Live from Music Row, Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
CROM CARMICHAEL:
Michael, we are living in almost a giant Saturday Night Live skit. You have crime across the country going through the roof. You have over a hundred thousand people, mostly young people under age 40 who are dying from fentanyl poisoning and you have homelessness that is going crazy.
You have just a degradation of social and societal values and you have a financial mess at the federal level in that the deficits are ridiculously high, and the regulations are forcing businesses and institutions to waste money complying with regulations.
And then you have the banks, which now we see a report over the weekend that up to 200 banks have similar problems to SVB and are at risk of a similar fate. You have JP Morgan and 10 other banks essentially extending a low-interest line of credit to First Republican.
You have Janet Yellen ridiculously saying, this is, I’m quoting here. “Administration officials maintained that the move to say First Republic was done at the initiative of the private sector.” But multiple outlets reported that Janet Yellen leaned on Jamie Diamond to get the deal done. I believe the second comment is more accurate than the first.
I don’t think a bunch of CEOs from 11 of the biggest banks all called each other and got on a conference call and said, hey, let’s all pony up a total of $30 billion. I think they were strong-armed to do it. And that in itself is telling. But you have all of that and you have many problems.
You have the tremendous stories out there now about the level of corruption between all these entities in China giving money to various Biden family interests, and then you have an indictment from New York over an issue that is seven years old. And it has to do with some hush money that Donald Trump paid to Stormy Daniels, as if that’s news.
It’s not news.
And then you have from The Epoch Times they’re now investigating gifts that were given by foreign dignitaries to Trump claiming that he didn’t properly register the foreign gifts when they came in. As I say, it’s like a Saturday Night Live skit.
You have Jonathan Turley who has said that the biggest initial hurdle that Alvin Bragg is gonna have to overcome is the statute of limitations on the use of a particular section of the code that that they’re trying to leverage to indict Trump. But the code says that there’s a statute of limitations of two years, but then if you can tie that particular offense to some federal offense, then it extends to five years.
The problem is that the document in question is more than six years old. And that doesn’t even matter when you think of what it really means is there’s zero question in my mind, zero question in my mind that the people in Washington signed off on Alvin Braggs, if he indicts Trump that this is a political prosecution that was approved by the powers in Washington.
And you have this expression, what goes around comes around. I’ve had discussions with people about what if Republicans get power. What if they treat Democrats the same way? And most of my response was, oh, that would not be good. That would not be good.
And then I asked him, I said how do you stop a bully from being a bully? Well, you punch ’em in the face.
And if they recognize it, that every time they’re a bully, they’re gonna get punched in the face. They’ll quit being a bully. I said, okay. I agree with that. And so now the question is if Republicans do regain power, and that’s an open question, and Republicans believe that the way the Democrats, the two-tiered system of justice that we have is akin to a bully on the playground. The question is how should Republicans respond. Historically, how Republicans have responded has not yielded a change in the direction of the country.
And that’s the great question here. No matter who is president, if Republicans are president we don’t go in the wrong direction at as a rapid speed as when Democrats are in power, but we still go in the wrong direction. We have an opportunity here to see what bullies do and we’ll see how we react.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this Crommentary:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Janet Yellen” by Janet Yellen. Photo “Donald Trump” by Trump White House Archived. Photo “Alvin Bragg” by Alvin Bragg. Photo “Jonathan Turley” by MSNBC. CC BY 3.0. Background Photo “Silicon Valley Ban” by Coolcaesar. CC BY-SA 4.0.
Live from Music Row, Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton to the newsmaker line to discuss federal education funding, charter schools, choice lanes, the top priority before the session ends, and more.
Leahy: On the newsmaker line now, a very good friend, Speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives Speaker Cam Sexton.
Good morning, Speaker Sexton.
Sexton: Good morning. How are you?
Leahy: Doing well and we’re delighted to have you on here this morning. And it has been an eventful session so far of the Tennessee General Assembly. You got a lot done. You got the bill that stopped gender mutilation for kids under the age of 18. So congratulations on that. That went through pretty quickly.
Sexton: It did. It did. We were able to do a couple of things early that moved us through the committee. Usually, we take a little bit of time to get committees up and going, but this year we got off with a sprint and we’re still moving along.
Leahy: I’m a big fan of the idea that you suggested that we look at telling the federal government, we don’t want their Department of Education money. There’s a bill that’s gonna set up a task force to look at that.
