Jordan Rickards: 00:01 All right. Welcome to conservative opinion.com. This is a video podcast our guest today is uh, it says Melanie Teresa. I know her more has a Melanie Colette who is a, what are, you now, the Executive Director of the New Jersey Federation of Republican women. Is that right Melanie?
Melanie Teresa: 00:20 Yes, you did? I’m sorry. I, you know what, I apologize. I turned the sound down so that when I went to the, I would get like double feedback. I apologize. Yeah.
Jordan Rickards: 00:29 Well you’re gonna need to hear for this. So anyway, I was just introducing you, uh, as the, what is the vice chair of the New Jersey Republicans? The Federation of Republican women. Is that right?
Melanie Teresa: 00:38 First Vice Chair, yes.
Jordan Rickards: 00:39 And you also host your own show Money Talk with Melanie, is that correct?
Melanie Teresa: 00:42 I do indeed. All right.
Jordan Rickards: 00:44 That can be seen on your own, Facebook page gets thousands of viewers and we certainly hope that you’re going to join us a lot more. Oh, Melanie, reason I called you on today is I went on your Facebook page today and uh, of course I’m always on your Facebook page and you’re always on mine. It’s hilarious. But you had something on there and you know, you and I have spoken at length about this since your, your posts. They was simply, can someone explain what this blackness is I’m supposed to be so concerned about now for, for those of you who might be listening to this instead of watching this, uh, Melanie is a lovely African American woman. I don’t think of you as my black friend by the way. I just think of you as my beautiful friend who by the way happens to be single.
Jordan Rickards: 01:26 All thanks for those of you who are care about such things. And also she does date white guys. So that’s good for like 99% of my audience. But this is conservative opinion. Anyway, but Melanie, you know, we’ve, we’ve spoken about this before. Can you just tell some of our viewers, um, what your own personal experiences, especially, you know, you’ve told me before about like how your own family has treated you. It’s almost like when you talked about, you know, coming out as conservative to them and almost runs you. Some stories I hear of like, you know, young gay kids coming out to their path and see those kids. I think they get a lot more acceptance than what you’ve told me you’ve gotten. So you could just share that with our viewers.
Melanie Teresa: 02:07 Well, it’s, I find it very strange that, that there’s even like a coming out process. It’s really weird. The only thing that I, in my twenties I was one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, which is probably the most conservative religion you could ever be a part of. Right? It’s like, you know, Christianity on steroids to maybe, or math or something. Right? It’s an extremely conservative religion. And so, you know, now I’m just involved in politics and my mother said to me that at one point she was having conversations with some family members about my political leanings and she said to them, why are you surprised she was a Jehovah’s Witness when she was 21 this should not be surprising anyone that she’s a raging political conservative. She’s always been pro life. She’s always been, you know, on the super conservative side. But when I really think, to be quite honest, it’s not the latest in Trump’s lap, so to speak, but it got considerably harder when Donald Trump was running, I think because he’s just a lot bigger personality.
Melanie Teresa: 03:20 When I was a Republican, it was, you know, I’ve always been a republican, but me being Republican didn’t bother them as much. But when Donald Trump ran and and me just, you had to make a decision, you had to pick a side when he ran, just because he had such a big personality, he forced you to be public because he was so big personality. And so people were like forcing you and what, and frankly, when Barack Obama ran as a, as a brown person, when Barack Obama ran, you know, you are forced as a brown person to make a decision and people just as, unless you were a Wimp, you know, white people were coming around and pat me on the head and saying, isn’t it wonderful? We’re racist. Right, right, right, right. Wonderful. That you’re going to be a part of history. People were like super presumptuous.
