some information on that that that's crazy, That is absolutely crazy.
How do you qualify? How do you qualify for food stamps?

(11:48):
See what comes up here? All right, you see what
it says here, d U the sea people in eligible.
Low income households most adults eighteen to fifty two no
children in their home can get snapped for only three
months in a three year period. The benefit period might
be longer if a person works at least twenty hours
a week or is in a job training program. And

(12:10):
yet we're spending two hundred billion dollars. Wow, what's the
highest income for food stamps? The highest gross monthly income
for a household to qualify for food stamps depends on
the number of people in the household in the state's
specific guidelines. Oh, state's guidelines. So you you take a
states like New York in California, California particularly, and their

(12:34):
guidelines are going to be a lot less strict. I
bet you can qualify for food stamps in California really
easy compared to Texas. For a household of one, the
maximum gross monthly income is two five hundred and ten dollars.
You have to make less than twenty five to ten
a month as a single individual in order to be
able to get food stamps. For a household of two,

(12:56):
it's three thy four hundred and eight, for a household
of three four thousand, three hundred four, and for a
household of four it's five thy two hundred. So in
roundabout that's that's over sixty thousand dollars year salary. If
you have one working parent who is making less than

(13:17):
sixty one sixty two thousand dollars a year and they
have three kids, then they would qualify for food stamps.
Is you know, I realized that, you know, with the
cost of living or whatever, that you know, sixty thousand
dollars a year for family four is not a crapload
of money. But seriously, should that qualify for food stamps?

(13:41):
So maybe we should be taking a look at these, uh,
these qualifications too as to whether or not, you know,
it should be a little bit more strict as far
as you know your income levels and whether you're attempting
to work at least attempting to work, as to whether
or not you qualify for food stamps, and for how
long a period of time you can be on food stamp.
It's like most government programs, right, it started off with

(14:04):
the best of intentions, but I would have to say
the evidence is pretty clear that it's gotten out of control.
And you add the actual cost of the program to
the thievery she said thirty percent. Thirty percent fraud and
abuse rate. That's amazing, and yet you know it's very

(14:27):
Here's the thing, it's very easy to cheat on the
federal government because they have very few safety measures. You know,
they have very few things that will catch people who
are cheating on the system. It's a pretty easy thing
to do, evidently, to cheat on the system. And my
guess is there's not a lot of It's not like

(14:47):
it's a private company or corporation. I'm sure there are
plenty of bureaucrats working in the federal government who aren't
really that concerned about how much thievery is going on
or how much money is being solen. So that's one
area fraud and abuse with the food stamp program. Here's
another area where there was I believe fraud and abuse,

(15:11):
and that's in the Energy Department. But I think Chris Wright,
who's the Energy Secretary, has been pretty aggressive about going
after this stuff. You know, these contracts that went out
during the last seventy two days of the Biden administration.
I mean, just an incredible amount of billions spent on this,
and they have been slowly but surely crawling back the money.

Speaker 5 (15:33):
Nearly one hundred billion dollars of taxpayer money was committed
to businesses all across this country to mostly build bridges
to nowhere. In seventy six days after President Biden lost
the election and before President Trump was inaugurated, nearly one
hundred billion dollars of taxpayer money was committed in just

(15:53):
a rush and a mad dash to get money out
the door.

Speaker 6 (15:57):
That is wins in the ordinary, that is extraorday. In
other words, they had money that they wanted to spend.
They knew that they were they lost the election, so
they just wanted to just get it out and allocate
it to wherever they wanted, even though I mean, these
projects were not necessarily in line with what the American
people wanted.

Speaker 5 (16:16):
Exactly a little over forty billion was committed in the
previous fifteen years the whole.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
History of the Loan Program.

Speaker 5 (16:23):
Office lent a cylinder as a famous example of that,
But a little over forty billion over fifteen years, and
then ninety billion in seventy six days. It's just appalling, Wow,
spending your money like it's just going at just confetti.
The President Trump got elected to lower energy prices, reindustrialize America,

(16:45):
bring jobs an opportunity back to our country, and peace abroad.
And he is pursuing that agenda aggressively. And energy plays
a big part in that. You know, last four years
we saw over a twenty five percent rise in the
electricity prices, no increase in the production of electricity. Now
we have the AI race in full steam that we

(17:06):
cannot lose.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
We must stay ahead of China.