Commissioner of Education, Penny Schwinn’s set to head that up. Six legislators, two superintendents, and two teachers, but no conservative talk show hosts on that task force. (Laughter) Are you gonna fix that problem?
Sexton: We can. We can always have testimony. I think it’s something important for us to do. My thought is, we talked about state’s rights and the 10th Amendment, but we continue to take federal money that takes away the state, our state’s rights places burdens and restrictions on us to use that money, and when those areas are federal education dollars because they also use Title IX to come through on the backside because we take the money and try to put things in our classroom or requires to do different tests in the classroom.
And I think that those burdens are more than they should be. And so I think fund that money ourselves instead of allowing the Department of Education to fund it for us.
Leahy: So this interesting development last week, of course, the Speaker of the State Senate Randy McNally involved in these embarrassing social media posts. We’ve called for his resignation because he’s passed his prime. I think that’s an example of it.
But interestingly, there’s this weird situation where there’s a state representative in the House, not in the state Senate, but in the House. Representative Todd Warner, he’s been in the doghouse, I think, for any number of reasons. So he puts out a letter and says it’s time for the state Senate leader to resign. Any thoughts on where that’s going to go?
Sexton: No, not yet. We’re, I think from what I hear based on the senators, none of them have come out and expressed that. My understanding is the Lieutenant Governor has called all of them personally and had conversations.
There are a lot of people who have opinions on it and it’s really a decision of the State Senate, whether or not they want to do anything. It doesn’t seem like at this point that they want to, so we’ll just have to wait and see what they decide or if they decide to do anything at all.
Leahy: Did you have any conversations with State Representative Todd Warner before or after he put that letter out? It’s not really a state House representative issue, it’s a state Senate issue.
Sexton: It’s a Senate issue. There were things used in there that you would have to know the person. I don’t think he’s ever sat down and had any conversations with him. That’s his opinion. He can say what he wants to, we live in a free country, and so he’s entitled to that. I don’t know if people agree with how he worded it or what he said.
Some may agree with the conclusion as you do on what needs to happen. But I will say, he’s never been in the doghouse. I think he likes to say he’s been in the doghouse. Leadership didn’t try to stop him or stop any of his bills or anything. I think that’s the way he wants to word it. Sometimes that’s just simply not the case.
Leahy: Tell me what’s on the agenda for the remaining couple weeks of the Tennessee General Assembly session.
Sexton: The biggest thing is the budget. We’re waiting for the governor’s appropriation amendment, which will be probably about two or three weeks. And then that will give us our timeline on when we’ll be able to be out of there. I think if you’re looking at different things that are still in play, I think choice lanes are up this week.
Saving the lives of mothers is up tonight on the House floor. We have some legislation dealing with charter schools. So there’s still a full plate to come. Constitutional carry on the House. True constitutional carry is being passed through the House.
So we’re hopeful that we will get that to the floor. We’re waiting to see what direction the Senate Judicial Committee wants to go. But there are still some big items coming through, at least on the House side.
Leahy: With the charter school legislation, would that expand charter schools? What are the details of the charter school legislation?
Sexton: Yes, the charter school legislation, there are a couple of different pieces. One is looking at residential boarding schools for at-risk kids. You have kids in some parts of our state that are homeless and living out of cars with their families and that’s not the best environment. You also have children whose parents are incarcerated, and one-parent families in high-crime areas.
Then numerous different types of things for at-risk kids. And trying to give them an opportunity their parents an opportunity to allow them to go to a boarding school like a public charter school that would give them a fresh opportunity to be successful and get out of a bad situation that they’re in to allow the family maybe to get back up on their feet as well.
That’s one idea coming. The other is offering a hybrid charter school program for people to go to a charter school for three or four days a week and then do remote learning from home one or two days a week to give parents also a little different alternative to what they’re being offered in their normal K 12.
Leahy: What’s the prospect for the choice lane legislation? We had Butch Eley here in the studio to talk about it. I think there are a lot of people who like it and a lot of people who don’t like these ideas. Where do you think that’s going to go?
Sexton: Right now, I would say it has the votes to pass on the House floor. I don’t know the exact vote count, but based on how it came through different committees it seems like the votes are there to pass it. It’s one alternative to improving our roads. It doesn’t change any road currently that’s being driven on, it’s only for new types of roads that are being built in highly congested areas.
