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 chairman of the Tea Party Patriots Action, Jenny Beth Martin to the newsmaker line to discuss today’s SCOTUS hearing which will address the power of the executive branch in regards to Biden’s student loan forgiveness program.
Leahy: On the newsmaker line right now, our very good friend, the honorary chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action, Jenny Beth Martin. Good morning, Jenny Beth!
Martin: Good morning, Michael. It’s so good to be with you.
Leahy: Jenny Beth before we get to our discussion of the Supreme Court contemplation and consideration of a lawsuit that would basically say the student loan giveaway program should not happen and is not constitutional. Before we get to that, just a little reminder.
I looked at the calendar. Today is February 28, 2023. You may recall, 14 years ago yesterday, on February 27, 2009, you and I and about two dozen other Tea Party activists organized the very first series of Tea Parties, I think in about 50 cities. We had had a bunch of folks turn out, and then that led to the big Tax Day Tea Party on April 15, 2009. Jenny Beth, we’ve been at this now for over 14 years.
Martin: It’s been a very long time. And Michael, your audience should know that the first round of Tea Party events would not have happened if you’d not started Top Conservatives on Twitter and found a way to start connecting people who were conservative on social media. It’s easy to take that for granted today.
You began that in 2008, right after the election, I believe, and that’s how I was able to get connected with others around the country and not just be connected with those in my own local, county, and state. So thank you for that.
Leahy: Isn’t it fascinating? You talk about Twitter. We did start Top Conservative on Twitter, and that’s how we connected all of what became the Tea Party activists. It started out with that. But what’s interesting, Twitter in 2009 was a lot different than Twitter in 2022 and now 2023, wasn’t it?
Martin: It really was, and there weren’t as many people on it. And I think that from a historical standpoint, the organizing that we did for those first rounds of Tea Parties was one of the first times Twitter had been used that way in such an organic manner.
And we’ve gone on to see that happen with many other movements and events around the entire world, frankly. But it’s easy to take for granted the way hashtags unite people now or trend and get news today. But back then, it was not an everyday occurrence.
Leahy: And you know what was interesting about that, Jenny Beth? When I started the Top Conservatives on the Twitter list and we started talking back and forth and having regular communications, I went from no followers on Twitter to like, 17,000, right?
And that was like, within six months. And then from mid-2009 to 2022, I went from 17,000 to like, 13,000. (Laughter) And only since Musk purchased Twitter and then I’ve been doing, as you have, a lot of appearances on WarRoom with Stephen K Bannon, now I’m back up to 16,800. So, you know, Twitter is a little more open than it was during that, I don’t know, you call it 12 years in the wilderness right between mid-2009 and 2021.
But it is fascinating how you and I have been working at this for 14 years, and now you’ve founded Tea Party Patriots, and now that you’re the honorary chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action, there is a Supreme Court case on the Biden student loan forgiveness program. Bring us up to speed on that.
Martin: It’s happening today, actually. They will hear arguments on two related cases, Biden versus Nebraska and the Department of Education versus Brown. And the question is whether the executive branch has the authority on its own to cancel the student loan debt program.
And I would contend that that absolutely is not something that the executive branch can do because it’s taking away the power of the purse from Congress and putting it in the hands of the executive branch single-handedly without going through the law-making process of passing bills in Congress and then being signed into law.
And this is a very significant amount of money, but it’s more than just the amount of money. It’s about whether the executive branch has the right to do this and if they can do it with a student loan program and if the court decides this is constitutional and absolutely allowable, where will it stop?
I think that if this is allowed, what will eventually happen is that Congress will no longer have the power of the purse at all, which violates the balance of powers and the checks and balances written into the Constitution.
Leahy: My guess is that this will end up being both cases will be six-three losses for the Biden administration. Your thoughts on where you see this going?
