Censored, Cut, Cancelled, Courageous – Flags Still Fly For Freedom – with James Staake – [Ep. 218]

Linda J Hansen: Welcome. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Prosperity 101® Breakroom Economics Podcast. My name is Linda J. Hansen, your host and the author of Prosperity 101® Job Security Through Business Prosperity: The Essential Guide to Understanding How Policy Affects Your Paycheck, and the creator of the Breakroom Economics online course.

The book, the course, and the entire podcast library can be found on Prosperity101.com. I seek to connect boardroom to break room and policy to paycheck by empowering and encouraging employers to educate employees about the public policy issues that affect their jobs. 

My goal is to help people understand the foundations of prosperity, the policies of prosperity, and how to protect their prosperity by becoming informed, involved, and impactful. I believe this will lead to greater employee loyalty, engagement, and retention, and to an increased awareness of the blessings and responsibilities of living in a free society. Listen each week to hear from exciting guests and be sure to visit Prosperity101.com. 

Thank you so much for joining with me today. I have another repeat guest today. Someone that I know is an audience favorite because he's so inspirational and you'll love this episode and his updates. So, before I introduce our guest, I just want to remind you all to go to our website, prosperity101.com. We'd really appreciate it. If you'd become a Prosperity Partner and support this podcast in any way you feel led, just visit the Prosperity Partner link on the website.

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If you are a regular listener, you know that I have had James Staake on before. His story of being canceled, not one, but two, but three ways and then more is one that tugs at all of our hearts. And I know that you will love hearing the updates of this cancel culture warrior. So, they picked the wrong person when they decided to cancel James Staake and we can all thank him for fighting for freedom for all of us.

So, James. Thank you so much for coming back to the podcast and for being our friend. But also, being a warrior for freedom for all of us. So, thank you. 

James Staake: Oh, my pleasure. We don't have a whole lot of choice in it. We got to do this. 

Linda J Hansen: Well, we do, you know, we all have to do it. And it seems God has called you and your wife to stand up to tyranny in more ways than one.

And instead of rolling over and becoming silent or running scared, you decided to fight. So, for those who have maybe not heard our previous episodes or don't really know your story, let's just give them a brief update of how you and your wife had this beautiful business that started with an idea from your son. You were building these custom flags and, you know, so just give the listeners a brief update into how it all began and what happened that caused you to become a canceled culture warrior. 

James Staake: Okay. As you mentioned, it started with my son who was 6 years old at the time. So, this was about seven years ago, almost seven years ago, where we were having a family event. Some friends came over. We were watching a sporting event. And my son said that he had a business idea. 

We thought that he would be talking about like a paper route or you know, a lemonade stand or something like that, but we live in a very rural area. So, neither one of those two businesses would really work too good with him. So, we were shocked when he said that he wanted to use my tools to make wood American flags and have his mom who's an artist, put artwork on. 

It kind of took me and my friends back for a minute to kind of really think about what he said. And so, we say, well, what kind of artwork are you talking about? And he said, well, let's put George Washington and Abraham Lincoln on it. And all of us were like, wow, that's a really good idea being that, you know, I'm in California at this time. We had, this is prior to us moving to Tennessee, and California in construction, you can get held up for a month on a permit. So, you're literally just sitting there doing nothing while you're waiting for your permit to come in.

And, during that time, rather than sitting around doing nothing, my son thought that I'd be better served by making these flags and developing a second income in those, in that downtime. So, the next morning, my wife and I were thinking about doing it. Max comes in the room, very excited, wants to start his new business.

We'd kind of been like, well, yeah, we said, okay, but we didn't have the money to go buy material and, you know, build a website and everything. And the answer was no, we didn't. We were in California where, you know, everyone looks like they're rich, but everyone is broke and going into debt. So, what we did have was a 50 gift card to Home Depot that my in-laws had given us for Christmas that year.

So, we took that 50 gift card. We went to Home Depot, we bought some wood, we bought some paint, and some screws, and took my son's idea and ran with it. We made our first flag that weekend, put it on to social media, took some pictures, just kind of as a father and son project and kind of put it out there as, hey, wouldn't this be a cool business?

So, a few of our friends thought it was, and they supported us and bought it. Then we gave them their flags. They took pictures of it, shared on social media. A few of their friends bought it and that kept on happening for several months. After that we realized, okay, we're about a hundred flags in, and we're only four months, five months into this.

