Michaelm this commentary is not about any particular thing that’s happened. When you look at all the things that are happening that are inspired by leftist thinking and then you see what the results are, you begin to recognize that the way the Left thinks and the way they want to organize the world is through pure force.
And even when things don’t work exactly the way that they expected, or in fact worked out to be exactly the opposite of what they say, they continue with the idea of force.
There was a testimony yesterday; I don’t know the name of the female professor from one of the universities in California, and she was testifying before a Senate committee over Roe v. Wade.
It became clear that she thinks that a man can identify as a woman and if you don’t then call that person a woman, just by the fact that they identify or vice versa, that somehow you are encouraging them to commit suicide.
She wouldn’t answer Senator John Cornyn’s question about whether or not a baby the day before birth has value. It took her two full seconds to answer the question, does a baby that has been born alive have value?
She had to really think hard about how to answer that question. And so you see that the Left’s value of life is determined by their view and their view alone. Now, you also see now evidence around the world where ESG, especially on renewable energy, is destroying entire countries and rendering some populations to possible famine.
Tucker Carlson last night talked about Ghana and what they’re doing in the Netherlands, and talked about Sri Lanka. These are countries in the case of Ghana and Sri Lanka, they used to be able to produce 100 percent of their own food.
In the case of Ghana, they exported food to their neighboring countries. Now they are experiencing it, without a great deal of international help they’ll have massive famine.
But yet the Left continues to think that ESG and renewable energy is the key to world order. This is fascinating. In St. Paul, the voters up there, last November, 53 percent of the voters voted for rent control in St. Paul for all rental property and put a cap of 3 percent a year. Since then, the number of permits for multifamily housing has dropped 82 percent – has dropped 82 percent since the voters voted for that. In Minneapolis, which voted in rent control, but left the rent control up to the city council, which hasn’t acted, the multifamily permits are up 68 percent, right across the river.
Now, you would think that the Left or that a rational person would recognize that this was a bad policy, because the Left in St. Paul says we need affordable housing, so therefore we need to control rents.
Well, if you try to control rents, especially in an inflationary environment, you’ll end up with no new construction or virtually none. And so that’s what they’re doing.
Then you see how the justice department can’t bring itself to do the job that it’s supposed to do, yet it somehow has the time and the money and the resources to launch an investigation into the PGA as a potential antitrust violation, and side with the Saudis.
Which is just amazing to me, but not surprising. Then we learned that Biden, in the bill that did pass, it had a giant provision in there for the Biden administration to bail out unions where their pensions are not adequately funded.
Now, they’re not adequately funded because they’ve been mismanaged. So what does Biden do? He takes all the people who are not members of a union and requires them to pay for the bad decisions and bad judgment and probably corrupt judgment by the people who run the unions.
Then you have New York State, where the Supreme Court ruled that their gun law is not constitutional. So they just passed another law in New York State that is equally unconstitutional. But they’ve essentially stuck their finger in the eye of the way that we conduct ourselves.
And then the last one that I have that’s just funny is Joe Biden and the whole Biden administration’s view on minorities. They think that black people, as Biden once famously said, if you don’t know how you’re going to vote, you ain’t black.
Meaning that that’s what he thinks, that black people are just too stupid to decide what’s best for themselves. And then you have Jill Biden, who goes down to San Antonio, and according to Hispanic newspapers, the way that she characterized Hispanics was she said, the Hispanic journalist said, we’re not tacos, don’t call us tacos.
And she couldn’t even pronounce the words properly. She called a bogada, which is a bodega, which is a convenience store in New York. It’s a bodega. She called it a bogada. And so she’s reading off of a teleprompter.
And the Hispanic community, by the way, is picking up on all this, as is the black community. And I think what you’re going to see in the midterms is how the Democrats are just making a complete hash of themselves, but what they are showing is that they truly are a party of billionaires and white elitists. And that’s what drives and motivates them.
Leahy: We are joined in studio by the original all-star panelist and my good friend for more than 30 years. We met when we were teenagers, (Laughter) Crom Carmichael, the original all-star panelist. Good morning, Crom.
Carmichael: Michael. Good morning, sir.
Leahy: It is a beautiful fall day. We were talking earlier at 5:45 with Mayor Glenn Jacobs, who’s got a big fall festival going on next Tuesday in Knox County.
I would go up there if it were on a weekend just to see him and see all that kind of fun that they’re having up there. I’m looking forward to the football season. I’m looking forward to some of the games like UT playing Alabama this week. And that should be a lot of fun.
Carmichael: We hope it is. (Chuckles)
Leahy: It’ll be better than it’s been recently. It’s time now, ladies and gentlemen, people wait for this every day. It is time now for Crom’s Commentary. Crom, what do you have for us this morning?
Carmichael: Michael, we tried to talk with Neil about the $3.5 trillion deal.
