Sure. So my first number one priority to me that's personal to me is our broken uh medical care system. So one of the main reasons my wife and I moved back down here to Texas is to be closer with our father. My father-in-law got stage three cancer. We came down here.
I very quickly begin to realize just how broken our uh our our medical system is, particularly in the fact that Texas is one of the few states in the country that's opted out of the Medicaid expansion program. The Medicaid money was just not there for him. It was also a very difficult hit for him as a retired public school teacher, which is one of the other items I'm very much into supporting our school teachers,
and also our retired school teachers, because I saw how much money he was getting as a retired teacher, and it's it's it's nothing at all. It's it's horrible. And um, of course, another one too is every Texan of course wants is a better infrastructure. Our power grid is failing us, and it's we're having a cold snap just this week, and I believe next
week as well. We all kind of get nervous about the power going out, and uh for good reason have after what we've seen, what happened a couple years ago. So uh supporting our power infrastructure is one of those as well. Oh, absolutely. This is something I had personally have experience with.
So I actually work with NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and they're actually uh subdepartment of the Department of Commerce. So that probably catches some people off guard, but you gotta keep them understanding. What you have to understand about NOAA is our job is to actually make sure that the fishermen don't overfish and kill all of their uh prey.
We need to make sure the environment is there for them to continue their business. Uh, and that's something that we do as a part of the Department of Commerce. So making sure that we only apply regulations when it's absolutely necessary in order for those business businesses to continue to function. It's something that we need another example of something kind
of somewhat off topic, but something we that I believe the government and legislatures need to be careful of is. yes, we absolutely should be giving tax incentives to uh corporations uh in order to pull them in here and stimulate our economy We also need to be careful. One uh one notorious example of this is what Walmart is doing.
So Walmart will typically get uh tax incentives to move to a certain neighborhood in order to stimulate their economy, create jobs, and everything's great for the first couple of years, because usually they're given a tax incentive that expires in a couple of years. Sometimes they will get abuseful in the uh communications process and trying to extend those tax exemptions. Sometimes they just leave and that bombs the local economy,
and sometimes they'll just move somewhere else. Some uh businesses get abusive with this when they demand an extension on tax exemptions, and that can lead to a business having tax exemptions for a much longer period of time than that was initially intended for. So the negotiation between government and businesses when it comes to tax exemptions, which we naturally, of course, should give out in order to pull them into our local community,
is something that we just need to be careful for. So, this is another topic that I care very much about. As I said, my uh father-in-law was a public school teacher, both my grandparents were public math teachers. My mother was actually originally training to be an English teacher, and what we're doing in Texas right now is horrible.
We are detrimentally underfunding our public schools. One of my good friends, I just saw the other day, sorry, day before yesterday. I saw her for the first time in a while, I said, Hey, how's your your your class going? So I want to know the her school situation. She said she told me, No, actually, I I quit my job uh a while ago as a school teacher,
and uh I'm now uh working as a bartenderist. I said, Oh, I'm so sorry. She says, Don't. I make more money now. And I was shocked to hear that. But knowing just how underfunded our schools are, this is what we see. Uh thereh, there's's also this pus for something called the
school voucher program, uh, or a push for what some call school choice. And I would, I would be able to have a conversation about school choice. But if you're gonna have school choice or have a voucher, those vouchers have to be funded by our massive surplus, which we have. Texas is the largest, I'm sorry, it's the ninth largest
economy in the world. We have the money in the bank. If you really want a school voucher program, we can pay for that. But I absolutely refuse to pay for school vouchers by sacrificing public education. We need to support our public schools. And I will refuse to talk about any voucher program
until our public schools are supported. As someone who's not originally from around here, I can tell you that I've seen uh some of the mass transit things that you guys have. Um it's definitely something to be invested in, it's something that can definitely be worked on. Um what I see here is okay, it's not great, it definitely could be better.