And there are all four big cities in our state that have that issue. But it would also allow us to continue to build out, enroll communities in suburban areas, improve the roads, and build new roads.
And the main reason is that the congestion is gonna cost us about $26 to $29 billion. And so we’re trying to develop new ways to help fund those areas. But at the same time, do not lose focus on the rural areas and suburban areas that need roads as well.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
– – –
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Cameron Sexton” by Speaker Cameron Sexton. Background Photo “Tennessee State Capitol” by Thomas R Machnitzki. CC BY 3.0.
Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed California refugee and an accomplished attorney, Mark Pulliam to the newsmaker line to announce his candidacy for Blount County Republican chair and why he’s qualified to do it.
Leahy: We are delighted to welcome to our newsmaker line, our very good friend Mark Pullium from Blount County, Tennessee. Good morning, Mark.
Pulliam: Good morning, Michael. I’m always pleased to be on the voice of reason in Nashville. (Leahy laughs)
Leahy: Mark, you’re mixing it up again! You won’t quit. And just for our listeners, Mark is a very accomplished attorney writer and a refugee from California and then Texas who moved to Tennessee in hopes of finding freedom and liberty. Found something a little different, didn’t you, Mark?
Pulliam: Yes. I’m either very persistent or a sucker for punishment, (Leahy laughs) but I moved here hoping to find a vibrant Republican Party that was as conservative as I am. And we moved here to find out that the Republican Party was in the witness protection program, and I’ve tried different things.
I got elected to the state executive committee as a write-in, but then my election was nullified. So now I’m coming at it differently. And one of the people that voted to nullify my election and to discard the ballots of 300 Blount County Republicans who voted for me is SEC member Cindy Gaba-Hatcher.
She’s running to be chair of the Blount County Republican Party at the upcoming reorganization meeting, and I decided that Blount County needs to have a real Republican Party with a real Republican sharing it. So I’ve thrown my hat in the ring and I’m running to be chair at this reorganization meeting coming up on April 4th.
Leahy: This looks to be a lot of fun to me. I know there are some bad feelings and bitterness back and forth, but heck, this is politics, right? (Chuckles) I just admire you so much, Mark, for jumping into all this stuff. Now you have a little bit of an edge that our friend Scott Golden, he’s our friend. I don’t think he’s your friend, right? (Pulliam chuckles) The chairman of the Republican Party. He seems to have set the rules up to make everything as hard as possible for you. Do I have that right?
Pulliam: Because we’re an open primary state, it’s hard to tell who’s a Republican and who’s not a Republican because nobody registers by political party. And there were two bills that were introduced this session to fix that. They were both killed under very questionable circumstances in committee.
But as long as we’re an open primary state, there has to be some basis to determine who’s Republican and who’s entitled to participate in Republican politics. So they come up with this bonafide Republican test, which is very amorphous.
It’s poorly drafted and it’s susceptible to multiple interpretations, and it’s ridiculous. You have to have voted in three out of the last four statewide Republican primaries. So for a Tennessee resident…
Leahy: That could cover a lot. Let me get to this, Mark. Every two years, there are elections for the county chairman. And I know in Williamson County here, there will be, I think, March 30th or 31st there’s a general meeting of all Republicans in the county. They’ve got to get verified and go through that vetting process you talk about, and there is going to be a race between, I think it’s Cheryl Brown and Tracy Miller are the candidates here in Williamson County. But there will be one big meeting. But in Blount County, they’re breaking it down into six separate precinct conventions that are precursors of the April 4th overall meeting. Do you have to get elected in the precinct conventions? How does that work?
Pulliam: What you’re describing from Williamson County, and that’s the way most of the counties in Tennessee do it, it’s called a mass convention. And so everybody that’s eligible shows up on a day and votes on a new slate of officers.
Back in the old days, when Tennessee was a backward rural state, they came up with something called these precinct conventions if you had a lightly populated state spread out or a county spread out. But what’s happening, and under the bylaws of the Tennessee Republican Party, all counties are required to use mass convention unless Scott Golden gives you permission to do it otherwise.
And so Blount County has gotten permission to do this precinct convention, so the actual people that will be allowed to attend the reorganization meeting are selected in advance at this precinct convention.
Leahy: Mark, is this all designed to keep you from winning the election? I’m just wondering.
