Lance Hillsinger-Protecting Our Children in Foster Care

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Protecting Foster Children -- Note: This is the AI-generated transcript of the interview with Lance Hillsinger. It has NOT been edited.

[00:00:00] Bob Gatty: intergenerational wealth is created for most families by home ownership, thus, and build a better bridge. He offers various low cost, no ideas to increase home ownership, as well as reduce truancy crime and other social ills that so often accompany poverty. While both books are written in an easy to read style, they seek to inform and persuade for common sense change.

[00:00:29] Lance, welcome to the Lean to the Left Podcast. 

[00:00:33] Lance Hillsinger: Thanks for having me. 

[00:00:34] Bob Gatty: Hey, amen. Appreciate it. Glad to have you. I'm told that every year more than 250,000 kids in our foster care placed there by Child Protective Services and the juvenile court. Is this a problem that's worsening? Lance are these numbers increasing?

[00:00:56] Lance Hillsinger: I think a lot has to do with the pandemic. That certainly stressed out a lot of families. It also stressed out the child welfare system. The struggles that had that the system had because foster parents weren't being recruited because of the pandemic was much more difficult to recruit people.

[00:01:15] People were concerned about having a child who's been expos. Covid coming into their homes. But the pandemic really affected the administration of the system there because things had to be done by Zoom and normally they're done in person. As far as general, I think that the system's getting better at identifying which ca serious cases from the not so serious and the criteria.

[00:01:44] For entering Foster home hasn't really changed, but I think we were better at diverting systems. The federal government has given some money that way. But people are still abusing drugs. The vast majority of cases are not because a child's been physically abused, it's because of neglect due to drug abuse.

[00:02:09] So you may. You may have a case where mother is arrested on drug charges and she goes to jail. There's no one to care for the young child. And so that's where we inter intervene. So that's, 

[00:02:24] Bob Gatty: yeah. I was going to ask you what can cause a child to be placed in in foster care? I guess the drug abuse in the family is one of those things, 

[00:02:35] Lance Hillsinger: right?

[00:02:36] Substance abuse is far underway. The biggest reason substance abuse is that leads to neglect, substance use. Abuse. Ah, ok. You have to add them, neglect. Dad's just drinking every night, but there's no neglect. The child's still eating, still going to school. That's not a good environment, but it's not necessarily one that where we would remove a child.

[00:02:56] And of course there could be multiple reasons. There could be drug abuse, there could be domestic violence, there could be mental illness, there could be physical abuse all wrapped up in the one case. But that's somewhat unusual. Let me just quickly go with the California code. The Welfare Institution Code California is under 300.

[00:03:15] Code 300. 300 A is physical abuse. 300 B is neglect. Either. In some sort of intentional or just like person who's abusing drugs and they just are not penny tending to their children. There's a diesel sexual abuse. There's other categories that aren't used very often. There's g that the parents are incarcerated, arrange care.

[00:03:44] There's e which is physical abuse of a child under the age of five. And just for your listen so there's a special category. If you physically abuse a very young child I would get about one, an E case a year. So that gives you a typical year for me as a court worker except for one year. When I did emergency response cases, most of my career was been, all my career has been court cases of one type or another.

[00:04:14] Most of them the initial court hearings. And so those are the categories that that are covered. Yeah. 

[00:04:23] Bob Gatty: Okay. Parents get, or foster parents get paid, right? 

[00:04:28] Lance Hillsinger: Yes. How's that work? It depends on the age of the child and if the child has any kind of special needs. And each county has a, in California it's by.

[00:04:43] Most states, it's at the state level. There are adjusted rates for age and for the degree of special needs. Okay. In San Luis County, we had four special categories. Some counties have had three. I've seen this. I've seen others that have more than that. Some people think that that the foster care system is just simply a way for people to make some extra bucks is, that's the wrong way to look 

[00:05:14] at 

[00:05:14] Lance Hillsinger: it, right?