Um, I also want to talk about it about roads. I know that probably sounds weird because the roads are actually great on the highway where you get told. Where there's tolls, roads are great. They're phenomenal. But when you go to the neighborhoods, I notice neighborhood by neighborhood things are different. And I think that this is something that we need
to look into and investigate because I tell you, the roads in my local neighborhood, they're pretty good. But I'll be honest, I live in a pretty nice neighborhood. Our neighboring neighborhoods, when I go to my other friend's houses, some of the roads are so bad in their neighborhoods, I almost don't feel comfortable driving on them because I worry about the wheels on my car.
It's very noticeable how different communities and neighborhoods have roads that are supported and not supported, and it's glaring. So it's definitely something to look into and invest in. That's a very good question So you may not believe this or not, but we're about to run out of water. If you don't believe me, let me explain. During the summer, right now, you may notice that we
get messages in the mail or requests to try to conserve on water. We get told, hey, maybe don't bring your sprinkler system every single day. Well, the reason for that is because Texas is a natural desert. In fact, we only have one natural lake here in Texas.
All the other lakes were created by the Army Corps of Engineers who uh irrigated these lakes to exist here in Texas. So, with Texas being a natural desert, and the fact that the Army Corps of Engineers has done a phenomenal job in creating all these other lakes, which is great. However, it's still just not enough. So, one of the problems that we have with lakes
is the amount of surface water that comes in contact with the Texas sun and of course evaporates that water away. We also have a major population boom happening in Texas right now. We have more and more people coming in, so water is something that we definitely need, and we need to uh get more of it and store more of it.
Now, there's a couple of different ways to manage this, but the number one best way is to stop necessarily trying to irrigate more lakes, but create more underwater uh reservoirs to hold on to water where it will not necessarily be contacted by the sun. I understand that creating these uh types of water reservoirs uh that don't come in uh sunlight contact are more expensive than simply irrigating a lake.
Uh irrigating a lake is cheaper, it's faster, and one reason I have a problem with that is because it usually involves imminent domain, which is something I'm not necessarily a fan of. Uh, but the best way to to go about it is to we just need invest in our underground water reservoirs and also reservoirs that do not come in contact with the sun.
That's the best way to store water for our water needs in the future. Yeah, that's a very good question. So there is a very wide stranded deviation of different types of workforces that exist in Senate District 30. Collin County and Denton County happen to be the more populated areas within Senate District 30. The rest of Senate District 30 is all rural farmland.
So first let me talk about the farmers and supporting their workforce. So the farmers actually do want people coming here legally. When I say coming here, I mean legally with certain special visas that allow them to work with the farmers. They depend on this heavily. So supporting that is something that's very important. Another issue that we need to worry about as well
for supporting our workforce is automation and the fact that automation is taking lots of people's jobs away, particularly for those who work in the manufacturing industry or those who work with manual labor. You can't have a career anymore working as a cashier at a grocery store, not as these uh touch screen self-checkout aisles become a thing. So supporting programs that assist people with uh higher education
or getting back into education is something that we definitely need to do because there are people out there who find themselves in situations where they need to switch to a different type of job platform or need to learn more skills in order to jump into a different job market. The best way I believe that the legislature can help those get into the job market and continue to support
innovation in incorporate America is to invest into our education system, invest in a higher education, and make sure that people are ready to get. into a uh a real job in their first job out of college, which is not something that everybody has I know quite a few friends of mine in college, they graduated. Their first job out of college was still working as
a cashier or working somewhere else. I was lucky enough to jump into a corporate job right out of college. My college helped me out with that. They taught me to tell me how to do interviews, uh, etc. And I think that's something that everyone should have. I think that's something that we need to support.
We need to support the higher education system in our country. It's very important. I don't believe in simply being left or right. I think you know the best solution can always be found in the center. I understand that there are some uh very good friends and candidates of mine who will, for example, come out
screaming angrily at the governor, type all sorts of horrible things on social media, but I don't believe that personal attacks are anything that's gonna get us anywhere in this country. Personal attacks is something that may help out a candidate trend on social media, but it's not actually gonna help us in the real world.
