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 Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs to the newsmaker line to talk about its upcoming first annual Fall Festival in Corrington, Tennessee and the infiltration of Clinton backed groups influencing local governments.
Leahy: We joined on our newsmaker line by our favorite retired wrestler, Mayor of Knox County Glenn Jacobs. Good morning, Glenn.
Jacobs: Good morning Michael. How are you, sir?
Leahy: I am great. So you got a fun festival going on in Knox County? I love to have a fun story. Tell us, is this the first annual fall festival, or have you been doing this for a while?
Jacobs: This is the first annual fall festival. It’s going to be October 26 this coming Tuesday at Oaks Farm in Corrington, Tennessee. It’s a beautiful place. There are all sorts of stuff, games, and fun activities for kids of all ages.
And, of course, a pumpkin patch, a corn maze. And we’ll even have live music by Gone Country, which is one of America’s top country cover bands. So we’re really looking forward to it and it’s going to be a lot of fun.
Leahy: That’s great. Now, who’s putting it on? And why do they decide to do this fall?
Jacobs: This is with my campaign. We are putting it on, and we just want to have a good time and get people out. And fall is my favorite season.
The temperatures are dropping. Football is in full swing. I love autumn. We thought what better time than to get folks out to Oakes Farm and just have a good time that evening.
Leahy: It’s interesting you say that fall is your favorite season. You’re a little bit younger than I am. But I remember I had the same exact feeling because as a kid playing in a little small high school in upstate New York, I had visions of NFL glory.
Didn’t make it past freshman football in college. But I always dreamed of being the star on the football field. Fall would come around, football practice would start. I was ready. It was just so much fun. And I sense that a lot of us sort of have that feeling about fall.
Jacobs: Absolutely. Of course, I played football and before that basketball. And basketball you’re ramping up during the fall. So this is a great time of year.
And of course, the harvest is done. And back in the day, there’s big celebrations about that. And to kind of carry it on now, I think it’s wonderful.
Leahy: Now, if I go up there on Tuesday…
Jacobs: You’re going to have a good time if you go up there. Yeah, but I am tempted. I would like to. Tell you what, if it were on a weekend, I would definitely go up. But am I going to have to wear a mask? (Chuckles)
Jacobs: Only a Halloween mask.
Leahy: (Chuckles) That is a lot of fun. In addition to having fun, there are other things going on in Knox County. What are the major issues that you’re facing right now as Mayor of Knox County?
Jacobs: Well, just like everyone else we’re dealing with all the code stuff and the tension between local governments and control at a local level and the edicts coming down from the federal government, of course.
Not only have I spoken out against President Biden’s vaccine mandate, which is having an impact on workers here. We already have folks that are being threatened to be fired, have already been let go and all those sort of things because they feel it’s their choice.
Leahy: Yeah, folks that have been let go from corporations there over their vaccine mandate policies.
Jacobs: Yes. And also being threatened to be let go. At Oak Ridge, which is very close to Knox County, we have the big DOE complex with the Oakes National Lab and some other Department of Energy facilities and the employees there, as well as the federal contractors, this impacts them. We can’t do anything about that.
Leahy: Federal workers are currently under this vaccine mandate, I guess. Is that right?
Jacobs: Right. Yes. And it’s coming down onto the contractors as well.
Leahy: So that’s already having an impact there.
Jacobs: It is. We already have people that have been placed on unpaid leave. There’s a class-action lawsuit going on. People are fighting back against it. But we have that.
We also had a federal judge impose a universal mask mandate on Knox County schools, despite the fact that schools have twice voted down on mask mandates. And there is no end in sight. He did not say the metrics or the numbers under which that mandate would end.
Leahy: Can I just ask you about that one? The status of that?
Jacobs: Sure.
Leahy: This is the lawsuit, the same kind of argument that was brought in two other counties. It was brought in federal district court in Shelby County, in Williamson County, and in Knox County. It turns out the plaintiffs were local parents with kids with some disabilities of some sort.
And the argument was made that not requiring every student to have a mask on violated the Americans with Disability Act. I’ve never figured that out yet. But did you see the group that was representing them? The lawyers you saw the connection there.
Jacobs: Yes. I actually asked some folks to look into this case as far as who is really behind it. And it turns out, as you said, the plaintiffs are local folks. But some of the lawyers in the case, as well as the organization supporting the case, is a group called Democracy Forward.
And they are a Hillary Clinton-backed group. John Podesta is on their board. Of course, John Podesta was Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, and he was Hillary’s 2016 presidential campaign chair.
Mark Elias, who was 2016 general counsel to the Hillary Clinton campaign. So literally, Hillary Clinton’s people are in Knox County influencing policy.