[00:05:14] Absolutely. The wrong way to look at it. As I point out in my book taking in a foster child from an economic viewpoint for a purely economic viewpoint is a loss, is an economic loss, okay? And there's only so many foster parents have bills like everybody else, and we also have to add that most, slightly more than half the children are placed in foster care with a relative.

[00:05:40] So we tend to, when we hear the word foster care, we tend to think of a foster parent and unrelated, but correct. A child can be placed in foster care with a relative, and the relative can get assistance as well. 

[00:05:50] Bob Gatty: Okay. Yeah. I have a friend in Maryland Who for many years has fostered kids to the point where she finally has adopted one little boy as her own child.

[00:06:12] Do you see this as a common outcome? It's certainly common. Yes, sir. Yes. Roughly half to two thirds of the children. Are returned home, or if you wanna look at one third to a half remain in foster care. Uhhuh. We see as adoption as the most permanent plan for a child. We don't want the kids linger in a ambiguous state for a long time.

[00:06:42] Lance Hillsinger: Relatives very typical or relatives will adopt a child. The grandmother adopting a grandchild is probably the most difficult. Okay. Okay. But we don't want. People who come into foster parenting, we want them to understand the goal is reunification, to provide a home and to help nurture that child's relationship back with the biologic parent, if that biological parent is becomes available to care for the child.

[00:07:16] Okay. In San Luis Vista County, we had special programs, in fact for children that had been drug exposed. And those they were called options for recovery in child welfare. There's all these names and everything, but and those foster parents were specifically, they were paid extra, but they spent a lot more time.

[00:07:38] Not only did the children need extra. But the goal was for the foster mother to help mentor and help in some ways to foster the biological mother. 

[00:07:49] Bob Gatty: Talk to me a little bit about what you did at your career in this 

[00:07:54] Lance Hillsinger: area. I was what the, what was casually called a court worker. Okay. Two thirds of my career.

[00:08:04] As a court worker, I took the initial case to court filed a petition that says, judge, we think such and such code section applies to these parents. And then with that is what we call a California detention report. But in other states it's called an affidavit. The petition in California is filed by the social worker in other states.

[00:08:26] It's filed by an I. And it lays out, like I said the in couple of paragraphs, short paragraphs, judge, this is what we think. We don't say judge, of course we think this is what these things are happening. Then the detention report gives more of the background, the parent's criminal history, the relatives, where the child went to go to school, that kind of thing.

[00:08:48] And what kind of plan we also, we would start. From the very first hearing to include a treatment plan. This is what the parents should start to be doing to get their child back. Some states don't do that, some counties don't do that, but we thought that was important. The next step is the jurisdictional hearing, which is the hearing that says we think these are the facts, and that's very often, but not always combined with a dispositional hearing, which is what we say.

[00:09:18] What do we think to do? Okay, these are the. What do we need to do with those facts? Okay. And so that whole process would typically, the the detention hearing is equivalent to an arraignment hearing in criminal court. So it's held very quickly, 72 business hours. So what was 

[00:09:36] Bob Gatty: your relationship with case workers that were assigned to these kids?

[00:09:39] Lance Hillsinger: I was the caseworker. Oh, you were the caseworker? Yeah, I 

[00:09:42] Bob Gatty: was the caseworker, yeah. Okay. Alright what type of people. Are attracted to this kind of a career. Sometimes you get the image that, that people are more interested in their pushing their papers and filling out their forms and all that kind of thing.

[00:10:13] There's gotta be a hell of a lot more to it than. I like to borrow a line from the Peace Corps. It's the hardest job you'll ever love. Yeah. You know that, that's their tagline and I like to think that's true. Both for social worker, central foster appearance. I think that people come into the position with high hopes and expectations.

[00:10:36] Lance Hillsinger: They get a degree in a master's degree in social work from college. And come in with. Idealism that they're going to help a lot of people, and sometimes the bureaucracy robs some of that. And it is a physically demanding job in the sense that you're working, driving all over the county.

[00:10:58] You're dealing with people who not necessarily want to deal with you. Yeah. I'm sure. 