Pulliam: This is the way they’ve always done it. And it’s certainly easier for the insiders to control the outcome because you have to register in advance. And so they know how many people intend to show up and they can pack each precinct convention, but we, the grassroots, are beginning to wake up.
And so my group, the Blount County Conservative Coalition, is on this. There’s a group called East Tennessee Conservatives that’s on this. And what we hope is that the grassroots will show up at these precinct conventions and outvote these insiders that have been treating this party as a private club for so long and we can finally breathe some life into a more abundant county party.
Leahy: You mean it’s not a private club? I’m just kidding. By the way, let’s talk about this Cindy Gaba-Hatcher. I’ve never met Cindy, but she’s currently on the state executive committee. She’s running for the Blount County Republican Party chair against you. Where do the two of you differ in terms of how you would do the job?
Pulliam: I’ve published my platform. I tried to become a precinct delegate two years ago, but my wife and I were both blackballed at our precinct convention. Essentially, I am not sure that on the issues there would be a difference in that she’s a moderate and I’m conservative.
Fundamentally, I want the Republican Party to act like a Republican Party, to empower the grassroots, have monthly public meetings, bring in elected officials and talk to the voters and answer questions, and have a precinct program, register voters to get out the vote to do the things that Republican parties are supposed to do!
Leahy: Register voters and get out the vote. That’s the standard job of a county chairman. Do you think you’d do a better job of that than Cindy Gaba Hatcher your opponent?
Pulliam: I think I would do the job, and in Blount County, according to the standard playbook, it’s not being done. The role of the county party in Blount County is to be invisible and ineffective so that the Chamber of Commerce can really run things.
Leahy: Of course, East Tennessee and Middle Tennessee are different really, you got a lot more engagement of conservative grassroots activists in the party. In Middle Tennessee, East Tennessee traditionally has been run more by the Chamber of Commerce types, I think, right?
Pulliam: I think that’s what I’m learning in the three years that I’ve been here. (Laughter)
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
– – –
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Mark Pulliam” by American Institute for Economic Research. Photo “Paul Moreno” by Hillsdale College. Background Photo “Blount County Courthouse” by Brian Stansberry. CC BY 3.0.
Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael in studio to discuss false statements made by News Channel 5’s Phil Williams that were left hanging on the internet for seven hours before correction.
Leahy: In studio, the original all-star panelist, Crom Carmichael. Crom, lead story at The Tennessee Star, which I wrote. Headline: News Channel Five Quietly Removes Unsubstantiated Claim by Phil Williams that Andy Ogles ‘Kept the Money.’ That was the original headline. Subtitle of the headline: that Andy kept the money from this GoFundMe account established in 2014.
Carmichael: And did the story go on to essentially say that?
Leahy: It had a statement to that effect that has disappeared. The headline and the statement that Andy kept the money which, by the way, Phil Williams could not substantiate that Andy kept this $23,000 GoFundMe account set up to honor Andy’s dead child in 2014 and used for Andy’s said purpose of helping other families that had children who passed away. It was up on the internet for seven hours, that Andy kept the money. He couldn’t prove it and couldn’t substantiate it.
Carmichael: Or he didn’t.
Leahy: He didn’t prove it.
Carmichael: He didn’t prove it. He didn’t substantiate it and offered no evidence.
Leahy: Offered no evidence that, that he kept the money. And then, mysteriously, seven hours later they changed the headline to say that Andy, kept the money and he won’t say where the money went.
Carmichael: He has said where the money went.
Leahy: At the time he published it because Phil went up to him and said, okay, I wanna know immediately how that money was spent eight years ago. And Andy didn’t answer the question. He came and gave us an exclusive statement and he explained how the money was spent. He didn’t show the accounting records.
Carmichael: Now, wait. So he did say.
Leahy: Subsequent to that headline.
Carmichael: Now, wait a second. Phil Williams says I’m lost on what the second headline says.
Leahy: The second headline said, “He won’t say where the money went.”
Carmichael: That’s not true either. That’s not true either. If you give somebody 30 seconds to respond to something and then they later respond, to not give anybody time. Let me just say this.
Leahy: He did say where the money went. He hasn’t provided any accounting records to that effect.
Carmichael: But then he has said where the money went.
Leahy: That’s a very good point. So the statement itself is wrong. Phil Williams’s statement should have been he will not provide me any accounting records. That would be an accurate statement.
Carmichael: Let me just say this. Phil Williams has been around for a really long time.
Leahy: He’s old.