Melanie Teresa: 04:12 And because I have a backbone and I’m a big girl, I would just call them out like, yeah, no, here’s the thing. Not Voting for him. Didn’t vote for him either, either time. Because to me it was a matter of experience and it was a matter. It was really a matter of whether or not he was going to be good at his job. And a matter of principle, I’ve always been pro life. I was not going to vote for somebody who was pro abortion and, and he had only been a senator for six months. And to me it is race was irrelevant. And I know people who were Republicans who voted for him because they just couldn’t give up the opportunity to vote for a black man. And while I kind of, I understand it intellectually, I understand the emotion behind it. Intellectually, I don’t understand the decision intellectually, if that makes any sense. Right. I understand the emotion behind the historical relevance of having a black president. I get that. I don’t understand. When you set that aside, the intellectual decision of making the most powerful person in the world, um, that person, just because he’s black, because you should know better.
Jordan Rickards: 05:31 I understand that the sense of solidarity that people would have. I mean, it was, I mean, I remember, I didn’t know for me there, but I remember going to court the day after he was elected and I saw how happy my black friends were and not just happy, but really overjoyed. And I wasn’t happy about that too. So, you know, I didn’t, I didn’t really have a problem with people voting for him. Um, what I have a problem with is when people sort of suspend their principles in order to defend people, uh, just because they’ve decided this person’s on my side and I’m on that side also. You know what I mean?
Melanie Teresa: 06:03 Well, and, and they, and they truly believed, and this was a problem. My family first started to like shy away from me when I refuse to vote for Barack Obama just because he was black. That was winning. Firms were kind of like kind of pushing me away a little bit. But when the unfriending and stuff really started was when the Trump presidency came around, that’s when they really kind of felt I went off the deep end. That’s when things got hyper emotional and a really legitimately got upset. And like I said, started unfriending me on Facebook, started getting legitimately angry with me.
Jordan Rickards: 06:42 Joan family though, this is your family, we’re talking,
Melanie Teresa: 06:44 Hi Bailey and I and some friends and I really, I’m going to be honest, didn’t understand that because, but they took it really personally as an affront against them and we never really got a chance to discuss it because it was just stuff that I was posting on my Facebook page and in my mind I was going, you know, I have 5,000 friends and I have, you know, this much family, so why are you taking what I’m saying personally? And they took it as I was being inconsiderate of them and I’m like, you guys know that I do all this political stuff you guys. So why would you take it personally? Like I don’t understand. And if you knew what I knew, you guys know that I know more than you politically, like you’re aware of this. Right? Why would you take it personally? Like none of that makes sense to me.
Jordan Rickards: 07:37 You think your experience is unique or do you know other people like that who’ve gone through this?
Melanie Teresa: 07:42 Oh, tons.
Jordan Rickards: 07:43 Yeah. Well you can’t know tons because there aren’t that many black conservatives. Let’s be honest, I was at the, I was at the New Jersey Republican convention in Atlantic City. I went to the African American breakfast. There was four of them. Okay. It was, it was like seriously, you weren’t there, so when you’re not there, you’re missing 20% of our membership.
Melanie Teresa: 08:01 Well that was at the same time many of us were at Seapak. There’s actual, I will say this, there’s actually a lot of us, that’s why I go to places like the, that’s why I go to DC. So off there, because you feel like you would feel like there are not that many of us, but unless you go to places where there are hubs, you would feel like there’s not that many recently. Matter of fact, yes, it depressed release was yesterday I became one of the members of an organization called Product Project 21, oh yeah. Project 21 is a group of black conservatives that’s a, I don’t want to use the word sponsor because that might be the wrong word, but we’re under the umbrella of the National Public Policy, uh, organization. And that’s a bunch of black conservatives that, uh, just do media that’s existed for years.
Melanie Teresa: 08:56 That’s a meets with the White House, uh, fairly often and just does press. Um, and it’s a group of black conservatives and if you go to that page, you’ll see that there’s a ton of us that just do press, but there really are a bunch of us from across the country. And like I said, you’ve been, unless you, um, went to DC fairly often, we’re all of us kind of convene periodically. You would think that there aren’t that many of us. If I stayed in New Jersey all the time, I probably would be balled up in a corner thinking I was alone.
Jordan Rickards: 09:35 It’s not, it sounds like one of these like esoteric support groups. Do you see on Facebook or something like that? Like Jane Austin addicts or something like that. People are like, have these like conventions and they all dress up like characters. The same thing that you guys have. It’s like when you get them all in a room, it seems like a large number.
