BlackRock | Michael Patrick Leahy

Crom Carmichael: ‘The Biden Agenda Is Being Carried Out in the Administrative State’

Live from Music Row Wednesday 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 discuss how the Biden agenda is not dead as it continues to push forward through the administrative state conveniently allowing the mainstream media to blame Republicans.

Leahy: We joined in studio by our good friend, the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael. Crom, good morning.

Carmichael: Michael. Good morning, Sir.

Leahy: Lots of things happening yesterday in Washington. In fact, we’re going to have today a couple of reports from Washington. Neil McCabe joins us at 7:15. The best Washington correspondent in the country. He works for The Tennessee Star and Star News Network. Senator Bill Hagerty will be here with us at 7:30.

Carmichael: Oh, okay.

Leahy: So I’m going to ask him a tough question to begin with. And then we’ll go on to talk about the border. And S1. S1, you want to talk about that. S1 is the bill last night, that the Democrats call For the People Act. Republicans call it the Corrupt Politician Act.

Carmichael: I want to put a couple of things into context. First of all, S1, all 50 Democrats voted for it.

Leahy: All 50.

Carmichael: And all 50 Republicans vote against it. And it’s very important that we understand that s one was really nothing but a head fake. That’s all it was. And then the question about the filibuster is nothing but a head fake.

Please understand that people say the Biden agenda is dead. The Biden agenda is dead. It’s not dead. They’re just not going to pass it through the legislature. And the legislature does not care.

Leahy: That’s a very important point.

Carmichael: The Biden agenda is being done through the administration. I was with a fellow yesterday, and he was telling me that in his large company that every month between four and 500 people are required to be on a two hour Zoom call for a two-hour call. And Black employees are allowed and encouraged to rail against white employees. And the white employees are required to be on the call.

Leahy: This is all part of the diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

Carmichael: Well, it’s called ESG.

Leahy: Environmental social governance. That’s the standard. We were talking yesterday here with Dan Grant of 2nd Vote Advisers. It’s basically a money market fund and exchange traded funds that are pushing against that.

ESG is the product of the big money manager BlackRock headed up by a very bad guy by the name of Larry Fink. He goes around to all these publicly traded companies and says, here are the ESG standards you must follow. And they include doing those kinds of trainings.

Carmichael: But the ESG standards are being promulgated by the federal government. He’s just the messenger.

Leahy: He may be the cause of those regulations.

Carmichael: No, he’s not Michael. He’s not. And I’m not trying to defend the guy.

Leahy: Let’s talk about those regulations.

Carmichael: The ESG, first it is environmental. The second is social. And the third is governance. Right now, the governance has to do with the makeup of your board and of your executive officers.

Leahy: Of a publicly-traded company.

Carmichael: Of a publicly-traded company. That’s the governance part. You have to have the right number of women and minorities and all these other groups represented on your board and in your officer group.

And I’m talking about now the executive people, not the military. Military is an entirely different issue which is ESG on an accelerated pace. But then going backward. That was the governance part.

The S part is the social part, and that gets into what I’m talking about now. The corporations across the country that are regulated by the SEC, which is all publicly traded companies, they’re doing exactly what I just described.

They’re having these enormous calls where Black employees are being encouraged to essentially humiliate the white employees. And what I’m interested in thinking about here is, does that do any good?

Leahy: It doesn’t.

Carmichael: I agree. But these companies are being forced. They’re being forced. And this is why I say this is not Fink because think can’t make people do anything Michael. That’s what I’m saying.

He may like the idea and he may be for the idea, but he doesn’t have…when we say institutional racism, there’s nothing he can do institutionally because he’s just a guy that controls a huge amount of money.

But when the federal government and the SEC calls the CEO of a company and says you are not following federal regulations, we are coming after you. How do you think that CEO will react?

Leahy: But let me step back for a moment because you’re adding something new to the picture here. And I wonder if you could elaborate on this. You’re saying that the SEC has current regulations.