We need to decide, do we really want to do this as a business? Do we want to advertise? Do we want to like go out to shows and maybe sell it at rodeos? What do we want to do with this? So, we came up with a three-month game plan. We executed that game plan. The business just started growing up. In that short period of time, we'd got on local news in San Diego where our son, Max stole the show and, gave a great interview on how he gave his idea was not camera shy at all.

So, at maybe about seven or eight months into it, my wife and I then had a second pretty tough choice. Do we saw that this business did have potential, a lot of potential, but we were pretty, I mean, I had been working at my job for 20 years.

My wife had been at her job for 15 years. Do we leave both of those for our 6-year-old son? Luckily, we chose yes. So, we did that. We started traveling around the country. We built our own sales booth out of wood, and it complimented our flag. So, we'd go to like a rodeo or a country music concert, or even a gun show.

And we'd set up our booth, hang up our flags on it, sell to the public. Interact with the public. Most of our designs came from the public's coming to us in our booths saying, hey, did you, have you ever thought about doing a flag like this or like that? So, we get about a year into it. We're now out of debt.

We're saving a little bit of money and we're thinking we got to get ourselves out of California. We're tired of like getting yelled at a lot of times. When we go to the booths that we'd set up in California, there'd be some nut job to come up and yell at us and tell us how terrible America is and that we should be ashamed of it.

So, we got tired of that. And we started looking to move. We did, we found a home in Tennessee. The business was doing so well, that we decided to move right around that time is when COVID hit, which really hurt our ability to buy a home. So, we reinvented ourselves online, with social media by putting ads out.

The business actually grew more at that point because now we weren't traveling around the country for three or four days a week, or sometimes even more. And then coming home, making flags. Seeing them out and then going back out on the road again, which was a pretty rough grind for, you know, about a year and a half or so.

So COVID really meant that we just had to lock down at home like everybody else and we could run ads, but being at home and our shop was at home, that allowed us more time to just make the flag. So, our business actually grew in COVID. Which, that for about 6 months of doing that, we were able to put together documentation, get ourselves out of California, by our first home in Tennessee in Harriman.

And, we were literally living the American dream off of our son's idea and a 50 gift card. It was four months after we got here that, you know, literally kind of fully engulfed in the American dream. Really just kind of wondering, you know, really counting our blessings, just really in awe of what had happened to us in the last couple of years to be able to build a business and have it take off and buy a home and move out of California and find this our dream home here.

So, when sales stopped and not, they didn't slow down, they just stopped. I was kind of, you know, still on cloud 9 and couldn't believe it and ignored it for about a week. Oh, things will pick up. It's just a bad week. By the second week, I'm starting to really wonder what's going on by the third week, I'm starting to get scared and starting to research it.

And in that week, I found out that Facebook, where we were placing our ads had suspended our ads, saying that our products went against their community standards. And in doing that, I also found out that Shopify, who we had built our website with and who was hosting it at the time had pulled off our best-selling flag saying both companies saying the exact same thing that our products did not go along with their community standards.

So, we had to either stop selling our best-selling flags, which by the way, our best-selling flags are police officer flags. fireman flags, military flags, Christian theme flags, and of course, the Donald Trump flag. So, when I looked into everything that happened, I was trying to find out what was the source of all of this.

And it turned out that it was indeed our Trump flag. What happened was that we did not have, we did, this wasn't, this was just like all the rest of the flags. We have a customer who says, “Hey, would you make this flag?” We said, sure. It wasn't a flag that was on our website at that time. It is now, but at that time it was not.

So, we had a customer call to say, “Would you make a flag with Donald Trump on it?” Sure. You know, it's not in bad taste or anything like that. So, we did. That customer loved his flag, took a picture of it in his home, put it on to social media and tagged us in that picture. And that's where it all started.

Facebook then identified us as some kind of, you know, terrorist organization or something, I think is one of how one of the representatives put it, because we supported Trump. So now this was, also coincided about two or three weeks after the January 6 incident. So, everything was at a heightened sense of easiness.

And, so that really was, I think kind of the perfect storm why we got canceled. We tried to cut a contact Meta. They were no help at all. It's very, very difficult to even get a human being on the phone with them. We tried to contact Shopify. That was even worse. There's nobody there to talk to. So, we were pretty much dead in the water.