Melanie Teresa: 09:51 You know, if you go on my Facebook, if you went to my friend’s list, I would say the majority of black folks that you see on my friends list are black conservatives. Yeah. Unless your family,
Jordan Rickards: 10:06 how many of those, how many of those are men who are just trying to hit on you and send you creepy messages?
Melanie Teresa: 10:14 Okay. Okay, that’s fair.
Jordan Rickards: 10:18 We’ll save that for another time by the way, to hilarious that when you move your head, I see a picture of your head behind your head. So it’s like, it’s like picture in picture
Melanie Teresa: 10:27 my head behind my head.
Jordan Rickards: 10:28 So let me ask you this, Melanie. We know that there’s been an allegiance to the Democratic Party for decades now. Really throughout my lifetime. Um, on behalf of the African American community. Is that because they really love with Democrats? Have to offer or is it because Republicans are basically, um, that make no real effort to get the black vote?
Melanie Teresa: 10:48 Um, I think it’s a combination of things. Yeah. Republicans don’t make an effort to get the black vote because they don’t know how. Yeah. Um, and because Republicans don’t make it, and it’s a matter, it is a matter of resources. Right. And what Democrats have done with that is they have parlayed that into a message of Republicans not caring. Right. And really it’s a matter of numbers and it’s very easy to do that. So, you know, what they do is they say, see, Republicans don’t care. They never come here to get your, to get your vote when the real reason is, is why would you go somewhere? It’s Kinda like, you know, planting seeds and never getting any growth. Why would you continue to play a scene somewhere where you don’t get any growth? So Republicans, you know, you’re not going to go knock on doors, knock on doors and places where you’re only gonna get two votes.
Melanie Teresa: 11:45 Yeah. You know what I mean? So, right. Republicans have that problem, so they’re not gonna, you’re not gonna go into that neighborhood and do the work to get boats. And so what Democrats do is they say, you know, see you. They don’t care about it. That’s why I never come here. And then when you do though there they say you’re pandering. You know what I mean? When Donald Trump went into the black church, they said he was pandering, but if he hadn’t gone, they would have said he didn’t care. There isn’t, there’s no way that Republicans can win that. I say that we just keep going. Yeah. And so he shot them up. But it’s a matter of resources.
Jordan Rickards: 12:20 You don’t actually have to go into the community these days. I mean, we have the Internet, you know, we’re able to g o toggle to create videos and, and, and posts and things like that. The problem is our messaging is so poor. I went to, like I said, the Republican New Jersey Republican convention like two weeks ago in Atlantic city, which is, it was a hot mess from the beginning, which first of all is scheduled the same weekend as sea pack, which is scheduled a year in advance. So, you know, someone should be held accountable for that and they’re not. But I’m there the whole time and not once through all these meetings we had, did anybody there once say anything about what they want to do for the poor? I mean, they’ll talk about, well, taxes are too high in New Jersey and this and that, but they never say, you know, we’ve got 100,000, uh, black and Hispanic kids trapped in failing public schools and the Democrats are keeping them there.
Jordan Rickards: 13:08 You know what I mean? They don’t do anything with that. So they make no real effort. You know, their, their whole goal is maybe some day the state will be so bad that will win again because people just give us another chance. But they, it’s the same people over and over again who become leaders because they get elected, but they become elected just by being in a, in basically all white Republican districts. So it’s like a self fulfilling prophecy. So, so there’s absolutely no effort to do anything other than maintain their own little fiefdoms there and win their elections and they couldn’t care less about what’s going on in the cities.
Melanie Teresa: 13:40 And here’s the thing you don’t need to say in my mind, you don’t need to say you don’t need to be racist in order to get that message across. You can just say core and impoverished neighborhoods. You don’t need to say black
Jordan Rickards: 13:58 people know what, that people know what it means.