Martin: I think so. And the reason for that is that we’ve already seen that the Supreme Court struck down mandates that are related to COVID. So we’ve already seen that they have done that. And very importantly, last year that they ruled in West Virginia versus the EPA that the executive branch, when they are taking actions that involve major economic and political significance, requires, the court said, clear congressional authorization. And on this particular loan forgiveness program or student loan debt giveaway, it does not have that clear authorization from Congress.
Leahy: Do we anticipate a Supreme Court ruling coming down in June on this?
Martin: That is what I would imagine. Now, I’m not a Supreme Court expert and I’m not an attorney, but usually, they do wait until June. And so I would imagine this would be one in June and probably one closer to the end of the month than the beginning of the month.
Leahy: Yes, that’s my take on it as well. Tell us a little bit about the agenda of Tea Party Patriots Action. What are the big issues that you’re working on?
Martin: As we look through the end of this year, in 2023, and through next year in 2024, we continue to work to secure elections. I think we still have a lot of work to do with that. But also it’s just a never-ending project because there are always more elections and we have to make sure that the elections are secure. So we are going to continue to work on that.
But I also want to win and I think it’s very important, important that we have faith in the outcome of the elections, regardless of who wins. And then as a conservative activist, I hate losing and I don’t want to see socialists control this country. So we’re working on both winning and securing elections.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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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 “Jenny Beth Martin” by Jenny Beth Martin. Background Photo “Supreme Court of the United States” by Adam Szuscik.
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 Taxpayers Protection Alliance President David Williams to the newsmaker line to explain the new left-wing funded study that would allow the IRS to prepare the taxes of Americans.
Leahy: We are joined on our newsmaker line now by the president of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, Mr. David Williams. Good morning, David.
Williams: Good morning. How are you?
Leahy: Well, I’m concerned, David, because the IRS, that Internal Revenue Service, they’re up to no good again. What is the latest IRS ploy?
Williams: Boy, this is really concerning because last year we saw the Inflation Reduction Act, the $80 billion, the 87,000 new agents, and there was something in that legislation that a lot of people didn’t see, and that was $15 million for the IRS, “study the implementation of a tax prep system by the IRS.”
That’s right. The IRS wants to now prepare your taxes. Think about that for a second. You go to a private company; you do it yourself. You’re trying to get yourself the biggest refund that you can.
Do you think the IRS is going to do that when they prepare your taxes? Do you think they really have it in your interest when they’re preparing your taxes? But that’s where we’re going with this, is the IRS wants to prepare your taxes.
Leahy: H&R Block, I don’t think they support this. And Crom Carmichael has a question for you.
Carmichael: The IRS is a part of the executive branch, correct?
Williams: Correct.
Carmichael: And it reports to the treasury because the President of the United States has determined that it should report to the treasury because the President is the head of the executive branch. Correct?
Williams: Correct.
Carmichael: So that means the White House could direct the IRS to do whatever the White House thinks the IRS should do in order to try to help the country.
Williams: Yes. And this is the huge conflict of interest right now is that if you have the IRS preparing your taxes, first of all, there are massive privacy concerns. Look what happened two years ago when sensitive taxpayer data was released to the media, to the public, something that should have never happened.
And we still don’t know who did it. We don’t know who is inside the IRS. Listen, Congress has dropped the ball on this, but the IRS has been so political over the past, boy, decades. In 2010, Lois Lerner denied groups their status, their 501 (c) (3) or 501 (c) (4). So it’s highly political. And now it’s going to get even worse with all this sensitive information being sent to the IRS.
Carmichael: But you said there’s $15 million in that. I think you said $15 million, not $15 billion, but to study whether or not the IRS could fill out people’s returns or should fill out their returns.
Williams: Yes. And so this $15 million is going to a left-leaning group, New America, that has had a history of being cozy with Senator Elizabeth Warren. They have supported the IRS in preparing your taxes. So, listen, this isn’t a study. This is ridiculous. This is not a study.