I searched as hard as I could to try to find a solution for new advertising. But during COVID, during, after January 6, everybody's very, very scared about being canceled and having their business affected. So, they didn't want to be associated with a business that was already canceled and fear of it would get canceled.

So, at that point now we're about a month into being canceled and I'm starting to get my hands on exactly what did happen and, what we really found out was that we were probably just going to go out of business that there was really almost nothing we could do. These big tech companies, when they're done with you, there's done with you.

There's no laws. There's no rules. There's no any, there's nothing that there's no recourse for a person to go to and say, “Hey, I'm being discriminated against.” Why are you being discriminated? Well, first of all, they're not even gonna ask you that question because there's nobody to call to talk to about this because there are no laws regarding, who, PayPal or who Facebook can or does not have to do business with or, or how they can exclude people from doing, business with them.

So, I didn't, we were basically dead in the water. So at that point, I read, I did a social media post and after that social media post on LinkedIn, I basically was feeling our business is done. There's nothing we can do. Nobody will touch us. We don't have enough money to do a TV ad or anything like that on Fox News, which probably would have taken our ad, I'm sure, or Newsmax, but we didn't have the money to do something like that at this point.

So, I left the shop here, which is about a hundred yards away from our house. This was about 10 o'clock at night after, you know, weeks of me trying to find a solution and that day was kind of the culmination of all of that work realizing that there was nothing we could do. We're probably gonna go out of business and lose our home.

All the bills are stacking up and we're late on everything. So, I leave the shop. I go up to the house. My wife is in bed, crying, which my wife doesn't do. She's, you know, a tough cookie. I've only seen her cry a couple of times in 20 years with her, but she was in bed crying. I asked her to get out of bed and to come to the foot of our bed where we got on our knees together and prayed as a couple for the very first time in our marriage.

We prayed more times than I could count privately, but it was always something just done very privately with us. So, this was the first time that we actually got on our knees and talked to God together. And what we asked was for God, just to show us what he wanted, where he wanted us to walk. If he showed us where he wanted us to walk, we'll walk it.

We won't complain. We love the light that he's given us. We don't want to lose it. Just how, where do you want us to be? If part of that means that we're going to lose everything. Okay, that's fine. But just show us so that we're confident. That we are where you want us to be, and then we'll be okay, So.

Linda J Hansen: I just want to hop in and just say, that's really a beautiful prayer to pray for all of us, you know, we don't really know where that will lead.

But if we are in God's will and we're listening to him, that is the best place to be. So, listeners, you know, keep listening because you'll find out how God has directed them, but there may be things in your life as you're listening to this, you're thinking, “Wow, could I actually pray that prayer?” And yes, you can pray that prayer.

And you don't always know where it will lead. Things didn't get fixed right away for you. I know that PayPal then came into the picture as well. And it seemed to, you know, things got worse before they got better. So, we have in the time we have left, can you explain, what PayPal did? And then also how you're fighting back and what's happening in the Tennessee legislature because of your story. 

James Staake: Yeah. So, that night, we went to bed pretty defeated, but something about that prayer made us kind of both just kind of, we slept that night for the first night in about four or five weeks, we actually slept.

We woke up that next morning. So, this was about 10:30 at night that this prayer happened, 7:30 in the morning, the next morning, I get a call from a producer from Newsmax who saw my post on LinkedIn. I didn't even know that he was following me. I didn't know that he could see my post, but apparently, you know, God works in mysterious ways.

So, I put that post out there and he saw it. He said, and this is the most interesting part of this was that when we said our prayer, we said we would, if He just showed us a path to walk, we will walk His path until the end. And we won't question it. When his producer called me, he said, “Oh, my God.” He said, “You know, let me know more about your story. Send me some screenshots of everything.”

He got all the things. He learned that, you know, this wasn't just a one-off thing. This was a pretty deep attack. So, he said, “James, this is an amazing story. We're going to have you on the news tonight. And as your story develops, we're hoping that some exposure is going to make some changes for you. And as it develops, we want you to come back on and tell your story and Newsmax will be here with you until the end.”

And when he said, “We'll be here with you until the end.” I'm thinking, that's exactly what we asked for. We asked for God to show us the path that when we'll walk it till the end. So, and Newsmax has done exactly that they have been with us every single time.

