Episode 46: Election Results Are In and a Meme Bill Passes the House

Transcript from our podcast episode 46. It is not perfect and had to be edited to be understood when read. However, it is good for people who would rather read. If you want to listen go to the podcast tab.
Episode 46 0
Esther: Hello, listeners. Welcome to Plano's Political Pit Bull podcast. I am Esther
Ruth: and I'm Ruth,
Esther: and today we have the results of the 2025 Plano City Council election and a legislative update. First, I'll give you the legislative update.
Esther: SB2, that is the school voucher bill, was signed by the governor on May the 3rd, 2025 and will go into effect September 1st of this year. There will be enough for 100,000 students to get $10,000 each and go to a school of their parent's choice. Special Ed kids and low income children get first priority. With over 5 million students in Texas public schools, 100,000 students leaving public school, actually, it's less than that because a lot of these kids have already left the public school, won't affect anything for the public schools. I would hazard a guess they won't even notice that they're gone. Also, the majority of those 100,000 students are going to be special ed kids because again, they get first priority.  You said the other day maybe that'll be good because a lot of schools don't know how to deal with special ed kids.
Ruth: Yeah, and they're kind of overwhelmed, at least in some schools. When I was doing [student] teaching they were over flooding the programs for special ed. So it doesn't really help the kids either way because they're not getting the attention they need.
Esther: So this could be a good thing for the schools. It alleviates pressure on the public schools, and it helps the kids as well. So please nobody panic okay. Nothing's going to happen to your public schools. 5 million plus kids [in the public schools]. It's 100,000.
Ruth: It's a drop in the water.
Esther: A drop in the bucket.
Ruth: Drop in the bucket. That's what I meant.
Esther:  Or the ocean.
Ruth: Right.
Esther: Because I guarantee you that half of those kids, let's say 50,000 of them, already go to either a private or a charter school. They're just going to be allowed to get some help right now.
Esther: Well moving on. The House passed a meme bill.
Ruth: A what bill?
Esther: A meme bill.
Ruth: Okay.
Esther: I had a feeling you'd get a kick out of this. So HB 366 has gotten the bad Bill of the week award from me. Now, I did give extra points because it's only a page long, but it didn't help in this case. So here's the bill. “It applies to a person who is an officeholder, candidate, or political committee. Makes an expenditure that exceeds $100 for political advertising, publishes, distributes, or broadcasts political advertising described in the next section. A person may not, with the intent to influence an election, knowingly cause to be publish, distributed or broadcast political advertising that includes an image, audio recording or video recording of an officeholders or candidate's appearance, speech, or conduct that did not occur in reality, including an image, audio recording, or  video recording that has been altered using generative artificial intelligence technology. Unless the political advertising includes a disclosure that the image, audio recording or video recording did not occur in reality.”
Ruth: People can't use their common sense? Some things are clearly a joke.
Esther: Yes. So, no more altered AI Trump memes, or Biden memes without a disclosure.  An offence under this section is a class A misdemeanor. So would you like to know how this bill came to the idea of Representative Phelan?
Ruth: They got the idea from Europe.
Esther: No
Ruth: Because they're doing that.
Esther: No. That wasn't it.
Ruth: You know, jailing people for making jokes on the internet.
Esther: No, they didn't get the idea from them. Somebody made a meme of Representative Phelan. This is this is what I've heard.
Ruth: Oh, and it hurt these little feelings.
Esther: It did. It was of him standing next to Nancy Pelosi. So obviously, a little Photoshop, you know, cut and paste. Nancy Pelosi standing next to the representative to make it seem like he is in cahoots I guess.
Ruth: They are making a statement that they think that they're the same.
Esther Yeah.
Ruth: Freedom of speech?  
Esther: So I guess it didn't hurt his campaign because he won. I guess it it hurt his feelings. He didn't like that because that picture's not real. So he wants a disclaimer.
Ruth: It's honestly no different than those old political cartoons that people would make. This is like the new version of that.  Where it was over dramatized stuff. It wasn't actually factual. It was based in what people believed to be true, but  it was over exaggerated.
Esther: Yes. But you could see how this could be an issue. I can understand his side of the argument, because if you could take an image and manipulate it and now you could put somebody in a, shall we say, inappropriate situation in a picture and say, oh my gosh, look what he did.
Ruth: But people know that. People know that AI it exist. People know that Photoshop exists. People know people can do this stuff. People have to use their common sense.
Esther: Yes. I mean, question obviously. Say, is this a real photo?
Ruth: You have to question everything on the internet now. Nothing could be real, and people know that or they should know that.
Esther: Yeah. And we see it with the AI, and they're actually making video of what appears to be  the president. Or they could do any politician. But right now, the president.