Melanie Teresa: 14:01 Thank you. You know the thing, and hopefully I’m not, I’m not commandeering the, the, the transition, but you know, talking about the blackness piece of it, you know, people complain about me not wanting to help black communities. I don’t think you need to say black communities if you’re poor and impoverished. I know plenty of white folks that are poor and impoverished and quite frankly, liberals speak victim hood. And so white folks that are foreign impoverished just as much as they do black people.
Jordan Rickards: 14:40 Yeah, I agree with that. I agree. But I also think that it wouldn’t kill Republicans to let black people know that, that they are talking to them. Also, I think they’d like to actually see, you know, a debate, you know, with, with our presidential candidates for example. And have them actually use the word black or African American to let them know, yes, we were actually thinking about you. They were actually concerned with you that you’re American. But we say make America great again. We make it great again for all of us, including you. You know what I mean?
Melanie Teresa: 15:05 How do you do that though, without being demeaning?
Jordan Rickards: 15:10 Well, I don’t think it’s demeaning at all to acknowledge the obvious, which is that there are certain challenges that are, if not entirely, not unique necessarily to the black community, but they are most acute. And in particular, if you look at, um, fatherlessness, we’re three quarters, uh, and, and we can, the three quarters of, of young black kids are born to single mothers, which is a direct consequence of liberals creating a welfare system that kicks back far. Got The households, you know, I can go into any of these cities here. You know, we have, we have de facto segregated schools. Okay. Yeah, we’re poor out. If you’re, listen, if you’re a poor African American kid born in New Jersey, odds are the government’s kicked your father out of the households. Okay. And odds are you’re put into a failing public school when you can go to an elite private school for less money.
Jordan Rickards: 15:56 Right. And I don’t think, I don’t think there’s anything offensive about you saying, listen, we understand, we see what African Americans are going through. It’s unique and by the way, but let’s just say it. No group of people has waited more patiently and longer for their, for their time to shine. Then African Americans, how many time to shine and do well, but at this time, you know, just to have their, they’re a seat at the table. Like, no, I’ll stay where’s now for Democrats and do something for them and what did they do? Accept mismanage every city that they’re put in charge of.
Melanie Teresa: 16:27 Now that point right there, that’s valid. And that’s where, that’s the message that I would hone in on. The part that gets murky for me is the part that says America hasn’t given you a fair shake. They would be fine if they stopped voting democrat. And quite frankly, quite frankly, if a couple of things happen, graduate from high school, right, don’t have kids before you’re married statistically
Jordan Rickards: 17:01 and wait until you’re 25 to get married.
Melanie Teresa: 17:03 Yup. That’s the third. Those things will save you from poverty no matter what color you are. Right. You know what I’m saying? So I agree with you on that, but if you stopped at the Stop Voting Democrat, those things will save you right there.
Jordan Rickards: 17:21 Probably put Republicans also have to give them a choice.
Melanie Teresa: 17:24 Exactly. I agree. I agree with that.
Jordan Rickards: 17:27 I know you, you, you mentioned a graduate from high school. You and I are both teachers. Of course. I just teach the one class in community college. But h w what are you teaching these days?
Melanie Teresa: 17:37 I am two foundations of funny story. Foundations of computer science at stock them. Okay. I’m teaching in high school, um, financial web page design and introduction to computers.
Jordan Rickards: 17:53 Okay. And one of the things that you posted were good transition here to the issue of 16 year olds voting. One of the things you posted about in your page is you wrote many 16 year olds had never even had a job, let alone engage in the political process. Okay. So what is your opinion on 60 and Nancy Pelosi wants 16 year olds to vote? What is your opinion on that? As though I have to guess
Melanie Teresa: 18:13 I was grading over the weekend and I don’t know. And I typically don’t grade over the weekend. And the reason for that, well, there’s a number of reasons. If there’s no textbook example of why socialism is bad. Um, like being a public school teacher because my contract is the same as any other as a teacher who had their feet up all weekend doing nothing. Like most teachers, like you’re stupid if you grade over the weekend. But I was trying to be a good soldier. I took a couple of days off during the week because I was under the weather and I was trying to do what I was supposed to do cause we supposed to update our grade books once a week. But I digress. So I was grading on the weekend like autonomy and just making myself mad and oh my Lord. So, uh, again, a, a, an assignment to I gave them a template, right. Uh, and I posted this on Facebook. If you go back to the weekend, you’ll see a screenshots of what w what I assigned and what was turned at. Okay. Questions that I asked you will laugh yourself. Silly obviously on him posted with the names, but literally I’m getting asked, I was like, you need to do this homie. He’s a 16 year olds.