Our story has a change. This is the interesting thing because when we said that prayer, you know, okay, so, what does that mean at that time? That means at that moment, what we were looking for is go on TV, get some sales. Everything will be solved. What we didn't understand was that, okay, then there'd be another hurdle.

Then there'd be another hurdle and there'd be another hurdle. And every single time one of these hurdles happened, God sent some other new person into our life that helped us get past that next one. For example, when we went on the news, that time we got a bunch of sales. Great. Now we have money again, so we can start doing our business and grow.

But the next morning, PayPal held every single cent of that money, about 111,000. They put it on hold when we called them and asked them what's going on. They said, “We feel you have a shady business. And you're not going to be in business very much longer. So, we're holding the money.” I said, Okay, well, if I put all these orders out, what happens? Meaning if I satisfy every single order, what happens?

“Well, at that point, we'll reevaluate your situation in 6 months and let you know what we come up with.” So, at that point, Harmeet Dhillon was watching my Newsmax thing. Harmeet Dhillon calls me and says, “Hey.” So in in the same moment of being on TV, that problem was solved. No advertising. That problem was solved.

A new problem came about with PayPal, then holding all the money that was solving our immediate problems. But then Harmeet Dhillon came in and was going to fight PayPal for us to get our money back. So as soon as the devil kind of came in and said, “No, we're going to take this from you,” God also provided Harmeet Dhillon to come into our life and to be our legal counsel and would get us our money back. 

So, we did end up getting all of our orders out. We got everything taken care of PayPal, then re-evaluated it in 6 months. They said, “No, we're still not going to give you your money back.” They dragged it out for 10 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days, at which time they contacted Harmeet and said, “Okay, we're sick of him going on the news and talking about us. We'll give him his money back, but he needs to sign a non-disclosure agreement for him to get that money back on.”

That's, to me, what I heard was that I was being extorted with my own money. So, I told him, “No, I was not going to give, I was not going to do that. I wasn't going to. I'm not going to sign anything.”

Then the next, I posted that happening on the LinkedIn. Then Sean Duffy from Fox News saw that post and he says, “Hey, would you like to come onto my wife's show tomorrow morning on Fox & Friends and tell them how PayPal is doing this to you?” Well, of course, I would. 

So now we're 11, almost 11 months in 10 months, 3 weeks, 3 days into this. And I'm learning that PayPal doesn't do anything from Thursday to Monday. If they're going to do anything with you and the lawyers, it happens Tuesday, Wednesday, maybe Thursday, but usually that's it. It's like a bank. Nothing happens on the weekend. So, I go on to Fox & Friends with Rachel Campos-Duffy on Sunday and tell, and basically out PayPal for holding our money for almost a year, running up on a year, and 5 hours after that interview, PayPal gave us our money back.

So, at every single time that we have something, God throws someone else in with it, Harmeet, Sean Duffy, Christopher Stevens at Newsmax with all these different amazing people, they come in like angels and they solve little problems. Then, we have our money back. We have means of advertising. Newsmax is a great partner.

We're kind of making our name for ourselves nationally and being able to fight and sell flags as, you know, a family that was canceled for making American flags. So, at that point, we're getting on TV regularly and things start dying down. 

And then a local congressman sees us on TV and says, “I want to come over. I want to learn more about your story.” He comes over. His name is Representative Monty Fritts. And he is shocked on what's happening and says, “It's not right. We're going to draft a law that's going to make this illegal for people to do this to company, or I'm sorry, going to make it illegal for banking institutions to do this to companies in Tennessee.”

So that's kind of where we are now. We went to Tennessee and gave our testimony in February of this year. That morning when, or the day, the week before we had the votes to get our bill passed into law, what happened was that PayPal sent lobbyists to Nashville, derailed our bill. So when we got to, Nashville, our bill was basically dead.

Monty just said, “James, go tell the truth, tell the story, let the chips fall where they may. God has brought you this far. Let's see what else he has in store for us.” So, I gave my testimony afterwards. We got all of our support back. Except the several of the Democrats that were opposing the bill actually were calling that they wanted to see more teeth in it.

They wanted penalties. They want to know how many people PayPal has done this to, how much money that they've held, how long they held it, and how much money that they've made off holding people's money. And they want to launch a congressional inquiry into that. So now we have Republicans on our side.

