Dangerous Heat

**Doug Pike** (0:01)
Remember when it was impossible to misplace the TV remote? Because you were the TV remote? Remember when music sounded like this?
Remember when social media was truly social?

**Doug Pike** (0:17)
Hey John, how's it going today? Good, man.

**Doug Pike** (0:19)
Well, this show is all about you.
This is 50 Plus with Doug Pike. Helpful information on your finances, good health, and what to do for fun.
50 Plus, brought to you by the UT Health Houston Institute on Aging. Informed decisions for a healthier, happier life. And by New Promise Neuropathy. Lose the pain and numbness. Get your life back. newpromiseneuropathy.com. And now, Fifty Plus with Doug Pike.

**Doug Pike** (0:52)
Welcome, one, all, and everybody in between, I guess, to this day's edition of Fifty Plus, the Wednesday edition of the show. I greatly appreciate you all for listening. Thank you, and welcome aboard.
As I talked about yesterday, I'm kind of reframing the front end of this show. I want to get into stuff that really matters in the beginning, rather than just go over a weather forecast and look at the markets, because I don't know that much about the stock market anyway, and I don't want to pretend that I do. So I'm just gonna kind of back off of that. Now, if it's something about gold, and you want to ask me a question, that's fine, ask me that question, I'll take it to Brad Schweiss from over at Houston Gold Exchange, and he'll come up with an answer for us. Other than that, check with your broker, check with your financial manager, whoever that may be, handling however much money you've given to them to take care of your future. But I'm not gonna do that anymore. I think I was kind of, to the very intelligent, the very educated people in this audience on finance, I'm not telling them anything they don't know. And to the people who know less than me, I'm not doing them any good by giving them advice or talking about trends in the markets.
It's kind of like being taught how to play golf by someone who's an 18 handicap. If you're an 18 handicapper and you're teaching how to play golf, the best you can do is teach them how to be an 18 handicap. And not too many people want to be that. So anyway, off to the Supreme Court and its decisions from yesterday.
One of the bigger ones is the rejection of President Trump's bid to restrict birthright citizenship, which I think, I wish it had gone through, I truly do.
It goes against a lot of things historically, and it goes against in the current, in the present, it goes against any hope we have of ever really getting our ducks in a row in this country financially. When you make it enticing, when you make it, when you incentivize somebody getting pregnant, and then in the ninth month, right three days before giving birth, they hop across the border, whether they get here legally or not now based on this decision, they hop in here, they have their baby, that baby becomes a US citizen, and that US citizen is entitled to all the things that everybody gets who needs help. And guess what? Those parents who are coming here on what's called, I think they call it, oh, what do they call it? Citizenship tourism, that's what it is. They come in, they have a baby, and all of a sudden they are entitled to anything and everything that any American citizen is entitled to. The family, not just the baby. And in fairness to the court, although I disagreed with the decision of the majority in the court, in fairness, they did say in their statement about it, in the ruling, that Congress is able to do that anytime they want. They can restrict that birthright citizenship to only people who are lawfully in the country, or to only people who are left-handed, whatever they want to do, if Congress passes it, then it will make it through, and it will be better for this country. But right now, when it's still lawful for anybody, regardless of their status or how they got into the country, they can shimmy over a wall or crawl under a fence, come in here pregnant and two days later have a baby, and you and I are having to pay for that baby and that baby's family. It was a six-to-three ruling, and basically what the court said is that they found that a person's citizenship status isn't dependent on their parents. They're citing the Fourth Amendment, or excuse me, not the Fourth, the Fourteenth Amendment in here, and Judge Roberts, actually, Justice Roberts, wrote that the court's 1898 ruling in a case, spit it out, Doug, in a case named Wong Kim Ark had settled that issue. On the flip side, though, in the dissenting opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Neil Gorsuch, they authored a 91-page dissent, arguing that the majority of the court misinterpreted the Fourteenth Amendment. Clarence Thomas wrote that the Fourteenth doesn't guarantee birthright citizenship to children born to parents who are in the country unlawfully or temporarily. All the way back to 1898, that decision in Wong Kim Ark, and I'll quote Thomas here, quote, Wong Kim Ark addressed only the citizenship of a child born to parents who were lawfully and permanently domiciled in the United States, end quote. How the rest of them didn't see it that way is beyond me, and it's going to cost this country continued millions in this citizenship tourism that's become a hot thing ever since Joe Biden opened up the borders five years ago. Judge Alito put it this way, and I'll quote again, suppose that a person's only connection to this country is that he was born here to a mother who was present just long enough to give birth and then quickly returned to her native country. Suppose that country is a strategic adversary or enemy of the United States. Suppose the child never visited the United States while grown and was inculcated with hatred of this country.