Ruth: Mostly it's being used for joke videos, like them playing D and D or something.
Esther: Yeah, or singing. They have him singing, President Trump, singing. 
Ruth: really just innocent joke videos.
Esther: Again, you could tell sort of that it's fake because the audio is off.
Ruth: It's not perfect.
Esther: Yeah, it's not perfect yet, but eventually it will get there. Somebody said eventually you are not going to be able to tell what's real and what's been created by computers.
Ruth: Look, we've always had that issue even before Photoshop existed. I mean, with information on the internet, just with type, just with words. No pictures, no video. We've always had that issue of is this true? That's why they teach in school now how to verify if something is true or not. Verify your sources.
Esther: How can you verify that a picture is real? She's thinking, folks.
Ruth: That's a little more complicated because it's so new.
Esther: How to know that now? Filters are okay. They don't mind if you want to make them more pretty.
Ruth: I think with videos and pictures, you just kind of have to use your common sense and also look in other areas if this tracks with behavior, past behavior. You've had doctored videos before of like cut clips and all that, things taken out of context and everything.
Esther: Why I gave this the bad bill is because I feel like this could be misinterpreted to include a kid who wants to make a joke video about, let's say Donald Trump or the speaker of the House or the governor or whoever. Well, could this be used against this kid whose not a candidate, and maybe he's not a member of a political committee, but just made a joke video that was funny. And now the  the candidate sees it or the opponent sees it, or, or the person who it's about sees it and makes a complaint. Now the police have got to figure out who made this. Track them down. This person's got to come in for questioning. They're going to want to search the computer. This opens the door to big government  harassing people who just want to make a joke. Or maybe they don't like Trump, let's say, and they want to embarrass him.
Ruth: I mean, people do that all the time. People do that with Joe Biden.  People did it with Hillary  Esther: They did a lot with Joe Biden. How many times did we have that meme where he's falling up the stairs and then down the stairs and then up the stairs?
Ruth: Or Mike pence and the fly that was on his head. That was a meme for a while.
Esther: But that actually happened. If they made the fly talk, that did not happen.
Ruth: People can realize that that flies can't talk.
Esther: This [bill] is so broad. You can get into sticky situations. So I do not like this bill.
Ruth: This is insulting people's intelligence also.
Esther: It is. Yes, I would say that. I mean, it's pretty obvious when you've got a Trump, AI video and he's singing something that that's not actually him.  
Ruth: So this all started with a picture. Somebody edited a picture of this guy next to Nancy Pelosi? Esther: Yeah. And I guess there was wording at the top or something. I'm not sure this is what I have been told. Okay.
Ruth: I feel like if it was just a statement against him trying to just say that these two are practically best friends, and they're too close together in ideals. I'm not sure what the statement was, but [the bill] is kind of skirting against freedom of speech.
Esther: It it does. It skirts against freedom of speech, and now you have to have a disclaimer. All he's asking is you have to have the disclaimer. “This did not happen in reality.” 
Ruth: Any time I see one of those disclaimers, because they have those on some things now, I'm just like, you think I'm stupid. It just annoys me.  Like, no duh, it's a joke.
Esther: Sources tell me that this is not likely to pass in the Senate, but you never know. I've seen  people were not happy about it. They said this was a waste of time and they wanted  them to get to work on property taxes and school vouchers and other stuff.
Ruth: This is small stuff.
Esther: This little bill here was a waste of time and it did not have unanimous support with the Republicans. Specifically, Shelley Luther thought that this was headed down a slippery slope, because if you pass one thing, you make a little hole and then you pass another and another and it's a domino effect. And it's like, well, we have this we're just expanding it a little bit to the next thing and sooner or later  you've got a huge bill that's going to really interfere with your freedom of speech in a big way. This is a little way. Yeah, you can do it but you have to put the disclaimer.
Ruth: I know it's like skirting on the edge, but that's the thing. It's a really fine line. And freedom of speech is supposed to protect the stuff you don't like.
Esther: It's supposed to protect the speech you don't like. And the only way to combat speech you don't like is with speech you do like.
Ruth: Even if it's untrue you know. I know there's a lot of misinformation. There's a lot of lies out there, but people have to be smart enough to not trust everything they see on the internet. I don't trust anything.
Esther: Thomas Jefferson said question everything and that means the internet too. Well we'll move on. If you do not agree with that bill or heck maybe you do reach out to your reps in the Senate and tell them to vote no or yes, depending on your thing. I am a no on that one. And I have a feeling Ruth is too.
Ruth:Yeah.
Esther: So the election. Well. Like most things, some people are very happy with the results, and some people are very depressed today.
Ruth: You have that with every election?