Carmichael: No, I’m not saying they have current regulations. I’m just telling you what they’re doing. You don’t have to have a regulation to be a thug. You don’t you don’t have to make it lawful. You just have to do it. (Chuckles)

Leahy: Let’s step back and see if I understand the argument here. So you’re saying that SEC executives are calling up CEOs of Fortune 500 companies?

Carmichael: No, I’m not saying that. They don’t have to. They don’t have to. Large companies are getting the message, however they’re getting it. But if they don’t do what they’re supposed to do, they’ll get the call.

Leahy: Yeah, but here’s what I’m asking you, though. When you say they’re supposed to do. There’s some kind of communication that they’re receiving.

Carmichael: Yeah.

Leahy: We’re trying to understand what’s going on out there. What I’m telling you is my understanding is they’re getting that communication through ‘stewardship teams’ that Larry Fink’s BlackRock has set up, that go out and talk to the CEOs.

Carmichael: Okay, well, that’s fine.

Leahy: But you’re saying that they’re getting it through the SEC?

Carmichael: No. What I’m saying is that if Fink is doing what you’re saying he’s doing, and I’m not saying he’s not, when he does it, he says if you don’t do what I’m telling you to do the SEC will. Just like in the military. You saw where the military where Austin has now unilaterally done away with the Military Code of Justice. He’s gone away with it.

Leahy: The Secretary of Defense.

Carmichael: Yes. I don’t know if you saw that.

Leahy: When did that happen?

Carmichael: Yesterday. It might have been the day before, and it was reported yesterday.

Leahy: This is 250 years of military code.

Carmichael: I’m just telling you that the Biden agenda is being carried out in the administrative state. The Congress doesn’t matter anymore. And this is all a head fake. This is a head fake so that the media minions can simply ban the Republicans for the Biden agenda not moving forward when, in fact, it is moving forward.

Leahy: I have a couple of things to say about that. Where is Columbia Law School Professor Philip Hamburger when we need him? He’s the expert on the abuses of administrative law, judges, and the regulatory process. And number two, and this is very interesting. Have you read something about this?

Carmichael: I’m logically putting the pieces together.

Leahy: You’re putting it logically together.

Carmichael: But I also know for a fact certain things are happening. So I’m taking the certain things that actually I know are happening and I’m piecing them together. I know, for example, that Senate Bill 1 failed yesterday because they didn’t reach 60, but they did get all 50 Democrats.

Leahy: All of them. Stepped in line.

Carmichael: Everyone one of them. Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema stepped in line to claim that Republicans are trying to suppress the vote. That claim is false. But that’s the claim. By the way, 46 out of 47 European countries require voter ID. Republicans want people to prove who they are to vote. Democrats do not want that. Period.

Leahy: They want illegal aliens to be able to vote. They want dead people to vote.

Carmichael: No, dead people. So how do dead people vote, Michael?

Leahy: Somebody forges and somebody pretends to be.

Carmichael: Or just stuff the ballot box and make up names and stuff the ballot box. There are two books. One book I can remember and the other one I can almost remember. The Secrets of the Hopewell Box.

Leahy: Oh yes!

Carmichael: It’s about all the corruption that went on in Nashville where they just literally stuffed the ballot box with the correct number of ballots. It didn’t matter if there was a voter name attached to it. I’m getting ready to read that book, and I’ll report some details. The other one is Fried Chicken Fiddlesticks or whatever it is. And that’s more about Tennessee politics historically and how similar things were done.

Leahy: By James Squires. Wasn’t he a big editor at USA Today?

Carmichael: Yes. Yes. But this is back a long time ago.

Leahy: It’s about the 40s or 50s.

Carmichael: So I’ve got that book and I’m going to read it.

Leahy: I can’t wait to hear what you say about that.

Carmichael: But it’s all about pure voter cheating. Stuffing ballot boxes with fake ballots and then counting them because you can.

Leahy: History repeating itself.

Carmichael: Yes.

Listen to the full 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.