Jordan Rickards: 19:29 Well No. If I tell the listeners of the template was like something like you had gotten, like there’s an error on your credit report or something and you had to write the letter, a pretend letter to like the credit agency explaining just that there was an error on the report and to please remove it and that was it.
Melanie Teresa: 19:46 Yes. And in each paragraph you were suppose it gave you like what information was supposed to be in the paragraph. Yeah. And then you replaced the paragraph with the information, the fabric.
Jordan Rickards: 19:59 You didn’t even need numbers to know thought you just had to replace it.
Melanie Teresa: 20:02 Wow. Okay. And these kids did everything from answering the questions that were in and I, I explained it verbally, it was another actions and some of these kids did everything but what they were supposed to do, and there were 16 some of them will be out in the world in gym.
Speaker 3: 20:24 Okay.
Melanie Teresa: 20:25 And never mind. Like I explained to them, I said, do you understand the concept of what’s going on here? Somebody has, you has put money there. You did not put on your card. And I’m trying to teach you how to dispute it so that it comes off your credit. [inaudible] why would you not want to know how to do this? Like do you understand what I’m trying to teach you? Yeah. And it was looking at me like I’m the crazy person. And you want this person to learn about,
Jordan Rickards: 20:57 well, I like boating. I like this thing. You put up a another reason I don’t grade on weekends. Ms Colette, I did make it work. And you put this thing here where you’re asking questions. Step one, what’s your goal? The answer. Be a rapper. That too. Uh, when do you want to complete the goal? A good flow. How much money do you want to save? 1 million. How much do you shave? A much. As much as I make. I mean, it just, it just like totally unrealistic things here. Yeah. You can, you cut back on your goal? Yes.
Melanie Teresa: 21:28 He’s 15. So next year. Or you want him to be able to vote? Yeah. Yeah. All right.
Jordan Rickards: 21:35 You know, every, at the big, at the beginning of my semester I teach us history. Um, at the beginning of my semester is I give my kids a diagnostic test. I might have told you this and I tell them it’s so that, you know, I know where they are in history so that I don’t, I know to teach to their level, but really I’m just doing it for my own amusement and edification. And every year I ask, it’s the same things. I asked them questions like, you know, how many stars and stripes are on the American flag and what do they stand for? And half the class can’t get it. You know, 80, like 80% can’t tell you what the three branches of government are. None of them can name their congressmen or know what a congressman is. I write like name a Supreme Court justice. And they were like Chris with Kimbro, Christ Chrissy, which I guess meant Chris Christie or something like that.
Jordan Rickards: 22:17 I don’t think he’s a supreme court justice. And I asked them things like, who was the president during the civil war? I don’t know. When did slavery end? 1960s, you know, who bombed this at Pearl Harbor? You know, just stuff like that and God forbid I give him like a map and ask them to identify Canada. Oh, here’s one that you’d like this. Oh, who invented the light bulb? Well, they can’t get that even though even though the school is located in Edison, New Jersey, it’s like you’ve got a bunch of kids who are completely, I don’t want to say ignorant cuts a mean word, but civically in historically illiterate and the one girl complaints me, you know, if if only a young people were allowed to vote, Hillary Clinton would have been president. Well what does that tell you? You know?
Melanie Teresa: 23:02 Well, you know, you know they call community college 13th grade if that, I was going to call it eighth grade. Like I always wonder to myself as I’m looking at this stuff, I’m like, maybe I’m being me. A matter of fact, I’m going to have a talk with my mother like very soon. I was thinking this. Today I’m going to have a talk with my mother and the next few days because I’m going to ask her was I, that’s super selfish and self center number one. That’s some questions and I needed her to be completely honest. She might say that I maybe was, I was the suspicion, she might say that. Um, I been, and secondly I, I couldn’t have been that dumb cause I know I had like reasonably good. Great cause there’s no way I was that stupid.