Speaker 5 (17:08):
And what does it take to win an AI a
lot more American energy. So we're going to grow American
energy production of all forms across the country, keep electricity
prices in check, and stay ahead and win the AI.

Speaker 4 (17:21):
Race, and keep calling that money back for the Biden people. Please.
One hundred billion dollars in seventy six days. One hundred billion. God,
there has to be an investigation all this doesn't there
There has to be There has to be an investigation.
Did you hear. By the way, evidently President Trump put

(17:43):
something on his untrue social about this conspiracy theory involving
Joe Biden being a clone. The conspiracy theory is that
Joe Biden was killed back in twenty twenty and they
put a clone in his place, or you know, doppelganger
or whatever, you know, whatever you want to call them.

(18:06):
You know that that wasn't that wasn't really Joe Biden,
that was somebody else. And if so, I mean, here's
the first thing I would say about that theory. If
that were the case, why would they put somebody in
that has such cognitive issues. Why if you're going, if
you're trying to keep somebody in power, why would you

(18:26):
put you know, a look alike or a doppelganger or
whatever they think it is in there that you know,
still had his brain intact, still had the ability to govern, unless,
of course, you didn't want anybody in there with the
ability to govern. I mean, it's it's it's clearly a
ridiculous conspiracy theory. But you know, with how secretive the

(18:48):
Biden deministration was, it almost becomes believable after a while,
doesn't it when you see these kinds of things. All right,
quick little break back with more Jimmy Barrett Show. You're
on AM nine fifty KPRC ME Monday. If you are

(19:20):
a relatively regular listener to our program, then you probably
know I have a passion for real estate. I always
have had a passion for that. At one point in time,
I did have a real estate license. That was my
backup plan if this radio thing didn't work out. And
it's this it's during these times that I'm glad the
radio thing worked out, because I'm guessing this is not

(19:42):
a real happy time to be a realtor. It's not.
It's not the best of times to be in the
buying It's a good time to be buying real estate
maybe or soon to be a good time buying real estate,
just not a really good time to sell real estate,
you know, And I would I will also say I
should probably correct that it's not a great time to
buy it either, not not when you have to pay

(20:04):
you know, close to seven percent interest rate. I think
the thirty year fixed rate now is like six point
nine eight percent on average, So you might as well
call that seven percent seven percent interest rate. And while
those of us who've been around for a while, we'll
always tell you that it's that's you know, historically low
or at least moderate. That's in the moderate range for
interest rates. You know, we got so used to those

(20:26):
cheap interest rates that we haven't been able to get
those out of our mind and still keeping people from
There's a couple of things I think that are keeping
people from buying right now. Number one, the interest rates.
Number two, especially if you're talking about things like beach
property insurance rates, they're you know, sales in Florida are

(20:50):
have kind of tanked a little bit. I kind of
know this. My sister just moved there. But I'm sure
I can't wait to hear the horror stories of what
is going to cost them to ensure that house they
just bought, you know, for flood insurance, although they are
not in a flood plan I guess, so maybe they're
going to not have flood insurance, but you still have

(21:12):
potential wind and hail damage from hurricanes, and that's not
cheap coverage to have either. You know, we have a place,
I know some of you are where we have a
place don Freeport, and the insurance on that has just
gotten ridiculous. And there's a g lot of homes for
sale down around the Galveston area right now, and it's
because you know, rental properties haven't been doing as well

(21:37):
as they have before historically speaking, because the economy has
been a little bit tight, and people are having a
hard time hanging on to those properties because they just
can't afford the insurance. So there's a couple of problems
they're connected with all that. The other problem, of course,
is just you know, you've got at this point, for
the first time in quite a while, you've got more

(21:59):
sellers than buyers. Now. The good news is that means
more inventory that's available for sale. But the bad news
is is that that kind of flips the script here
on the value of your home. Even though home sales
were not that particularly great, home values remain high because
the inventory was so low. Well, now the inventory's gone

(22:20):
up and we still have fewer buyers. So I think
twenty seven either twenty seven or twenty eight states right
now have seen home values go down, not hugely down,
but they've gone down. Here's a guy in the name
of Mitch Rochelle. Mitch Rochelle is in the real estate business.