We have Democrats on our side. Everyone is United and it looks like our bill will pass here in Tennessee. So, what's the next stage would be, we need to get other states involved because it, helping us in Tennessee is great for us in Tennessee, but it doesn't help those other people out there in the country that have small businesses that, you know, are selling Christian products or products that specialize in law enforcement or firefighting or military or Christian. 

So, we need other senators and congressmen to adopt this law so that then it can become a national law and that, you know, people can actually run their businesses without having big tech come in and dictate to them what they can sell. You know, they're not a business partner of any kind to us. They're a service. They need to stick into that. 

So that's basically our entire story, where we are today. Today, we're basically just advocating for legislation, nationwide legislation, that would end cancel culture. And, one last thing I'd like to say about that is that, if PayPal and Facebook, and Shopify would have left us alone, this was 3 years ago. So, this would have been at year 4 for us being in business. Statistically, 70 percent of businesses go out of business in the first 7 years. 

So statistically, we would have probably gone out of business by ourselves had they just left us alone, but because they didn't leave us alone and we were able to get on the news and we were able to fight back and make some progress in doing that, they've kind of created a situation where, one other part that came in is on TV, we met our business partner who came in and basically said, “You're not going to fail for them holding your money. You're not going to fail because if you fail, it's going to, because it's a bad business.”

But he brought in the money, 40 years of business experience, all kinds of resources, and just said, “Look, we're going to build this business bigger than you ever dreamed.” And that's what he's doing with us now. So had they just left us alone, we probably would have gone out of business. 

So that would be some advice of mine to these big tech companies, leave companies alone. Chances are, if you don't like them, they're going to go out at, 70 percent of the time, they're going to go out of business.

Now, what people don't know is that when a family business goes out, a business about 60 percent of the time, that family ends up breaking up and those kids end up coming from a home that has a divorce in it. Mom and dad might have some anxiety towards each other, some animosity to each other. The kids get started caught in between and they are the ones that suffer. 

So, in that, and this is what my testimony was about in Congress, was that cancel culture is not, it should not be looked at as some kind of war against the American entrepreneur or small business. It should be looked at as a war against the American family because breaking up and bankrupting these businesses leads to these families getting divorce. And they're breaking up homes. 

So, I think that if we started focusing on cancel culture is really harming the American family, I think more people would understand that this is just something that we just can't stand for as a society. And as a culture, we have to, you know, it's hard enough to go into business for yourself. It's hard enough to stay in the business. 

We don't need to be stacking the deck against anybody or any group of people. If you have a crappy business or a crappy product, let the market cancel them. It works. It's been working for a hundred years. Just let that market work. It already works.

Now, if the company has a good product and they have a good way of getting it out there, let them just stay in business. You know, it's wanted. So, I think that's kind of my message is that, if you don't like something, just ignore them. They'll probably go out of business. If you don't like a certain business, chances are other people don't like them.

And if you just give them enough space or what's that saying, if you give them enough rope, they're going to hang themselves, just let them do it themselves. And we don't need people out there putting their hands on the scale. 

Linda J Hansen: You bring up such a good point about how it hurts families.

And I think that's one of the things I try to bring up all the time with what I do with Prosperity 101® is that all of these issues that we see, all of the policies that happen in a local state and national politics and, you know, state houses and things, we see the effects of those policies every day on families all around.

So, if it affects a business, it affects a family, even if it's not an entrepreneurial family, such as yours, they're working for someone. And if it affects that business, it may affect their paycheck. It affects their benefits. It affects their hours that they work. It just affects everything.

And so, as we see this cancel culture and that you lay out a very great, explanation of the domino effect. I just wrote an article for the U. S. Christian Chamber of Commerce website and their newsletter, and I called it the Domino Effect and how to reverse it because we really do have this domino effect that, you know, there's one cancellation leads to another leads to another.

You just laid it out so well that one problem led to another problem, another problem, but you and your wife put your faith in the Lord and you prayed for guidance and direction and every single step they brought someone. And so, it's just like, so often in scripture, we can see what, Satan meant for evil, God meant for good.

And I would say people picked the wrong person when they picked to cancel you because you have become this warrior, this voice for so many. And that is what we all need to do. You know, if we want to really help keep America free and keep our economy strong and keep our families strong, we need to stand up and be a voice, just like you have done.