Carmichael: He’s old; he’s got white hair. It reminds me of Randy McNally. They have something in common.
Leahy: They do. They’re past their prime.
Carmichael: Past their prime. They say things and do things that they shouldn’t do. And I think there is a Republican lawmaker who has…
Leahy: Todd Warner.
Carmichael: Who publicly said that Randy McNally needs to step down. And you have editorialized…
Leahy: On Sunday.
Carmichael: That Randy McNally, after having served for 45 years should step down. Phil Williams should step down. He’s lost his step.
Leahy: Lost his fastball.
Carmichael: He’s lost his fastball. That’s a better metaphor. And uh, put me in coach a baseball. So here we’re talking baseball metaphors. (Leahy laughs) But Phil Williams is past his prime and like Randy McNally, he has the hair to show for it.
And there’s no doubt when you look at Phil Williams, you look at a man who might very well be past his prime just by looking at him. But then when you see the story that he put up where he made an accusation that he could not support, by journalistic standards, that is a terrible thing to do.
Leahy: He can’t substantiate his claim that Andy kept the money.
Carmichael: That’s the first claim and the most important claim because to claim, I’m changing the headline to, he won’t provide an accounting of something that was eight or nine years ago, I would ask anybody to keep an accounting of something that that’s eight or nine years ago.
Leahy: That’s a very good point. It would take a while to put that together. If you can.
Carmichael: If the accounting still even existed. I go through my files at the office and stuff that’s old and no longer relevant, I clean those files out because I’ve closed the books on them. I’ve paid my taxes on them and I’ve done everything. And I’ve held him for the appropriate amount of time for my tax purposes, and I eliminate that stuff.
Leahy: Phil Williams is trying to create the impression that he actually never said Andy kept the money.
Carmichael: Right. And that’s what I’m saying. That’s why he’s like Randy McNally and News Channel 5 needs to recognize that they have a reporter who will say and do anything perhaps for a personal vendetta.
We don’t know. We don’t know what his motivation was. It could be that his mind just isn’t as sharp as it ought to be, and Phil should be put out to pasture. (Makes horse sound)
Leahy: I love the sound effect. Phil, you’re going out to pasture.
Carmichael: You’re going out to pasture and we will hold the gate open.
Leahy: And Phil Williams. Phil, your own actions and statements are leading you to be put out to pasture because you, he tweeted Wednesday evening at 9:27 pm, about an hour after News Channel 5 secretly changed that headline from, Andy Ogles ‘Kept the Money’ to ‘Andy Ogles Won’t Say Where the Money was Spent.’
He retweeted this tweet from Dr. Joy Heningsen News Channel 5 never said he kept the money, which right is falsely blasting Williams for. Actually no, he did say that and he said it for seven hours, Crom.
Carmichael: Who is claiming that Channel five never said what Channel five said?
Leahy: His retweet was claimed by some blue check.
Carmichael: That’s more evidence that he needs to be put out to pasture. Listen, I think Phil Williams believes everything that he is saying. I think he believes everything he’s saying and therein lies the problem.
Leahy: News Channel 5, by the way, has a policy Crom that they correct errors promptly, prominently, and transparently. They need to be prominent, so there’s no confusion about what changes were made to the story. They did not follow their own corrections policy. They made this major change.
Carmichael: Maybe there are some other people there who need to be put out to pasture. The pasture’s getting bigger.
Leahy: Bigger, bigger, and bigger.
Carmichael: And the gate is getting larger. It’s so tough to backtrack on something that you did that was wrong.
Leahy: Phil Williams is finding that out.
Carmichael: Yes. (Makes horse sound)
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
– – –
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Phil Williams” by Phil Williams NC5.
Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
CROM CARMICHAEL:
Michael, Holman Jenkins of The Wall Street Journal wrote one of his best columns. And the title of it: Silicon Valley Bank and Joe Biden’s $19 Trillion Money. And what Mr. Jenkins points out are things that really need to be pointed out about what Biden did and what the ramifications are and then whether or not what Biden did solved the underlying first mover problem.
Which it did not. I’ll give a little advanced warning that it didn’t solve the underlying problem. And he identifies the underlying problem. He goes on to say, and I will give some quotes here from the article, “If Monday’s routes and bank stocks further spooked uninsured depositors, it was just one more way government was working against itself.”