[00:11:04] Bob Gatty: But they view you as somebody who is a threat to their kids. Sometimes, yeah, but you, I think people would be surprised at how often that there's actually a pretty good relationship between the parent and the social worker.

[00:11:19] Lance Hillsinger: I'm not saying it happens all the time, but I think it's more, and we do sincerely try to make stronger families. That's one of the buzzwords that we have. Okay. Now, Just, if I could go back real quickly. Yeah. So you asked about my career. The two hearings are typically take about five weeks.

[00:11:42] There's in California and other states have other timelines. But the practical matters, it's rebut then after the judge declares the child independent, which is at the disposition hearing, the case can be dismissed. You can dismiss it with the opposite parent. In other words the mother was using drugs and the dad was okay.

[00:12:00] You can take jurisdiction and place the kid with. And close the case, but then you have review hearings at least every six months. 

[00:12:07] Bob Gatty: Okay. What are these judges like? Are they decent people? 

[00:12:13] Lance Hillsinger: I've had the pleasure of working with several different judges. Yeah. Each had a little different temperament. Each looked at the world a little bit differently, but all of 'em, I took their job serious.

[00:12:27] And that's I think the monthly thing. Sometimes I thought judges didn't see things my way. Of course, that's human nature, but I do think that they always listened and they wanted to do the right thing. And I think that they have their Jubal court judges traditionally are at the bottom of the pecking order in the judicial system.

[00:12:48] Sure. They're not looked on as kitty court. Yeah. But I think that there's been a change in that and that judges who don't do jubal court really appreciate the strain that goes through and the life-changing decisions that you can make. Just Okay.

[00:13:11] Bob Gatty: Now talk about a little bit about the in education, the gender disparity. You, you mentioned in some of the preparatory work that you sent me that there's a gender disparity in education. That boys seem to drop out of high school more frequently than girls. And one of the things that I've observed in my years as a social worker was that a lot of it used a very non-professional term.

[00:13:46] Lance Hillsinger: A lot of the men were losers. It's 

[00:13:50] Bob Gatty: What would be a professional term that you would use in place? I'm not 

[00:13:54] Lance Hillsinger: sure what I would know, but very often they were actually more likely not to have graduated high school more than the mother. There's usually disparity and I observed that. And then so when I wrote my second book build a Better Bitch.

[00:14:11] Social policy for the 21st century. I explored that a little bit further. And the dropout rate for boys is substantially higher than girls. And if a girl drops out of high school, she's more likely to get pregnant. And become dependent upon the government for welfare, for assistance at some point.

[00:14:32] The boy who drops out of high school doesn't complete high. He may father a child that he's financially unable to support, right? But his he's also more likely and so is the girl, but much more a boy to drift into criminal behavior. And so his failure to graduate becomes a matter of public safety.

[00:14:52] Okay? So we need to focus on that. And the disparity for by race is substantial. African American girls. Much more likely to graduate high school than African American boys. African women are in college about the same percentage as the general population, but African American men, it's about half.

[00:15:16] Wow. They're, yeah. So that's amazing. 

[00:15:20] Bob Gatty: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Why did you write in place of parent to begin with? Why did you do. I wrote it for three main reasons. One is because the child welfare juvenile court system is confidential, so people don't know about it. They don't, they all sorts of rumors and misconceptions.

[00:15:40] Lance Hillsinger: And so I wanted to write it to educate people about the system. The other thing was I wanted to in inspire people to become foster parents or if not that become casa workers or guardian ad lits, some state they call 'em guardian ad lits. Back with foster parents, the system works better if a foster, if a social worker gas drive 20 minutes to a foster home as opposed to two hours, you've created a much better efficiency.

[00:16:07] Yeah. Just that by alone more foster parents that we have in the system will be a better choice for replacing the child. We don't like to have just a choice between, okay, you're the o you're the only people in town available to take a child of this age and this gender. So we'd like to be able to match kids.

[00:16:25] The type of home that they're in, but there's just not enough foster homes, so I wanted more people to become foster parents. And third, I wanted to change the system. The system has improved since I started. No question about that. But it has also backslid in some ways. I think it's the social workers become much more bureaucrat.