(22:40):
He's at Madison Ventures. Here he is talking about what's
going on with the real estate right now.

Speaker 7 (22:46):
More sellers than buyers supplying demand. That's why values are
falling on the margin. But if you're a home buyer
and there's more homes on the market, that's a good thing, right.
The issue that has plagued this housing market is a
lack of supply of homes. So the fact that we're
seeing people put their homes on the market and there's
homes that are actually available to buy, I think that

(23:06):
that's a good thing for the industry. And if that
trend continues, then there's, you know, homes for people to buy,
and if prices are falling, that means the first time
home buyer may have a shot at that home.

Speaker 8 (23:16):
But what about seven percent thirty of fixed rate mortgages?
Is there any sign that that mortgage rate is going
to come down appreciably in the future.

Speaker 7 (23:24):
I'm glad you didn't pull the tape for me from
four years ago when I said that mortgage rates would
hit two percent. So I appreciate that, Stewart, But the
fact of the matter is there's a problem brewing in
the bond market. These treasury auctions that go on and
creating a lot of volatility in the treasury market.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
Mortgage rates are tied.

Speaker 7 (23:43):
To treasury yields, so I don't see interest rates coming down,
you know, writ large. So I think we have to
as home buyers and people in the industry get used
to the seven percent mortgage, more.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
Likely to go to eight than it is to go
to six.

Speaker 8 (23:57):
Is there anything positive, really positive I can report for
us this morning on the estate market.

Speaker 7 (24:03):
I'm seeing even though last time I was on talked
about home builder optimism being, you know, at a multi
year low, I'm seeing home builders out there building homes,
and they're building smaller homes because they're very focused on price.
So people that want to entry level new home, it
may be a little smaller than the one you would

(24:24):
have bought a couple of years ago. But I'm seeing
activity amongst home builders. And again I'll start with where
you know the first question you asked me. I think
five hundred thousand more homes on the market is a
really good thing for the housing market, because you know what,
when there was no homes on the market, they were
slim pickens and you were going to buy it and
then run right to home depot to start fixing it up.

Speaker 4 (24:46):
So does that mean the end of big mansions? Now
they're building smaller houses, so we're all going to we're
all going to downsize in order to be able to
have something that is more affordable. So have you out
there looking for you know, three four thousand square foot house,
You're going to be out there looking for a fifteen hundred,
two thousand square foot house that could be. That could be.
You know, we got used to big houses and that'd

(25:09):
be a big change. That also means some you have
to explain this to my wife, Elizabeth. That means we're
gonna have to get rid of some of this junk. Honey.
You can't downsize if you keep all your crap. You
gotta get rid of some of that stuff. Oh, one
more thing before I go. Today is National Leave Work
Early Day. So you know it's almost five o'clock. So

(25:34):
if you haven't left by now, if you hurry up
and leave right now as I'm talking, then technically you
might be able to leave a little bit earli or
maybe if your shift ends at six or whatever, you
could leave a little bit early today. I don't know
why we have a National Leave Work Early day. You know,
chances are pretty good that you can in most jobs
these days, you can pretty much leave almost anytime you

(25:56):
want to, right you don't have to come up with
an excuse, although you you could always try the family
emergency line or yeah, I got a really bad case
of diarrhea. That might scare them in the letting you
go home early. You could try the women's man it's
that time of the month. Does that work better with
the male boss or female boss? By the way, I'm wondering,

(26:19):
is the female boss going to be more understanding of
that or is the male boss going to be more
afraid of that and say you have no go home?
Go home? Hard to say, but anyway, if you want
to take off early, you're running out of time to
take off early. Listen, You'll have a great day. Thank
you for listening. It is hurricane season now, kids are
out of school. Here we go summertime in Houston. We'll
see you tomorrow morning, bright nearly five am over on

(26:41):
news Radio seven forty KRH. Hope to have you back
here at four on AM nine fifty KPRC.

Speaker 3 (27:00):
I'm early