2nd Vote Advisers Co-Founder and CEO Dan Grant Offers an Alternative to Corporate CEO’s Forced to Adopt Leftwing Idelogies

Live from Music Row Tuesday 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 Co-Founder and CEO Daniel Grant of 2nd Vote Advisers to the studio to discuss their alternative for Fortune 500 corporations who want stay out of the politically correct ideology promoted by left-wing asset management firms.

Leahy: I’m just so excited about our guest today because you’re going to learn something about how to fix America right now. And one of the problems with America is embodied by a guy you’ve never heard of folks.

Listen to this guy’s name. He’s aptly named. His name is Larry Fink. F-I-N-K. And he’s very aptly named. He’s a very powerful guy, really powerful guy. He’s ahead of a group, the biggest money manager in the country, BlackRock. They manage, what, $9 trillion?

Grant: $9 trillion.

Leahy: $9 trillion. And he’s pushing all this leftist claptrap. There’s a claptrap that he’s pushing. And he wants in his mind, there are good sources of virtuous energy. And then there’s evil. And so in his mind, natural gas, oil, coal, that’s evil.

But solar wind, that’s virtuous. And he’s created all sorts of incentives for CEOs who just want to keep their jobs and get paid $10 million, $20 million a year to kind of be figureheads, moving along with the left.

There are all sorts of pressures with his regular messages to them about what he wants to see. This guy is running the policy of many Fortune 500 companies today, and it is, in my view, Dan Grant, a disgrace. What do you think?

Grant: I think, Larry, he’s a representative of the asset management industry as a whole. BlackRock is the largest. But if you look at all of the leading banks, all of the leading asset managers, investment managers, they’re following this philosophy. And if you went to the BlackRock website, you would find what they call their stewardship team. And that sounds great.

Leahy: Well, there’s a biblical concept, stewardship.

Grant: Sure. They adopted the term. And what they will brag about on the website is last quarter, the stewardship team from BlackRock visited 482 companies and their boards, their management teams, and said, hey, listen, guys, we’re owners were big owners of your company. And if you don’t start making acceptable progress towards hitting these ESG metrics that we have laid out,

Leahy: ESG. Environmental social governance. And some of these metrics are ridiculous, right? They basically, take bad leftist policies, they are the metrics.

Grant: So they’re the largest asset manager in the world. They go to these management teams and say, you need to start doing more to implement our definition of good. You need to start forcing that definition on your suppliers, your vendors, and ultimately, your customers. And if you don’t, we will start voting you out. And they are doing it.

Leahy: They’re voting them out. And basically, you got to accept their version of diversity, equity, and inclusion. You got to embrace Critical Race Theory in the workplace which is perhaps one of the most divisive things that are out there.

Now, people listening to us, you work for a large company, they’ve got diversity, equity, and inclusion. And if you go in, you’re forced to sit through the training. They’re telling you stuff that you know is wrong.

But what are you going to do? Are you going to say you’re violating my rights and lose your job? That’s what’s going on.

Grant: My company from a practical perspective, 2nd Vote Advisers, we’re looking at what they’re doing and we’re saying, what is the cost to these companies at the end of the day?

What is the cost of a diversity and inclusion program? I mean, it sounds great. But JP Morgan, for example, a couple of months ago announced a 30 billion dollar capital commitment to diversity and inclusion and closing the racial gap.

Leahy: (i.e. dividing people). That’s what those programs do.

Grant: You read the press release and you look at it and it’s like, okay, their funding, additional mortgages, small business loans, and that all sounds great. And the top 10 banks all have very similar programs, multi-billion dollar programs.

But nowhere in that press release is the actual cost. They’re not talking about the underwriting criteria for these types of loans and for these types of mortgages? A friend of mine was seriously being considered to be the CEO of Fannie Mae back in the Great Recession.

Leahy: Tell people what Fannie Mae is and why it matters.

Grant: It’s one of the government-sponsored entities that will essentially buy up mortgages.