Esther: It was not a good night for the non establishment crowd in Plano. So, Plano politics can be broken down between two sectors the establishment or the old guard and the young kind of rebel crowd, and establishment won overwhelmingly. Not only that, but we have more Democrats now on the city council. That's new. The city council, some would consider it very moderate Republican, now has not one, not two, but three Democrats. If you consider,  Bob Kehr a Democrat. It's depends on how you label him.
Ruth: I think he's independent.
Esther: Well, I would call him an independent personally, but in Texas he'd be called a Democrat because the last primary he voted in, which I believe was 2022, he voted in the Democrat primary. So for many, many years, he voted in Republican primaries, and then all of a sudden he voted in one Democrat primary. Then in 2024 he didn't vote in any primary, Democrat or Republican. So. I would have to call him an independent, but because the last primary he voted in, he voted under the Democrat primary, he's considered a Democrat.
Ruth: I think that's kind of stupid.
Esther: I think you should need at least like two times, two consecutive times to be considered that party. Until they maybe have you register finally as one party or another. And in Texas  that is a bill that's in the legislature now. I have no idea if it's going to get very far.
Esther: Getting to the results. So in place two, this is Anthony seat who I'm going to miss dearly, Bob Kehr won by 55.68% of the vote. Carson and Douglas Reeves got 20 and 23%, so  they made up 43% together. Bob is the one that I was just talking about. He's the independent/Democrat. Christine Downs got 54%. So she won that race. John was unopposed. However, he did get some undervotes. People skipped his race. 5978, to be exact, decided to just skip that race and not vote for him at all. You couldn't write anybody in, so that's kind of the way you protest. Vidal got 53% of the vote and Hayden got 46%. Then place five surprised me. Gary Carry got 42% and Steve Lavine got 57%.  Steve Lavine is the other Democrat. The Republicans are very upset. Their slate, and they had a slate out, lost resoundingly. Steve Levine and his group had a slate and they all won. So it's going to be very rocky,  I'm predicting.  We had four candidates on [the show] we wanted to have everybody, and we interviewed them and they were very gracious.  I was hoping to have everyone on so that they could make their case equally. Everyone was going to have the same questions, and the voter got to decide. The other side decided not to come on. I don't know if that helped or hurt them. I think what helped is the low turnout. If you look at these numbers, about 21,000 people came out to vote. Almost 300,000 people live in Plano. Let's say half of them are children. So let's say 150,000 are adults. That is an abysmal turnout.
Ruth: It always is.
Esther: The fact that local elections affect you more than the president, than the governor, then your congressperson.
Ruth: Yeah. It's really interesting how people during general elections, it's if their candidate doesn't win, it's the end of the world, and they're we're all going to die and it's all going to be a catastrophe. But then local elections, it's all blase and I don't care and don't even know who their mayor is. Even though that's going to affect you way more than anything the federal government is going to do to you.
Esther: Every day you leave your house, you drive on city roads, you go to city parks. Perhaps you go to the city library. You pay city taxes, property taxes. Your sales tax goes to the city and the state. They control your lives much more. They decide whether or not you have to get a permit for something that you need repaired. They decide whether or not something is against the law in your town. All the regulations. And look at all the money they give away to large corporations who move in here. Zoning, zoning changes the face of a town. Anyone who has lived in Plano for more than ten years can see it. If you've lived in Plano for more than 30 years, you see it. How Plano has changed, and it has changed because we used to be Agriculture and now we're changing into a high density city. Plano has become the most dense city in the state of Texas. More dense than Austin and Dallas. That is local.
Ruth: Yeah, the federal government didn't do that. The state government didn't do that. The local government did that.
Esther: They changed the zoning.
Ruth: You may like it. You may hate it, but either way, that's their control.
Esther: They made us more dense, more congested, we need more services. We need more police, more fire which we don't have enough firefighters.
Ruth: We're running out of water.
Esther: We're running out of running out of water. Water is a big thing that locals do. Those that did not come out and vote because they weren't paying attention. Which I don't know how you missed an election. The signs were freaking everywhere, and then at the library, there's a big sign that says vote here.
Ruth: Willful ignorance.
Esther: Right, and I say this, especially in the case of Steve Lavine and Gary Carry's race, there are still more Republicans and Democrats in Plano. That should have been an easy race for Gary to win, but he  lost. His side did not get the message out. Steve Lavine's side did a lot better in what we  say is work it. He outworked the other side in his group.
Ruth: Local elections historically have always had the lowest turnout, and it's really sad to see because then whoever gets picked doesn't reflect the residents.
Esther: You have  21,000 people deciding for almost 300,000 residents. That's not fair.
Ruth: That's not how it's supposed to work. That's not how its was built to work anyway.
Esther: Not at all. Apathy is a real thing, and I don't understand it. I'll tell you this, folks, I have looked into the winners.We don't endorse here, but afterwards, it's another story.