I'm sure it was scary at times and pretty unnerving at times, but you boldly went, and you boldly spoke and you have helped millions of people, I'm sure, because you have put these companies on notice. And apart from that, you've helped to grow the freedom economy. So many great places that we can choose to spend our money. We do not have to spend our money with people who hate us and hate what we stand for. 

So not only can we be an activist with our dollars, but we can be an activist like you and support legislation that will provide for the freedom of entrepreneurial families and others, and people who just want to have the freedom of speech and commerce. 

But it will also put a hedge around them that they can be protected from these cancel culture companies that really want to change not only just the economic impact for those families but is really seeking to divide families and destroy our culture, which is part of the entire takedown of our nation, which is happening before our very eyes.

So, you know, each one reach one, and everybody does what they can. You guys stepped up and did what you could. And so, I do want to make sure people know what this legislation is. And I know there's another piece of legislation in the Tennessee legislature that is addressing being canceled with your bank account being debanked.

And so maybe if you can let listeners know what that is, they could go and look at the legislation numbers and be able to follow that. And so, listeners, if you're hearing this and you think, “Well, we need that in our state,” you know, you can contact James or go look at the legislation and then make sure your state legislator knows about it, so that they can craft a similar legislation for your state. 

James Staake: Our bill is Tennessee House Bill 846. So, if you go to the Tennessee.gov, it's TN HB 846. And that's our bill that deals with debanking, specifically in that one, my experience was PayPal. 

We do have another bill that's going to be coming out this next year that's going to be a little bit more, debanking is a very easy bill. I mean, if it's your money, you should have access to it. There's not a complicated bill, you know? So, the next bill that we're going to be dealing with is deplatforming. That one’s going to be a lot more complicated because it's got, you know.

I mean, if a business doesn't want to do business with somebody, they shouldn't really necessarily have to. I'm all for that. As long as you know, you're not really discriminating against someone, but if someone's values are just so opposite yours, I'm kind of okay with that. But when you become a public utility, it's a lot different.

Like if your power company doesn't like your politics, they should not be able to say, “Hey, look, we don't want to give you electricity.” It's completely different than. You know, everyone likes to throw the Cake Baker story out. I've heard that, I have more times than I could count. You know, what about the Cake Baker?

Well, you know, there was a religious thing attached to that. There's not really a religious thing necessarily attached to ours besides that they did cancel the Christian cross flag, which does kind of make it a religious thing and kind of gives a little bit of an understanding of where they are coming from.

But, so the deplatforming bill will be a little bit more difficult. Then the third bill that I really want to get out there, is I'm hoping we'll just skip right to the national level. When you sue a company like a PayPal or a Facebook or a Shopify or a Google, you have to sue them in the jurisdiction that their corporate office is in.

So that makes it very, very difficult for someone in little tiny Harriman, Tennessee to sue someone in the Silicon Valley because they've got a bunch of lawyers working for PayPal that are masters in the law in the Silicon Valley, but yet the crime was committed here in Harriman, Tennessee. 

So, what we really need to do is, is get rid of that law that allows these corporations to travel across state lines, county lines, city lines, and go into these jurisdictions that they don't necessarily run their business out of. 

What they really did to us was come from Silicon Valley, come here to Harriman, Tennessee, punch me in the face, run back to Silicon Valley and said, “Haha, sue me over here.” You know, and that makes it very difficult for me to sue some very expensive to sue someone in, you know, cross state lines and that kind of thing.

So what we really need to do is get rid of the law that allows these corporations to commit these acts of destruction or, you know, sometimes against the law, against the company, but then we have to sue them in their jurisdiction, mind you, a jurisdiction where these companies are the ones giving all of the money to their local congressmen and senators, and that kind of thing, who then appointed judges in that jurisdiction.

So, it's pretty fair to say that if I were to sue Facebook in the Silicon Valley, I'm going to be going to sue them in a courtroom where a judge will be presiding that was appointed by a politician that is receiving money from Facebook. So, when you add that all up, we would spend, God only knows how much money, to get into court. And what would most likely happen is the judge would just throw the case out. 

So now if I could sue Facebook, Shopify, or PayPal here in Roane County with the Roane County judge. I'm pretty sure that that judge is going to see things much differently than the judge would see it in the Silicon Valley. So, if the crime is committed here in Harriman or in Dubuque, Iowa, you should be able, the business owner should be able to file a lawsuit against that company in that jurisdiction, and they should have to hire a lawyer that knows the law in that jurisdiction and fight it.