“Shareholders had a reason for fright as the government suddenly, and unilaterally rewrote the terms of their investment. In essence, out of the blue, the risks that large sophisticated, uninsured depositors had willingly accepted were shifted to bank shareholders and US taxpayers so Biden could have a pleasanter start to his week, and otherwise would’ve been the case.”
He says it goes on. Don’t buy the claim that bank shareholders and CEOs have been taught a lesson. He says the government doesn’t actually eliminate failure. It transfers the risk to itself with enough risk transference, government’s own solvency, and ability to maintain the value of its currency are placed at risk.
We aren’t there yet, but hard to miss are the whispers that the Fed should now back off the inflation fight to support the administration’s priority to avoid more political noise in bank failures. Here’s the key paragraph. When he gets into what the underlying problem is that is causing all of the distress across our economy.
The biggest problem of all is the size, inefficiency, indebtedness, and unsustainability of government. This is why I said earlier this week, the key is the governments of incredibly high government spending and incredibly high overreach by the bureaucracies of our country. Our political class has a silent strategy here too.
Hope it blows up on somebody else’s watch. Now that’s a key one. Hope it blows up on somebody else’s watch. If the politicians like Barney Frank who passed the Dodd-Frank Bill, then retired, oversaw them, and was responsible for the 2008 and 2009 mess. Then he goes on the board of Signature Bank in New York and watches it proceed to have a whole bunch of terrible woke policies.
He collected hundreds of thousands of dollars as a bank board of directors as a bank board member. The question is whether or not he’s gonna be sued, which he ought to be because he didn’t do his job. There are fiduciary responsibilities to being a board member, especially of a bank. Already written into law are set 25 percent cuts in social security benefits.
Medicare can always balance its books. Listen to this. Medicare can always balance its books by cutting reimbursements to doctors and hospitals and letting declining service and wait lists drive patients to seek care elsewhere. That’s what’s happened in Canada, by the way.
That’s what’s happening in Great Britain as we speak. Those are exactly the things that are going on, and anyone who does not understand that our biggest problem facing this country is the vast overreach of our federal government is simply wrong. It’s just that simple.
And unfortunately, saving Silicone Valley Bank and the depositors in the method that they’ve done it, kicks the can down the road. The question is, does it kick the can down the road a couple of hundred yards, in which case it’s gonna rear its ugly head fairly soon, or does it kick the can down a mile or so, which pushes it out? Maybe two or three or four years.
We will see. But, Kevin McCarthy has a chance with the Republicans on the debt ceiling increase to force the Biden administration to do the right thing and to cut government spending by at least half a trillion dollars which shouldn’t be that difficult because Biden’s increased government spending by at least one and a half trillion dollars. So in two years, it shouldn’t be very difficult to get him to give up a third of his increases. But we’ll see.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this Crommentary:
– – –
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “U.S. Capitol” by The Free Birds.
Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed openthebooks.com Founder Adam Andrzejewski to the newsmaker line to unravel Silicon Valley Bank’s ties to California Governor Gavin Newsom.
Leahy: To the issue of honesty, cover-up. Silicon Valley Bank, all the roads are leading to Governor Gavin Newsom. Adam, thanks for joining us.
Andrzejewski: Thanks for having me on. I appreciate coming back on the program.
Leahy: Crom and I were here talking; there’s a lack of honesty and integrity. I think in your latest column at Openthebooks substack, you’re pointing out that there’s a coverup about Governor Gavin Newsom’s involvement with the Silicon Valley Bank. Which as everybody knows, failed spectacularly. Adam, tell us more about that.
Andrzejewski: So incredibly Silicon Valley Bank through their investment banking arm bought stakes in three of Governor Gavin Newsom’s private businesses. That was broken by The Intercept.
Here’s what we broke at openthebooks.com. We put the other half of the story together that the president of the Silicon Valley Bank’s investment banking arm, his name is John China.
Leahy: Whoa, whoa. No.
Carmichael: Are you making that up?
Leahy: Are you making that up?
Andrzejewski: I’m not. I’m not making it up. His name is John China. It is.
Carmichael: At least you didn’t say his name was Hunter China. (Laughter)
Andrzejewski: There is a real question. Is the Chinese influence being funded out of that investment banking arm as well? But no, his name is actually John China, and he’s a good friend of the Newsom’s. He’s right in the mix of Newsom Inc., as we call it, at openthebooks.com. We found that he is a founding board member of Newsom’s nonprofit, the California Partners Project.