Leahy: It’s the Federal National Mortgage Associations Administration. It’s a quasi-public organization.

Grant: Back in the Great Recession, both of the GSEs were about to fail. And the reason they were about to fail is they allocated 10 percent of their capital to subprime loans. But that 10 percent represented about well over 50 percent of at-risk.

Leahy: Why did they allocate those 10 percent of subprime loans?

Grant: Because they wanted to do something for the social good.

Leahy: Because it would be good.

Grant: It would be good.

Leahy: Virtue signaling.

Grant: So to bring it back to JP Morgan and this 30 billion and the top 10 banks, what they’re doing, what is the actual cost? Nobody knows. Third Bank just announced a $2.8 billion program, and they’re investing in a bank in Detroit, which doesn’t have the best background.

And yet they’re going to allocate a lot of capital to this bank in Detroit. And that bank in Detroit is going to be putting that money to work. Well, how successful is that going to be?

Leahy: I guess we’ll find out.

Grant: Right.

Leahy: But let me come back and say, okay, so these big money managers like Larry Fink. F-I-N-K. Big Larry Fink, that guy. They’re forcing companies to do all this politically correct stuff that’s costing a lot of money.

Let’s say you have some assets that are currently under management. What can 2nd Vote Advisers do to help out?

Grant: The first thing I would tell you is we are not going to do what BlackRock is doing. We are not going to be visiting companies and their boards and saying, hey, guys, we want you to implement our definition of good.

Leahy: Threatening them basically, you must do our version of lacking good or we’re going to whack you and we’re going to get rid of you.

Grant: That’s right. So what we’re doing is we are actually voting our shares with our beliefs. Companies should not be into social justice engineering. So we are telling CEOs to do that.

And I feel like we’re actually giving CEOs a reason to say no to Larry. Larry, right now, and all the big banks, all the asset managers, as I mentioned, are behind it.

Leahy: He’s kind of a tyrant when it comes to dealing with CEOs who are just quivering when his stewardship team walks in, they start to wonder, what can we do? What can we do? How can we not make them upset? How can I keep my job?

Grant: So what I hope to do is give these CEOs a reason to say no to Larry. I want them to say, Larry, listen, I hear what you want, but I got Dan Grant from 2nd Vote Advisers, and he wants us to do something completely different.

We’ve gone to our board, and we’ve decided to just stay out of the whole thing altogether and focus on our company and profits and let the individual decide where they want to put their philanthropy and charity.

Leahy: This Larry Fink guy at BlackRock manages 9 trillion dollars of money. Where does that money come from, by the way?

Grant: It comes from you and me.

Leahy: Private individuals.

Grant: Private individuals. If you’re in a pension plan if you’re a teacher if you’re a policeman if you’re an individual investor. These guys have hundreds upon hundreds of exchange-traded funds and mutual funds.

Leahy: So they’ve got 9 trillion under management. So 2nd Vote Advisers, what do you have under management?

Grant: Well, we started only a few months ago, and unfortunately, it takes a company like ours, a startup, to do what we’re doing. So I mentioned we started in 2000.

Leahy: You started with zero.

Grant: We started with zero. We now have two publicly traded exchange-traded funds.

Leahy: Tell us what an exchange-traded fund is.

Grant: It’s very much like a mutual fund. So you can go on, you can put the ticker symbol in. And one of our tickers is EGIS and it’s a Second Amendment fund.

Leahy: Which ticker do I go to?

Grant: If you are with a Morgan Stanley or any broker and you want to buy a stock, you put the ticker symbol in and you hit buy. So it is a liquid stock.

Leahy: Can I do it online myself?

Grant: Absolutely.

Leahy: Where would you go?

Grant: I have an E-Trade account.

Leahy: Put in EGIS I could do it right now if I wanted to buy. And what’s the fund do? Investing in gun companies?

Grant: Well, no. So what we’ve done is we have rated the S&P 1500. And we have different issues that Conservatives care about. One of the issues that Conservatives care about is the Second Amendment.

Listen to the third 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.