This is jeopardy. Jeopardy, you watch the show, they have the answers first, and you have to come up with the question. That’s what New America is doing. They’re just coming up with the question. They already know what the answer is. So this $15 million, A, is a waste of money, and B, there’s not going to be a real study here.
Leahy: In this bill, the incorrectly named Inflation Reduction Act, George Orwell said obviously it was the Inflation Increasing Act because the spending was crazy. There’s a $15 million contract. The federal government is giving money to this group called New America, a left-leaning group.
So I’m looking at the people that are funding this nonprofit. Are you ready? The Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Reid Hoffman Foundation, the left-wing guy who made money off of linkedin.com. This is a compendium of left-wing philanthropic groups.
And now they are getting $15 million of taxpayer money to study the idea of setting up a taxpayer prep service that would compete with H&R Block and all the other folks that are doing that?
Williams: Yes. And it’s a who’s who of left-leaning groups. And this is a group that has hundreds of millions of dollars. They don’t need this money, and they shouldn’t be getting this money. And not enough people know about this. And that’s my concern, is that people are listening, going, what the heck is going on?
And this is something that they tried to slip by us, but we actually had a whistleblower reach out to us that said, hey, listen, did you know about this and gave us this information. So if it wasn’t for that, I mean, talk about a non-transparent government, because this would have happened.
We would have found out probably in June when the study was done. But I’m glad we know now because we can put pressure on the House Republicans. And that’s what we’re doing, is we’re contacting the House Republicans saying, hey, whoa, wait a second. Pump the brakes on this, and we’re seeing if we can at least stop the study from happening.
Leahy: By the way, I’m looking at the other donation here the other guy’s donation, Michael Bloomberg. (Laughs)
Carmichael: Wow. That’s a who’s who of the billionaire class.
Leahy: The who’s who of left-wing billionaires who want to tell you how you should file your taxes. What’s wrong with this picture?
Williams: Yes, quite a bit wrong with that picture. And again, the IRS should not be preparing your taxes.
Leahy: Has the money changed hands? Are they doing the study now?
Williams: So they are doing the study. I don’t know if the $15 million has changed hands yet, but they’re in the process of doing this. And what you’re going to have is if the IRS is in charge of this, you’re going to have to give all of your financial information to the IRS.
And what that also means is that they’re going to have to hire more people. And this nonsense when we hear that, oh, they’re not going to go after the little guy in these audits.
Leahy: They’re going after the little guy.
Williams: They absolutely are.
Leahy: I’m looking at the list of donors. Wait for it. Wait for it. George Soros.
Williams: Oh my gosh.
Leahy: Open Society Foundation and then Pierre Omidyar. Right. His group. He’s the left-wing guy that started one of these; I think PayPal or something like that or eBay. He did eBay. But wait, there’s more. Google is funding it. And Amazon, the crazy guy who made money on Enron and now is a real lefty, Arnold Ventures.
Carmichael: Now, what are you talking about here, Michael? Is this is an organization that somehow is getting $15 million from the federal government to study…
Leahy: To study the idea of setting up the federal government’s tax preparation service. David, this is lunacy. It’s insane.
Williams: It really is. And the IRS has gone way beyond what it’s supposed to be doing. I mean, during the pandemic, the IRS gave money to dead people. And here’s the reason why is that no one told them not to. Literally, an IRS agent asked, why did you send checks to dead people? And they said, Well, Congress didn’t tell us not to.
Leahy: There you go. That wraps up the IRS in a nutshell. (Williams chuckles)
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 “David Williams” by David Williams. Background Photo “Internal Revenue Service Federal Building” by Tony Webster. CC BY 2.0.
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 Metro Nashville’s City Council Member-at-Large Steve Glover to discuss Nashville’s budget timing and pointed out a recent Wall Street Journal article signaling Nashville’s fiscal trouble.