[00:16:45] I was becoming spending much more time, screen time than real FaceTime not Zoom, FaceTime, but real FaceTime. Yeah. Yeah. And that's not good. And that's what I rallied against in my book is that you want social workers who are social workers and not bureaucrats. Yeah. Okay. 

[00:17:05] Bob Gatty: How about building a be or build a better bridge?

[00:17:07] What's its focus and how does it expand beyond in, in place with a 

[00:17:12] Lance Hillsinger: parent? Any, anyone who's been a child welfare, social worker becomes familiar with the larger welfare system. The cache, what used to be called a fdc, it's now called Tan Food Stamps. You become familiar with those programs.

[00:17:26] And you see the limitations of the programs. You understand the rules of those program. And I realized that those programs also, a lot of people Miss Kip. Oh, there's just the people are just sitting on welfare, gathering money and that kind of thing, and they're just lazy. I'm saying there're, I'm not saying there aren't lazy people in the world.

[00:17:47] There're obviously lazy people in the world. Sure. But I wanted to improve that system. For instance you can get a one year exemption from having to work under Welfare to work. Under 10, if you have to work to get welfare, woman has to work 30 hours a week. But you can get an exception if she's in school.

[00:18:08] But the exemption typically is just one year. If you get a job or if you go to school for one year, you really can't get a degree or anything that's gonna give you a job that's gonna allow you to be economically, self-sufficient. It's Pennywise in town, foolish not to let that be two. Okay.

[00:18:27] And so that you can get an AA degree and perhaps with a, hopefully with that aa degree, a woman could get a job that, where she could be economically self-sufficient. The other thing I point out is that the, again, with the men we tend to think of hey, there's the welfare mom. She needs services.

[00:18:48] Her kid needs services or whatever. She needs to get a job. But the out-of-home dad, which is the vast majority of the situation, If he's doing really well. If he's got a decent job, the mother gets child support, there's no welfare. Yeah. If he's just a marginal person, if he is just got a part-time job, sometimes he works, sometimes he doesn't work.

[00:19:09] Sometimes he works minimum wage, sometimes he works under the table. Anything he works at a legitimate job the child support doesn't go to the mom, it goes back to the government. And that sounds. In some ways the right thing to do. Okay. Dad, we're looking to you to help offset the cost of supporting your child.

[00:19:32] But in practice, it drives that father into the underground economy. Okay. And also the mother doesn't see the benefit of that. And she's gonna have a lesser opinion if she were to get child support if the father were. Then she sees the father in a better life. He's not the good for nothing guy.

[00:19:55] And then that's a better relationship. And he's got some investment in being a better father because he sees his child support to his kid on welfare going to his kid, and he has, that's just going to, you're gonna have a better outcome then. So that's one of the things I rally against in the rally four in the book.

[00:20:15] There's other change. For instance, food stamps. Most people think, okay, we we don't want hunger in America. We need some sort of food stamp program. And it was one thing that I found out doing research for my book was that roughly 9% of seniors in America are in food stamps. They're poor in there.

[00:20:37] And when you're a senior beyond your working years and you're poor you're not gonna get a person on poverty. As an adult, as a young adult may break out of poverty. If you're in poverty when you're 65, you're probably gonna live and die in poverty. So this is one of the things I point out, but what food stamps are calculated by income and size of family has always been.

[00:21:01] But if you have teens in a home, particularly a teen boy he eats, anyone will tell you the tea boys eat right course. Sure. And why can't we adjust that to increase the allocation if they're teens in the home? Because this is just, that's gonna be cost effective in the long run.

[00:21:24] Yeah. You're gonna have kids who. Like everybody else, I get a little inable if I skip lunch or I've skipped breakfast. Sure. You got some teen who's not eating and he, somebody rubs him the wrong way. He may react more aggressively than he would otherwise. So that's the other thing.