What is the California Partners Project? It’s a nonprofit expressly created to push the public policy agenda of Jennifer Siebel-Newsom, the wife of Governor Gavin Newsom. She calls herself the first partner. The first thing Governor Gavin Newsom did when he was inaugurated was he established this public office for his wife.
A subdivision of the office of governor, it’s called the office of the first partner. It’s got nine staffers and a million-dollar-a-year appropriation of taxpayer money. Five million dollars since 2019 has gone into this office, but it wasn’t enough. They established this nonprofit to bring in more funding, more staff, and more political lobbying muscle behind his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s public policy agenda.
The first thing they passed incredibly was gender quotas on corporate boards, and they were patting themselves on the back with Silicon Valley Bank’s John China, the Newsom’s, when they passed, signed this into law, but even a California court threw it out because obviously, it was discriminatory. Judicial Watch sued them and got that law thrown out.
Carmichael: I’m really interested in this thing where you’re saying the Silicone Valley Bank in their private investment arm invested. When they collapsed, did they still own interests in three of Newsom’s companies?
Andrzejewski: Yes. They disclosed it on their website. And this begs a lot of questions. We know what the questions are, right? They’ve got the regulators, now that the bank has failed, they’ve got to open the books on the good friend of the Newsom’s, the head of the $5.5 billion investment pool of money that bought stakes in three of his businesses.
Did they overpay for the governor’s business? Was he able to pull chips off the table, pull money out of, take money and risk off the table for himself personally, because of the deep relationship with the head of the Silicon Valley Bank’s investment business? We don’t know the answers to that, but we need that transparency.
Carmichael: So you’re saying the Silicon Valley bank had a $5.5 billion private investment organization or entity within their holding company or within their bank that took $5.5 billion and made direct investments in private companies, three of which were in entities where Newsom was a material shareholder. Do we know the names of those three companies and the amount of the investments?
Andrzejewski: We don’t know the amounts. That’s not disclosed, but we do know the names. There are three wineries, I forget the third one, but the second one is Plump Jack. Two of the wineries are pretty well-known brands and so we don’t know the amounts, but certainly, all of this needs sunshine on it.
Leahy: If you look at this, will the equity interests of the Silicon Valley Bank and these three businesses owned by the governor of California be liquidated?
Carmichael: And then the question is whether or not they’ll be liquidated at a preferential rate if these wineries are doing well. (Andrzejewski laughs) If the voters get angry…
Andrzejewski: It will really open a can of worms. What if Newsom buys back the interest from Silicon Bank in his own business at a discounted rate than what they purchased it for? It gets really interesting very quickly.
Carmichael: John Steinbeck wrote a book for if the voters get mad about these winery deals The Grapes of Wrath. (Laughter)
Leahy: Boom, chakalaka.
Carmichael: This is very interesting, especially if those numbers. If it’s a couple hundred thousand dollars each, it’s not that big a deal. But if it’s five or $10 million that’s real money.
Leahy: By the way. Adam, can you find out how much was spent, and how much was invested by Silicon Valley Bank in those three businesses owned by Gavin Newsom?
Andrzejewski: They’re private transactions, but now that the Fed has taken over the bank, look, we need to know. I think there needs to be transparency on this, and the regulators and law enforcement need to start asking the proper questions because here’s what we do know.
The governor himself solicited, he requested a six-figure $100,000 gift for his nonprofit from John China through Silicon Valley Bank, and they paid it. They gave $100,000. It was so close to Newsom that under California ethics law, they had to post that $100,000 gift as behested, as a requested gift on a state ethics website.
That money should be paid back to the bank from Newsom’s nonprofit. And we’re issuing the clarion call that they paid $100,000 back. This was given in 2021, so not that long ago. The depositors, the investors, and now the taxpayers, deserve to have that six-figure gift back in the bank.
Leahy: Absolutely. Adam, a great reporting on your part. Hey, can you come back and tell us what the resolution of this is going to be?
Andrzejewski: Absolutely. I look forward to it.
Leahy: It’s a lot of money and this needs to be transparent, Adam, with Openthebooks.com. Thanks so much for joining us. Come back again if you would please.
Andrzejewski: Thank you so much for having me.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Photo “Adam Andrzejewski” by Adam Andrzejewski. Background Photo “Silicon Valley Bank” by Tony Webster. CC BY 2.0.