Leahy: In studio with us, Metro Council member at large, Steve Glover. But Scooter has a weather update for us. Lots going on out there. Scooter, Speaking of troubled weather and storms, there’s a fiscal storm going on in Nashville. It has for some time. We’re talking about that here with Steve Glover, Metro Council member at large, The Wall Street Journal pointed it out in a devastating article that is entirely counter to the way that Mayor Cooper presented the State of Metro on Thursday.
Glover: The sad part is, is the way that the State of Metro was presented. Then Friday, the joke of the way the budget was presented.
Leahy: Let’s stop and talk about it. Let’s be clear about how this works so our audience can understand. On Thursday, it was a press conference. Yackety yack.
Glover: Thursday was the State of Metro right at that point. And I’ve not known this to be the case that once the Mayor hands the budget over it’s the council’s budget.
Leahy: Got it.
Glover: And I didn’t see it handled that way number one.
Leahy: Part of the State of Metro is to present the budget. Correct?
Glover: Well, you don’t know. Not necessarily. Normally, once the State of Metro is completed, then they come in with the budget. But they waited a day and just said there wasn’t enough space. That’s malarky. Malarky. They could have adjourned upstairs, come down to the Davidson Ballroom, or whatever where desks were already set up for the Metro Council.
And they could have done a budget and a Council meeting and gone ahead and done it. They just chose not to. It’s just another way the legislative body just keeps giving up more and more power to the executive branch. And The Wall Street Journal article that you first started talking about in this segment is exactly right. And this is why we’re in the predicament we are in right now because the executive branch does whatever the heck it wants to. And the legislative branch says okay.
Leahy: Where’s my rubber stamp?
Glover: Doh dee-doh dee-doh… And they can get mad at me all they want to. I don’t care, because, you know, the thing that drives me the craziest is we are elected by the people who represent the people, and they have abdicated that to one office downstairs in the executive branch. The legislative branch, our forefathers had a great reason for the way they set up our Constitution and the way our government is supposed to work in America.
The Wall Street Journal article talking about Nashville being one of the five worst cities fiscally it should have been, and I think the article pointed it out, we should have been literally at the crest of being the best because we had every opportunity in the world.
Leahy: Nashville has everything going for it except for a very bad, reckless Metro government.
Glover: Yep. And as I said on Tucker Carlson about six months ago, whatever it was, it’s a lack of leadership. That’s our problem in Nashville. A lack of leadership. And whenever you have that kind of void, this is what happens. Oh, well, just like you’re talking about the American whatever, blah, blah, blah. They give them all these names and whatever.
They’re going to throw all kinds of money at things. And they’re not going to fix anything. And that’s been our problem. We keep throwing money, throwing money, throwing money. And we’ll talk about some of this as we go forward here on where I think we’re throwing money in all the wrong places.
Leahy: Wasting money.
Glover: In my opinion, it’s beyond wasting. And we’re not really focusing on where we need to be spending the money. The Wall Street Journal was exactly right. They come out last week and they said, oh, no, we fixed it. Everything’s golden. No, it’s not. Don’t think it is. And I’m not saying the sky is falling, the sky is falling. I’m saying that it’s raining pretty hard outside and you better get a frigging umbrella.
Leahy: And it’s mostly it’s largely these unfunded health care liabilities for retirees.
Glover: Well, the op-ed. So what they’ll talk about on that is that they fixed that and they’ve removed one point one billion dollars off of the financial sheets because they’re going to shift everything to this Medicare advantage thing. So we’re going to move it from the local government to the federal government. Yeah, that will fix it.
Leahy: That’s a joke.
Glover: So way to go, Metro. Oh, my gosh. You guys are just tremendous.
Leahy: This is very much how Liberal Democrats pretend two ‘solve problems.’ They just move the accounting for it from one side to another side or try to.
Glover: Let’s make sure we give credit do where it’s supposed to all be given. Don’t forget now and I think it was last hour or whatever you were talking about the George W. Bush thing.