[00:21:46] So those various changes, I want to get back to your thing about a school is the dropout. What can we do to address the dropout boy's dropout rate? Yeah, one of the things is very simple. It doesn't cost the government anything. Require school districts to post graduation rates or dropout rates however you want, but broken down by gender, you've gotta, one of the things in social work, one of the truisms, is you have to label the problem in order.

[00:22:17] You have to name the problem in order to fix it. So if they just were required to do. That would illustrate because I think that's a surprise to most people. What can we do to encourage boys to graduate? One of the things, it's a minor thing, is change the educational requirements, or not so much change, but like typically you need four years of English to graduate.

[00:22:43] Okay. Typically English classes are literature. Boys fiction, litera. Boys generally don't like fiction, really. A again some of the research I found out 80% of the fiction books sold are bought by women. Really? Yeah. I haven't know that. So if you require non-fiction, a year of non-fiction writing the type of writing that someone's gonna need in a job that will help the graduation rate. It's not a panacea. There isn't one thing that's gonna cure everything. It's just one of those two things post the graduation rate and requiring one of the poor years of English to be non-fiction, those two things aren't gonna help.

[00:23:36] Yeah. It's not gonna cure everything but it's, then that's what I advocate for in the. 

[00:23:42] Bob Gatty: Okay. One of the other things that you advocate for is home ownership saying that it's an important factor in reducing crime. It took me back because it took me aback because if these folks that are in foster care are typically there because of Poverty in the home drug abuse in the home, neglect in the home, and so on and so forth.

[00:24:18] Where does home ownership come into the picture? Very few of the children that enter foster care were came from parents who own their own homes. 

[00:24:31] Ah, okay. And You're advocating that steps need to be taken to help more people own their own home? Is that what you're saying? 

[00:24:45] Lance Hillsinger: Yes. I yes. Home ownership people will say that kids that well for one reason, let me go back and say home ownership allows for inherited wealth.

[00:25:00] At world War ii, there was a GI Bill of Rights that helped millions of men get homes for their families. Sure. One of those, the typical place was Levittown. Levittown was like the town built like almost all with the GI money, GI Bill money. The cost of those homes now is risen about five times the rate of inflation.

[00:25:28] So it's harder and harder for people to afford homes. The cities where home ownership is high, crime rate is low. They're related to education in cities where you have a high education rate and a higher home ownership rate, you have low crime. And so when you have a neighborhoods that are all. Where people aren't invested in having their own homes and where there's a lot of poverty, yes, you're gonna have more crime because people have, are going to gravitate the crime to meet their needs.

[00:26:00] So if we do that and also there's a lot of talk about, okay, we need to have a more equitable world. And let me just imagine that if America was a hundred house. And 50 of those households were homeowners and 50 were renters. Okay. Okay. And let's say everybody has $10,000 in savings each household, but the homeowners also have $10,000 in equity.

[00:26:31] Okay. So two thirds of the wealth in, in our a hundred household America is owned by homeowners. Okay. But. If that equity increases by, say, 10% by $10,000 a year. And it becomes 60% renters, then it's something like 83% of the wealth is owned by homeowners. Okay. So you see how much homeownership helps.

[00:26:58] Create wealth. And concentrates wealth. I'm not saying we should do away with inheritance laws, but this is one of the thing we, in fact, I'm saying we ought to do more to have people have more homes so that there can be inherited wealth. More people can have that. And here in St. Louis Vista, home prices are so ridiculous that more and more are renters, the people, families buying in with children is buying home is relatively rare cuz they can't get that down payment home.

[00:27:27] It's 700, $800,000 for just a typical home. And that's not something that your families with children can typically afford. No, of course not. 

[00:27:41] Bob Gatty: So do you have some specific recommendations that you include in your book for increasing home ownership? I have two. One is that to take the habitat for humanity.

[00:27:55] Lance Hillsinger: Where people help build their own homes. That's, they're a fairly inefficient way. Habitat for Humanities will typically build a few homes at a time. And we all look at Jimmy Carter there when he was pounding nails. All that's very good and very what a great guy he is doing.