Jordan Rickards: 23:54 Well my kids know, my kids think I’m mean because first of all I hand out extra credit quizzes at the beginning of every class. So if you get a zero on this, it doesn’t hurt you. But if you get at least 60%, I give you extra credit for the test. And I’m a mean person because I insist that to take this extra credit quiz, you have to show up on time. Okay. You can’t just kind of walk in, in the middle of class and then, you know, start taking it [inaudible] we’re all moving on and then they’re mad at me because I give multiple choice tests, which I figure is easy. Cause then you can just guess if you don’t know something and they’re like, no, no, we want essay so that we don’t know the right answer. We can just, you know, like filibuster or something and get a few extra like yeah, that’s what I’m going to do. So I’m the main person now for making you know the right answer.
Melanie Teresa: 24:35 This guy came up to me last night and said that, um, this was in college, said that he tried to find the assignment but it had went away because I make them go away when there has to. Yeah, they’re all a blackboard are all online and I was like, well how did that happen? Because I literally put the due date in the line. Like when it’s posted it’s like such and such and such and such due on such and such thing. Like I’m like, I don’t want to say it. I want to happen. I announced when it’s due, it’s in the syllabus. It’s in the post. Like,
Jordan Rickards: 25:17 Oh, I had some kid one time. The first time I saw him was on our first exam. I was like, who is this guy just shows up. He gets a 20 which is basically, you know, one out of five when we have one out of five multiple choices. So, you know, if you just like, guess you should get a 20, he blows off the final and then sends me like an email a week later and asked if he can make it up. And I did the math. I was like, you know, you’d have to get a 280 on the final just to get, just to get a d minus in the class. I’m not going to make it up for you man. I’m sorry.
Melanie Teresa: 25:45 Yeah, I don’t, I mean we live in a world, we’re talking, you’ve got, you’ve got that situation with the college, um, with the parents who pull that big scam to pay to get their kids into school. Is helicopter parenting,
Jordan Rickards: 26:02 do their parents talk to you?
Melanie Teresa: 26:04 Do the parents? I’ve had that happen once at round. I thought it Roland, for four years, I had a parent email me and I completely clown that kid. Like he came in the next day and I said, uh, I said, really? When everybody left us a really, you had your mommy email me about your grade. Are you serious? Yeah. And that was all I said. I just walked away like I’m not even, I like, well I said one of the benefits of teaching college as opposed to beat it. I don’t deal with parents. Right, right. Like what do you,
Jordan Rickards: 26:39 I taught college cause I thought I get to deal with adults. But you know it’s, you’re right, it’s like 13th grade basically. Hey does your school yet, have they caught onto this new thing that other schools are doing called a minimum grade policies where you can’t give a zero anymore or you can’t like give a grade below a 50 no matter how bad it is.
Melanie Teresa: 26:56 That’s why I was about to, oh we have that there. It’s called a grading safety net. I am actually doing my,
Jordan Rickards: 27:01 it’s called, it’s called minimum wage for grades basically.
Melanie Teresa: 27:05 Oh, I’m doing my, my doctoral thesis on how it affects, um, screening students. I’m APP, I have a honor students and aid students. I’m convinced that there is a lawsuit there and I’m going to tell you why because there’s another part to that. First of all, I think there’s, there’s, there’s a couple of legal issues there. Federal law says the teachers are to report accurate grades. That’s a violation of federal law. Right? Okay. That’s number one. The grading safety nets as it depending on your school of Berries. Um, but there’s grading safety nets that say you can’t give a grade for marking period below 55 60. I’ve had kids get thirteens seventh I’m not even kidding and I have to give them 50 fives and 60 remember if you know math, that’s percentage points. You know how many points that is. That’s ridiculous. Okay. So so that they can’t fail for the year. As we all know, money is connected to attrition. You see where I’m going, right? Yeah. Not Failing. You’re keeping that kid and if tax dollars attached to that kid that’s like, that’s racketeering. Like what are you doing? Right?