Leahy: Neil McCabe, the best Washington correspondent in the country.
Carmichael: Yes, I think that thing has been deep-sixed. I don’t think there’s a chance that that will pass. But here’s what’s interesting.
Manchin is apparently sticking to his $1.5 trillion, but he’s also saying which entitlement programs will not be included. And it’s virtually all of them.
He’s willing to spend money on some very specific things. But none of it is these long-term entitlements that the Democrats are using trickery to get the amount down. Here’s how the trickery works.
Let’s say that you have a program that you want to spend $500 billion a year. Let’s say you want to spend $100 billion a year to make the math simpler. What you’re supposed to do is you’re supposed to take that $100 billion and multiply it times ten because you’re supposed to provide the amount of spending over a 10 year period.
So that would be a trillion dollars. That’s a lot of money. You’re supposed to be able to fund that. The Democrats have a bunch of those types of things in their package. And the total of all of those things if you went the full 10 years is actually closer to $6 trillion.
So the Democrats have already said, well, we’re only going to run those programs for five years. And then what’s going to happen? Well, then they’ll go away. Everybody knows they won’t go away.
And so what the Democrats are doing is they’re trying to get people hooked on the heroin of government programs. And then at the end of five years, then they’ll have to renew them. Well, Manchin will not have any part of that on the other side of the Senate.
Or when I say the other side, I don’t mean really the other side, but Kyrsten Sinema has said that she will not support increases in marginal tax rates on personal income, corporate income, or capital gains. Well, enter Ron Wyden.
Now, this is an interesting article. Ron Wyden is now calling for a capital gains tax on unearned capital gains for people over a certain wealth. Now let me say this. As you and I have discussed, the multi-billionaire class is heavily Democrat.
This tax right here hits the multi-billionaires right where they live. And he has a special tax on the first one because his argument is that people like Zuckerberg and Bezos have been building these unrealized capital gains for many years.
So there will be a special one-time tax on those guys. And to me, this is going to show that the Democrats and especially Bernie Sanders don’t really really want to tax the billionaires as he likes to say.
What he really wants to do is he wants to tax the people making a million dollars. I think that what’s going on in Washington right now is a Kabuki dance that may end up in a colossal mess come December.
Leahy: As always, Crom’s Commentary, on point and very insightful. I think that’s a very interesting point. I think you’re right. I think you’re going to see Bernie Sanders doesn’t want to tax the billionaires. He wants to tax the self-made millionaires.
Listen to the second hour here:
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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.
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 to the studio to explain the Biden infrastructure bill, special interests that benefit from it and the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire.
Leahy: Joined as we almost always are every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:30 by the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael. Crom, good morning.
Carmichael: Good morning, Michael.
Leahy: Well, they’re going to build an infrastructure, maybe. What are they going to build in Washington Crom?
Carmichael: Well, the infrastructure bill pattern is similar to the so-called $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill. Nine percent of it was for COVID relief and over 90 percent was for other stuff. They just called it that.
Leahy: Gee, I wonder who got the other stuff.
Carmichael: Well, special interests of a whole variety. Now the infrastructure bill, and this is a good question. If I were to say the word infrastructure, what do people think?
Leahy: Bridges, roads, airports.
Carmichael: Highways, things like that. Things that are built to last very long periods of time.
Leahy: 50 years.
Carmichael: Generally you think of something with steel or concrete.
Leahy: Generally.
Carmichael: That’s kind of what you think. Well, less than five of the two-point three trillion is for roads, bridges, and highways.
Leahy: Okay.
Carmichael: Another two percent is for airports and ports.
Leahy: It’s even worse than the COVID bill.
Carmichael: Even worse.
Leahy: It’s only seven percent.
Carmichael: But let’s remember, it’s only seven. Let’s remember that when Biden was the vice president led by Obama to pass an $8 billion shovel-ready bill. No one could ever name anything that was built with eight billion dollars. In fact, Obama even joked, it’s hard to be shovel-ready. I guess there wasn’t any. And then the Democrats laughed because they all knew that the $8 billion for so-called shovel-ready stuff were going to special interests.
And so that’s what’s happened here. Now, the remaining almost 500 billion, now of the two-point three trillion so-called infrastructure bill, less than 25 percent is actually labeled under the category of transportation. Of that 70 billion is for mass transportation relief. Now, excuse me, 80 billion is for mass transportation. Did you know that the COVID relief bill had 70 billion for mass transit?
Leahy: Interesting. I didn’t know that.
Carmichael: But now you’ve got 80 billion on top of the 70 billion. So you now have $150 billion for mass transit. Now, you may recall, in Reagan’s years the mass transit, by the way, is for very isolated areas, and most of them are blue. So this is really a throw down or a throw-up, whatever you want to call it, to big labor.