[00:28:19] He may not like his politics or may like his politics, but you admire. His dedication to helping people sure. Have the pride of home ownership and the people working there, but that's still a very inefficient way. A a contractor building a hundred homes can build those homes a lot faster than if you have a hundred different people helping build their own homes.

[00:28:42] True. And right. So why not have a system where people can like, earn their down payment by doing community service? Not like the community service you would have a criminal court, but doing some sort of community good. Lot of high schools, one of our local high schools there, missing prep requires students to do so many hours of community service just as part of their graduation.

[00:29:07] And if you earn so many hours, students get recognized. The Mayor's Award and that kind of thing we could do that. So it's e it's not. Cumbersome bureaucratically as you think it might be, and have people say, okay, you do so many thousands of hours, we're gonna help you with your down payment.

[00:29:25] Because even if the FHA program where you get 5% 5% of a $500,000 home is $25,000. It's really hard for a lot of people to save that. Exactly. 

[00:29:41] Bob Gatty: Exactly. 

[00:29:43] Lance Hillsinger: And the other thing is to help have workforce housing. That's the big phrase here. We had a little mini scandal locally. The superintendent of schools got a kind of a home equity through the school district.

[00:30:03] Okay. To help him with his mortgage. Okay. I'm all for that. If everybody get. Not just the superintendent, but the teachers and the custodians and everybody else should be able to have something where I see a vision where okay, you $600,000 home, you can't afford that as a teacher, but you might be able to earn a $300,000 home.

[00:30:27] Let's let the government take half interest. And when the home sells for 800,000 some way, then the people split 50. And also give tax corporations tax breaks for companies that provide them employee owned housing so that people can have that inherited. The, all those tech companies in San Francisco, there's all these stories about young people making six figure salaries, living in like a co-op setting, living in And that's not good for society.

[00:31:03] Yeah. That might be fun if you're 25. Yeah. If you're 35 and you wanna have kids you can't live in 

[00:31:09] Bob Gatty: a co-op setting. And just to, for instance, the public assistance for subsidized housing in San Francisco, the income limit is over a hundred thousand dollars. What? Yeah.

[00:31:24] Lance Hillsinger: Yeah. The housing is that expensive that you could still qualify for, subsidized as. And if you make a hundred thousand dollars, your household income's a hundred thousand dollars in San Francisco. Holy miracle. Really? Yeah. It's adjusted locally but, so we really need to do something.

[00:31:42] And one of the things I wanna point out in the book, and it's not talked a lot, is maybe not very liberal idea, but women who have college degrees have a negative birth rate. They tend to have, just on average, a little less than two children per. Okay. A woman who's a high school graduate, her birth rate is more like three that creates more poverty.

[00:32:06] She's more likely to be on poverty to begin with. And if you're in poverty or you're children born in poverty are more likely to stay in poverty. So we really have a demographic issue here that we have to encourage people to be to have, be able to support their children without government assistance.

[00:32:23] And how you do that constitutionally that's a big challenge, but, I do think that you can give financial in incentives to people to say, Hey why don't you, if you're not making over X number of dollars, here's, instead of giving you a tax credit, if you have a child, here's a tax credit for staying childless because you're under 25 and you don't and you don't have children.

[00:32:51] Bob Gatty: Have you Reached out to any legislators to try to generate support for some of these ideas that you have. I've reached out, 

[00:33:07] Lance Hillsinger: but you have to be a organization. Your local representative will assist you if you have a constituent issue. If you have some.

[00:33:19] But if you're just one person with an idea, it's really hard to get politicians to listen to you, unless if you. Backed by some 

[00:33:26] Bob Gatty: organizations. You've got you've got these two books. You've got this expertise that you built up over a whole career. I like to think that, 

[00:33:37] it seems to me like, like you would be a valuable resource 

[00:33:41] Lance Hillsinger: for I, if they wanna listen, I'll certainly talk, but yeah.

[00:33:47] Bob Gatty: You know what maybe we can send him a copy of a link to. Interview here and Yeah. Yeah, I worked on Capitol Hill for seven years early in my career. And you're right, consi constituent service is certainly a big part of their job. They do it for a number of reasons, not the least of which is to generate support for the next election.