Jordan Rickards: 28:24 Yeah. And you’re setting the kid up for failure. Sure.
Melanie Teresa: 28:27 Absolutely. You’re setting the kid up for failure. Like to me, that should be handled on a case by case basis. I had a kid one time who had a wall mark in Paris and it is great, just like depth. And so I went to his guidance counselor and I was like, you know, if there’s anything going on, as it turned out, his mom had been diagnosed with cancer and I was like, cool, I’ll let him make the stuff up. No problem. You don’t need a grading safety net for that. All you need is to do is be a teacher just paying attention. Right, right. You know what I’m saying? So it bought us and by the same token, and this is what really ticks me off, they have a ceiling. You can’t have a kid get more than a hundred how about that? So out of school where I had a kid, I had a, uh, I had been one marking period.
Melanie Teresa: 29:15 I had a kid that got I think like a seven and I know the kid that had a 101 and the same marking period. And I’ve got my spreadsheet back and they said, you have to adjust these grades and this kid has to get a 50 and this kid you have to change to a hundred. I was seeding. Do you hear me so mad? I didn’t care about the other kid probably going to fail for the year anyway, but the kid who’s right, right. 1% I had to take away. That made me so because she ironed it. She did like an extra credit assignment that she didn’t have to do. She earned that one percentage point. What if somewhere in some other class she’s struggling and got like a 98 you know what I mean? Totally.
Jordan Rickards: 30:03 Same situation. I had the same stitching student and she, you know, her, her second of three tests was bad and I figured out what was happening and she had to go to some funeral and so I just, yeah, I just, she was a B student. I made sure she got a B was, that’s how he did who during the final exam I see them talking to each other. Right. And of course it’s always, it’s always the, the f students who are cheating off the other f students. Like they don’t even start him to look at the eight students paper. So you’ve got these two morons who, who are cheating off each other. They both fail in both individually but migrate up. I’m like, I shouldn’t zero you guys out. Just be glad I’m not reporting it. You know what I mean? Like if you guys had done well, either zeroed you out. It’s only because you’re going to fail anyway. They don’t care that much, you know? Right.
Melanie Teresa: 30:47 Report you and you don’t end up getting kicked out of school.
Jordan Rickards: 30:50 Yeah, exactly. I had a kid, you know like you know if I think they’re giving good effort, but I had a kid, we had 13 grade assignments. He got straight D’s, I think like a c and he asked if I could bump them to a B. I want you, you know what? What drug are you on right now? You know,
Melanie Teresa: 31:07 smoking too much and I stop rolling because I like this question. This is my favorite all time grading question. What grade? What were my gray B? If I do these two assignments,
Jordan Rickards: 31:26 like magic asking your box that
Melanie Teresa: 31:30 right. I said, do you realize what you’re asking me? I’m like, you’re coming up to me and asking me what’s the least amount of work I could possibly do right in order to pass? I’m like, that’s like a really not an awesome question to ask.
Jordan Rickards: 31:51 Brakes goes to show the kind of judgment that these young people have and it’s obvious that Democrats just want them to vote because they’ve done the math and they know these kids will vote for Democrats. But you talk about bad judgment. I don’t know if you saw this. Um, this article I posted on, uh, on our conservative opinion.com a Facebook page here of like all these kids or people who are no longer kids talking about stupid stuff they did at age 16 and why they should not be allowed to vote. Like they actually tweeted this stuff to Nancy Pelosi. There’s one key rights. When I was 16, my friends and I bought a live lobster, put it on a leash and walk it around the neighborhood at 2:00 AM be allowed to vote. Or when I was 16, I would’ve given anything to be able to have a tattoo of axl Rose’s face on my butt, uh, at 16.