Leahy: Oh, yeah.
Glover: He’s the one who did the Medicare Part D. And Clinton gave us Medicare Part C, which is Medicare Advantage. And then George W. gave us Medicare Part D, which is prescription drugs and has been a fiasco ever since. And so what we’re doing in Metro, apparently and I haven’t read the whole thing so it’s hard for me to tell you exactly what it looks like right now.
If you’re 65 plus, you have to go on Medicare Advantage. That means now you will have to take Medicare Part B, which is 136 or 140 or whatever it is a month that you’ll be required to pay. And so what my question is, well, okay, if you’re doing that and how much are you still going to have to pay off the insurance? I know people grind the axe on the Council members, but you got to talk about the retirees. We’re talking about folks who gave years about years upon years upon years of service.
Leahy: And there’s unfunded healthcare liability for those retirees.
Glover: Yes. And there is across the entire country. It’s not anything unique only to Metro.
Leahy: It’s just worse here apparently.
Glover: It is.
Leahy: Like, by a lot.
Glover: Well, it’s because we like to buy new, shiny toys every Christmas, as opposed to buying one toy every Christmas and making sure the toys we bought in the previous Christmases are kept operational, functional, and serving the purpose.
Leahy: This budget document you’re talking about that was not presented along with the State of Metro address, but was delivered separately.
Glover: Friday. It always is. That’s the way the bill is always filed on Friday.
Leahy: So it was delivered on Friday. And this is for what budget period?
Glover: Well, it will be for the FY ’22.
Leahy: And when does that begin?
Glover: July one.
Leahy: July one of this coming year?
Glover: Yes. July 21 of 2021.
Leahy: Until June 30th of 2022.
Glover: Correct.
Leahy: Now, how many pages is this budget?
Glover: I don’t know the number on the orders.
Leahy: A lot?
Glover: You got to look at the budget book. The ordinance only spells out the legalities.
Leahy: The budget then.
Glover: The budget book typically is about 1,000 pages.
Leahy: Are you going to read every page of that?
Glover: Pretty much.
Leahy: You’re kidding me?
Glover: No.
Leahy: That’s a lot of work.
Glover: I always do that. That’s what I do.
Leahy: You always do it. How many Metro Council members read the 1,000-page budget book?
Glover: I don’t know. I mean, you could ask each one of them. They could tell you whatever.
Leahy: So after the Mayor submits the budget, it goes to a committee in Metro?
Glover: It goes to the whole Council. The Budget and Finance Committee, which I’m a member of, we will take it, and we pretty much so do what’s going to be the hearings. But what I found most interesting is this year our chair, and look, she’s a nice person. Nothing personal here. It’s just the fact that only going to be one substitute. You can do amendments, blah, blah. Once again, we’re abdicating our responsibilities.
Leahy: So let me ask you this. The Budget and Finance Committee of Metro is very important. And you’re a Metro Council Member-At-Large.
Glover: Correct. I represent the whole city.
Leahy: But you’re not the chair of the committee.
Glover: No, I’ll never be the chair. If I was the chair, we’d start fixing things.
Leahy: You’re not the chair of the committee because…
Glover: I’m a Republican.
Leahy: Who picks the chair, the vice Mayor, the Vice Mayor. And how many people are on the committee?
Glover: I think there’s 13, 14, 15 of us.
Leahy: Wow, that’s a big committee.
Glover: That’s a huge committee.
Leahy: I think you’re having a meeting today?
Glover: Yes. At four o’clock. Four or four-thirty. Something like that.
Leahy: Tell us what is going to happen in that meeting.
Glover: Well, you’ll go through this week’s agenda and that’s what we’ll talk about. But we’re going to be convening this coming Thursday to talk about the budget. So here we are one week later, and we’re gonna start talking about the budget. We won’t be talking about it today or tomorrow. We’re going to wait until Thursday because no need to talk about something that’s kind of spinning out of control.
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.