[00:34:16] Because in the House of Representatives, people will run it every two years. So they're really always running, always raising their money. And always trying to come up with a story as to why they need to be reelected. Seems to me that you've got a lot to say and that some of these folks ought to be listening.

[00:34:37] And your ideas are not, are not necessarily what I would say, either liberal or conservative. They're just. Smart ideas. 

[00:34:49] Lance Hillsinger: Thank you. Yeah. As I said in the preference of my book neither conservatives nor liberals happen a monopoly or on good or bad ideas. That's 

[00:34:59] Bob Gatty: true. Absolutely true. Even people that Lean to the left don't always have.

[00:35:06] Okay. What else did I want to ask you? Talk to me about this third book that you've got in the works. It's something completely different. I The emphasis, I think, is on fathers. I I had a good father. I've seen men in my caseload become better fathers. And so this book is beyond Amelia Lesser Known Women of History, but it talks about the the men in their lives very often.

[00:35:45] Lance Hillsinger: These were their fathers, not always. But the men who helped women succeed. We've all heard the reason this says Beyond Amelia, it's beyond Amelia Earhart. Everybody heard Amelia Earhart, but anybody heard of her husband, George Putman? No, George Putnam. But here he helped bankroll his wife to fly around the world with another man.

[00:36:07] Maybe George needs a little credit, yeah, he, that's true. Hadn't thought about that. Okay. So working people, huh? 

[00:36:18] I'm sorry, go ahead. So that's the theme of the book is in, in various ways there's adventure, venturesome, women spies entrepreneurs. It's classified by categories, and I try to cover different culture.

[00:36:38] The most powerful pirate of all times was ying saying, oh, ying saying yes. Ow. Excuse me if I mispronounce it. She commanded an armada that's dwarfed the size of the Spanish armada. She commanded and that her stepson of her leading the armada when her husband died.

[00:37:04] Okay. 

[00:37:05] Bob Gatty: So do we have anything else we need to cover in this little conversation? 

[00:37:11] Lance Hillsinger: No I just appreciate the time you've taken with me. It goes by so quickly. 

[00:37:16] Bob Gatty: It does. And but before we go you need to tell us where people, I presume people can find your books on Amazon anywhere else. Bilderberg Bridge is available on Amazon Barnes and Noble.

[00:37:31] Lance Hillsinger: It's been on Walmart. It's Google Books. Okay. Bilderberg Bridge is just exclusively on Amazon. Okay. 

[00:37:39] Bob Gatty: All right. And when will your new book, your third 

[00:37:43] Lance Hillsinger: book be out? I'm hoping for the Christmas book buying season. All 

[00:37:49] Bob Gatty: right. That's my goal. Okay. All right. So you're hard at work at it now, 

[00:37:53] Lance Hillsinger: right?

[00:37:54] I've just turned it into my publisher just this week. Do some editing and sure. There's, it always takes longer than you anticipate. 

[00:38:04] Bob Gatty: Sure. Yeah. So who's your publisher?

[00:38:07] Lance Hillsinger: Paper Gold Publishing. All 

[00:38:10] Bob Gatty: righty. Okay. I thank you very much, Lance, for taking the time with us. Lean to the left.

[00:38:16] It's been fun talking to you and enjoyable informative. I think people who care about kids and about the way families are today who care about social policy. Need to pay attention to what you're talking about here. I think some of your ideas, frankly, to I improve home ownership they're a little bit they're certainly different.

[00:38:47] But you know what? There's the old saying, if you keep doing things the same old way you'll never get a different result. And it's time for us to take a look, I think, at social policy and come up with some innovative ideas and see what else we can do to make things better for folks.

[00:39:08] Lance Hillsinger: So if people have any questions, they can contact me@lanceholsinger.net. Okay. But I appreciate the time and I appreciate your kind. Okay, 

[00:39:18] Bob Gatty: my friend. Hang on a second. Okay.