Jordan Rickards: 32:39 And my friends put one of our friends in a hot tub with his permission, tie them up and shot him with a BB gun while he was drenched in hot water. Oh my word. And this is my favorite. My favorite was, well, when I was 16, I got arrested for making dry ice bombs behind an elementary school. Cops then found a video tape in my car, me and my friends putting those light up deer on top of each other to simulate them. Copulating and I was art class. I was our class president. I should not be voting a bunch of kids who don’t know anything and whose brains aren’t fully developed. And we’re going to say, well, you know, that’s, it’s a good idea for them to have equal say with actual adults who have jobs and stuff. And I’ve experienced a real life, you know, it’s, it’s kind of ridiculous.
Melanie Teresa: 33:28 They don’t even want to know. I hadn’t had a budgeting project for them. They were given three sample budgets to analyze. I explaining how to analyze the budgets. In fact, I analyze each budget for them. After I gave them the opportunity to analyze the budgets and they didn’t like what they turned, it absolutely stunk. So the next day I put each budget up on the board and analyze the budgets for them. I showed them what to what was wrong with each budget. I explained the difference between a fixed expense in a variable expense. I explained why they are the possible reasons why they probably spent too much in each area, et Cetera, et cetera. And then they were to develop their own budget. Part of what they needed to do was discover, um, how much they made a month. Okay. With a $30,000 salary minus 25% deduction. Oh, good luck. Right. So you saw a post on my page over the weekend that said, why is it that students cannot remember how to do a percent? I learned it like 30 years ago, but apparently this is a heavy lift percent of 30,000 divided by. Yeah. And then you subtract like what? But apparently that was like real hard, like students out of 12 got it.
Jordan Rickards: 35:09 Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Well I’d say, do you have, do you um, make them write essays or anything? Cause that’s when you really are gonna like give me your grip that you know, hair out of your head. I don’t want to, but my, my, my school, yeah, exactly. My school makes me use and the funny thing is at the beginning of every semester, you know, I’m going through the syllabus and I’ll be like, all right, we have our three tests for extra credit, whatever. And you know, we have a five page paper. Okay. And they all grown and like, listen to me, you guys have to write one paper, I have to read of these things. How do you think I feel? And none of them are college level work. Like in all my, I’ve taught four semesters, so say 120 papers and I’ve read like two that I thought were passively college level maybe. You know what I mean? By which I mean it was basically like writing in complete sentences. I’m not talking about like scholarly work, just you know, just like spell checking and stuff like that, you know?
Melanie Teresa: 35:59 Oh, they turn in work. I’m like, okay. It was in Google docs. There were red lines. Yeah. Those red lines then bothering you. You’re just saying just no, just all over the place. And you were like, so what?
Jordan Rickards: 36:19 I had a student, I had a student write one time on an assignment. She was bombing it and she just writes in, Yo this sad. I’m like, yes. This sad indeed.
Melanie Teresa: 36:32 Did you see the great shot of the kid? The answer you need to call the the, the, the, the, the FTC. Oh, me. Did you see that on your page? This was on an assignment. What do you do if you’re, I did it against all that. You need to call the FTC homie.
Jordan Rickards: 36:50 I like the front. I like the one who brought the kid writes a, uh, Melanie Cola is the best teacher. Psych. He smells Cyprum.
Melanie Teresa: 37:00 Yeah.
Jordan Rickards: 37:03 All right, my friend. Well listen, you’ve done your yeoman’s work for tonight. I really appreciate you coming on. I hope you’ll come on again. I hope you let me call on your money talk thing. I write a lot about financial stuff too, so
Melanie Teresa: 37:14 hey, definitely that’s going to happen, right? That is going to happen.
Jordan Rickards: 37:17 We’ll cross post it. All right, well listen, Melanie Collette from a New Jersey Federation of Republican women, also money talk with Melanie. If you’re not following her page yet, please go follow her page. It’ll make her very happy and she’s a good friend of ours. We want to make her happy. All right, Melanie, thank you so much. Have a great night there.
Melanie Teresa: 37:32 Thank you. So Heidi, thanks for having me. All right, you too. Bye Bye. All right, bye bye.