Ruth: She is just going to let it all out.
Esther: I can tell you from what I saw, from what they were saying, and they were saying not a whole lot.
Ruth: Probably strategically so.
Esther: We are going to have a higher tax bill come next year. The budget's going to be bigger. And this group, my prediction, they're going to do whatever the city manager and the staff wants.
Ruth: I don't understand how you would run to be on city council, and then just let other people tell you what to do. What was the point of you running? Why did you want this position?
Esther: People do that who are sitting on council now they're a rubber stamp.
Ruth:  Well, yeah,  I'm also talking about them too.
Esther: They say, “We should trust our staff. They know better”.  Why?
Ruth: Why did you run?
Esther: Trust no one and question everything. Now, the staff could be right. Maybe they are right. I'm not saying that they're wrong all the time. What I am saying is that the city council is the people who hold the purse. They must guard it because that's our money.
Ruth:  Because the city Council is the ones that are voted. The staff is not voted in.
Esther: The City manager is also not voted in.
Ruth: The council is then the voice of the people that is supposed to either agree or disagree with what the staff says. Not just be yes men.
Esther: Do you think that anybody who voted for the other side is now going to be represented? I don't think so. Not with this crew.
Ruth: No, it's completely one sided.
Esther: I know folks who email city council. The only ones who responded  were Anthony and Shelby, no one else.  I've heard this from multiple people. “Oh, Anthony and Shelby got back to me no one else did.”  That's just wrong.
Ruth: Well, okay, devil's advocate here. We don't know how these guys are going to operate. We don't know if they might answer people, we don't know yet. Give them a chance. Being a bit of negative.
Esther: I can tell you, Steve Lavine, ain't taking my phone calls.  He is for public private partnerships. He is going to be for more economic development. He wants the arts center, the visual arts center that we talked about.  He wanted $5 million for it. He is going to push that hard,  and so is Downs, and so is Julie Holmer. They're going to push for that arts center. They are going to want to build a new one when we've got four public schools that are going to be sitting empty. Also he's going to want the city to pay for it. That is a nonstarter here for me. That is a waste of taxpayer money. Do it privately. I'm not hopeful.
Ruth: Clearly not.
Esther: Prove me wrong. Please, please prove me wrong. I challenge you four to prove me wrong. Maybe you will speak to your constituents that didn't vote for you, and believe me, they know who didn't support them. Because its mostly people with “R” after their name.  This is also a bad record for the Republican Party of Collin County, because no one who got endorsed won. The Republican Party of Collin County use to never endorse.
Ruth: Yeah, that's a bad look.
Esther: They started endorsing in local elections even when there were two Republicans competing against each other. And in this race not a one of these folks that they endorsed won in Plano.
Ruth: Yeah, that's bad for them.
Esther: That is very bad for them. It is a bad sign for that party. The Democrats are very happy, because all their folks that they endorsed won.
 Ruth: all the way down the slate.
Esther: Again, I challenge you. I challenge you to prove me wrong, not to raise our taxes. To be good fiscal conservatives with our money. Guard our money. Ask questions. Do not take anybody's word for it. Question everything. Because if you don't, then you're going to prove me right. If they're even listening.
Ruth: Probably not. I'm very pessimistic on that.
Esther: Probably not. But if you are. I challenge you. Prove me wrong. Right now, I'm not hopeful. Good news is, hopefully these two years go by real quick.
Esther: Well, I have good news. Spot was finally adopted.
Ruth:Yay!
Esther: So that means we have a new VID of the week.
Ruth: You always forget to put VID. You always put VIP.
Esther: I put VIP in my notes. Yes I do, and I have to change it to D okay. Very important dog. Well, our new very important dog is named Gemma. Gemma is a friendly dog who is about three years of age. She's very sweet and so playful too. Gemma will make a great companion for you. She was never claimed by her owner and wants a new home. She is an affectionate dog too, and she is at the Plano Animal Shelter. So if you are interested in Gemma please go to our website www.planospoliticalpitbull.com and click on the link Pit bulls for adoption and you can see all about Gemma. She's a very cute dog. She's got very nice pictures.
Ruth: Sounds very sweet too.
Esther: Well, I have some other good news we have finally figured out Rumble!
Ruth: Yay!
Esther: We are on Rumble! So if you go to our website now, we will have a link to Rumble for each episode.
Ruth: I helped her with that.
Esther: She did. I was having problems. I could not figure this out, but we figured it out. Thanks to Ruth over here. So we are now on Rumble for those who prefer Rumble. Please remember to like, share and subscribe and also comment. It helps us with those algorithms folks. That is all the time we have for today. This is Esther
Ruth: and this is Ruth
Esther: for Plano's Political Pit Bull signing off. ​