As long as these companies can keep these lawyers, a staff of lawyers, that are masters of the law in their jurisdiction and fighting in courts where the judges are basically on, not really payroll. I don't want to say that, that's kind of a little bit inflammatory, but these judges are very friendly to these companies.

So that shouldn't be able to happen. Now, if I had my way, we'd have a law that where the crime is committed, that's where you sue. So that would mean that I could sue all three of these companies here in Roane County, Tennessee, and they would have to find lawyers here and pay lawyers here that are familiar with these laws.

Now that would require the social media companies to have lawyers literally in every single jurisdiction in the country, which would be so expensive to them that they wouldn't do that. They would just start acting right. So, it's not a matter of us all suing each other and us winning. What would happen is that it would change the behavior of these companies, and they would just stop doing these things that are harmful to people like us. 

Linda J Hansen: You bring up such good points. And so, listeners, you know, please keep following this story. This is why I have James on frequently, you know, when it gets to be several months in between the interviews, I ask him to come on again so we can have an update, and bring new people into understanding what is happening with all of this.

So, you know, there's people like James and Ginger Staake all over the country. People have been debanked. They have had their businesses crushed. They've had their freedom curtailed. We know that the term lawfare, we see it in what is happening with President Trump and many people who you know, have supported or worked for President Trump, we see it, so many people that are lesser known like James and Ginger, that are struggling and maybe for whatever reason, they just couldn't stand up to the cancel culture the way that you have, and they weren't able to be a voice. So, you are a voice for so many, and we have no idea how many things you're preventing by just being out there being a voice. So, thank you. 

And so, listeners, I want you to support James and his company, Your American Flag Store. Do what you can to support that. But also please, follow this legislation in Tennessee. This is exactly what I talk about all the time. Policy affects paychecks. So, it's so important and we need to unleash people like James.

We need to unleash the power of employers and employees and entrepreneurs to reclaim and preserve America. And that's what I try to do with Prosperity 101®. So, listeners, I hope that you will join with me, get the course that I have that you can share with people that can share basic understanding of things. Please get the book. Help people to understand how policy affects their paycheck, but then keep them up to date on things. 

Let people know what's happening with James. I mean, it may not be something you share with your boss necessarily, but you might share it with your neighbor. So, however we can get the word out, we need to let people know that this is unacceptable and we will not stand for it. You know, we are united and we will stand for freedom, and it's so important. 

So, if people want to support you and your family by purchasing things from you, please give them the website. 

James Staake: Go to YourAmericanFlagStore.com. And we've got tons of flags, about a hundred different flag designs. So, they're all handcrafted, with an option of having hand-painted artwork on them.

And then we've released a new, several new product lines of posters, patriotic posters and puzzles and shirts, and all kinds of new kind of cool stuff that you can take your patriotism out on the street and show everyone that you come in contact with in the public. 

Linda J Hansen: Well, and when you do, you'll be supporting this cancel culture warrior and his family.

And if you use code P101, you'll be supporting Prosperity 101® as well. So, we thank you every listener that goes to YourAmericanFlagStore. com and uses code P101. 

Thank you for supporting both companies and for listening to our podcast. And James, thank you for continuing to stand firm. Listeners, please pray for him, pray for his family, and pray for all the people around this nation and really around the world who are suffering under this whole cancel culture time in history where the enemies of freedom are working against every freedom-loving individual. 

So, we need to stand and stand firm so we can make sure we pass freedom on to the next generation. So, James, again, please give the website one more time. 

James Staake: YourAmericanFlagStore.com. 

Linda J Hansen: That's wonderful. Thank you and please, listeners, reach out to them and order your flags. So, thank you for listening.

Linda J Hansen: Thank you again for listening to the Prosperity 101® podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share, and leave a great review. Don't forget to visit Prosperity101.com to access the entire podcast library, to order my newest book, Job Security Through Business Prosperity: The Essential Guide to Understanding How Policy Affects Your Paycheck, or to enroll you or your employees in the Breakroom Economics online course.

You can also receive the free ebook, 10 Tips for Helping Employees Understand How Public Policy Affects Their Paychecks. Freedom is never free. Understanding the foundations of prosperity and the policies of prosperity will help you to protect prosperity as you become informed, involved, and impactful.

Please contact us today at Prosperity101.com to let us know how we can serve you. Thank you.