Leahy: It’s a redistribution of income.
Carmichael: It’s a redistribution of income without the accompanying tax because these are not tied together. They don’t pass together. One can pass and the other can fail and it would still pass, which would drive our federal deficit. Biden has also said that this money is being spent over eight years. So this could be similar to the Keystone pipeline and the projects could be started, and then projects could be defunded.
And so that’s possible. But here’s where the money is being spent, it’s being spent on buying millions of cars. Electronic vehicles. It’s being spent on 500,000 charging stations. It’s being spent on tens of billions of dollars of green stuff. Now, when I say green stuff, the U.S. government doesn’t build anything. It doesn’t make anything. So what you have is you have dozens of billionaire special interests who pull themselves up to the table and have gotten the Democrats. Because Republicans are not going to sign on to this. This is a billionaire’s special interest bill where over one and a half-trillion dollars is going to billionaires.
Leahy: When you say that, be more specific about which billionaires. Billionaires who are making electric vehicles?
Carmichael: Yes. That are making electric vehicles or making the charging stations or making the other things that are so-called green. And so the executive, this is a lot like what we were talking about with Senator Mark Pody who said if you are going to buy condoms under this particular bill, you have to buy a particular brand name.
Leahy: Right. Whoever makes those is the one benefiting.
Carmichael: It’s the one benefiting. That’s the one that had the lobbyist get their name in that bill to force taxpayers to spend more money to buy their products. That’s exactly what is going in here. And this is why big business now is so supportive of Democrats. They don’t want the taxes and they’re going to fight the taxes, and they’ll probably win most of that battle.
But what they are going to get is trillions of dollars of spending, because this is on top of the $1.9 trillion so-called relief bill, which, as we said, is only nine percent of that. So you have 1.7 trillion-plus 2.3 trillion. That’s $4 trillion. Trillion is a number that most of us can’t even talk about.
Leahy: You can’t comprehend how big it is.
Carmichael: And somebody was talking about 100,000 Brazilians. And I asked somebody, is a Brazilian, more than a trillion? (Laughter)
Leahy: Crom, that’s kind of funny.
Carmichael: These words. It used to be a billionaire here or a billionaire there. Now it’s literally a trillion here or a trillion there.
Leahy: And this all began with if you remember that famous statement by former minority leader in the Senate, Everett Dirksen? He said, a billion here or a billionaire there. Sooner or later, it adds up to real money.
Carmichael: And I want to try to put this into context in terms of just the multiples of it. If you have one dollar, that’s not a lot. If you have a thousand dollars, that’s not a lot.
Leahy: No.
Carmichael: But if you add three zeros, it’s a million.
Leahy: That’s a lot.
Carmichael: Okay, well, it’s a lot compared to a thousand.
Leahy: It’s a lot compared to a thousand. It’s for an individual.
Carmichael: Yes, well, the point I’m trying to make is that a person who has a million dollars is in pretty good shape. But if they retire on a million dollars, they’re going to live a modest life in retirement. If you add three zeros to a million you have a billion. Now, that’s way up there.
Leahy: Now that’s real money.
Carmichael: That’s real money. For the average American, that is an astounding amount of money. Add three, zeros to a billion, and you get a trillion.
Leahy: It’s really hard to conceptualize that.
Carmichael: Here’s the key thing. It’s a thousand times more. Just as each one that we’ve talked about is a thousand times more. When you get to where you are at a trillion if we start getting to where we’re throwing around trillions, that leads to hyperinflation. At some point, the jig is up.
Leahy: Aren’t we on a path to hyperinflation though?
Carmichael: It’s interesting. A friend of mine said, you know, the stock market tends to go up more when Democrats are in office than when Republicans are in office. And I scratched my head about that, and I went and looked and it’s true. But Democrats spend a whole lot more money than Republicans do when they’re in charge. And the greater the government spending, the more liquidity there is. And the moral liquidity goes to find places to land which is in the asset class. Now, Democrats claim that they are for the little guy, the opposite is absolutely true.
Leahy: Totally the opposite. There was a congressman from Indiana named Congressman Banks. He was on Tucker Carlson last night, and he said, look, let’s face it. Right now, it’s the Republican Party that’s the party of the middle class and working Americans, not the Democratic Party.
Carmichael: No, no. But this gets a little bit like your Victor Davis Hanson. All of these things, which is the up is down and down is up. Left is right, right is left. This is exactly the same thing. The Democrats have to trick people who are in the middle class or who are lower-income, they have to trick people to vote for them because all of their policies hurt the middle class.
Leahy: And the way they trick them is, they tell lies constantly. And they’re repeated by the mainstream media and Big Tech.
Carmichael: And then they give them a few hundred bucks.
Leahy: Exactly.
Listen to the second hour here:
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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.