Leahy: This is basically political colonization through litigation. That’s what it looks like to me.
Jacobs: Well, it absolutely is. And I got to hand it to them, they’re really smart strategically because the left has realized that the way you subvert America is through local government.
Not only are they working at the federal level. But they’re also working diligently at the local level. And that should be a click on for all of us should be going off in heads.
Leahy: That is a very important point, Mayor Glenn Jacobs, that you just made and you’ve seen it for decades. With George Soros funding prosecutors and other local elected officials that aren’t enforcing the law. Will you come back and give us a report after the fun of your big fall festival up there on Tuesday?
Jacobs: Sure. Michael, it is going to be a lot of fun that begins on Tuesday, October 26th at Oakes Farm and that’s in Corrington, Tennessee. If it were a little closer, I would be there. But I’m going to come up there and let’s have lunch sometime and we’ll do an exclusive interview with you. That would be great! Maybe one of these years when we do the fall festival, you can do a remote from there.
Leahy: We’ll shoot for that next year. Glenn Jacobs, mayor of Knox County. Thanks so much for joining us. What a great interesting guy to talk to.
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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 “Glenn Jacobs” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
Live from Music Row Thursday 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 U.S. (R) Rep. Mark Green, a Tennessee congressman to the newsmakers line to outline his new bill that establishes illegal migrant children’s status that are coming into Tennessee and preferential treatment of refugees in Central American countries.
Leahy: On our newsmaker line our good friend, Congressman Mark Green from Tennessee. My congressman who does a great job, by the way. Good morning, Congressman Green.
Green: Hey sir. How are you? Good to be on your show.
Leahy: Well, we’re delighted to have you on. And we want to have you in studio someday soon. You’re introducing a new bill apparently or have to address the issue of migrant children being brought to Tennessee. Tell us about that.
Green: Yes. We found out that with this incredible border crisis, the open door and open border policy that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have created, it’s resulted in a lot of children showing up at our doorsteps.
And what’s happened with the federal government and its clandestine methodologies decided they just fly these folks to Tennessee without letting Tennessee know. In fact, they asked Governor Lee and Governor Lee said no but they sent them anyway in the dead of the night.
The problem is the incentives that have been created, we have to shut the incentives down. What we’re basically saying is that the federal government has to ask the governor for permission.
The governor has to give permission. But one of the things we’re doing to make sure that the children are still taking care of we’re moving them from the control of HHS and the refugee program to Homeland Security so that it’s still an immigration issue and not some kind of refugee issue.
Making those guys be classified as migrants keeps the legal status in a way that the federal government can’t force them on Tennessee. The other issue is with this bill is we’re addressing the preferential treatment to certain countries in Central America that get automatic refugee status.
And so we’re trying to fix that as well. And then, of course, to take care of the children. We leading their ability to be housed with HHS because DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, the actual law enforcement folks don’t have the resources to house these children.
So if we leave that portion in law and then change their status, we can address the immigration issue and still take care of the children. And so that’s kind of what the bill does.
Leahy: So it’s interesting you mentioned something that was kind of a mystery to me. I never understood exactly why the Office of Refugee Resettlement was involved in moving these kids here.
Were they trying to just flaunt the law or using a loophole in the law by bringing them in under the Office of Refugee Resettlement? The issue is in the weeds but it struck me as interesting.
And I was wondering, well, how could they do that because these are illegal aliens because they are not coming in through the refugee program.
Green: So that doesn’t make sense in the law. And it’s very interesting. We approached multiple people, former immigration judges. We approached the folks here in D.C. who write the bills for us.
They’re our lawyers on our side that are Republicans and think the way we think. And no one seems to be able to agree on the status of these children and whether they could technically be refugees or not. And so we want to clarify that ambiguity by making sure that the unaccompanied children are, in fact, unaccompanied migrants.
And they can’t, therefore, be treated as a refugee because once they’re treated as a refugee, the state either has to get out of the refugee program completely, which governor chose not to do, or we don’t have to say at that point.
Leahy: Exactly. By the way, this was a very good catch on your part. I’m delighted you’ve done it because you’re kind of solving a bit of this mystery because there is an act called The Refugee Act of 1980 that governs refugees.
Green: That’s exactly correct. With Tennessee in the program, we can’t basically block refugees being resettled in Tennessee as long as the state is in the program because of the court rulings and the way the court rulings found on those original refugee laws.
So that’s why these children, I’m trying to classify them as unaccompanied migrants. And therefore, when they get into that status, it’s a law enforcement and a migration issue and not a refugee issue.
Which is essentially what they truthfully are. So that’s the dilemma we’re fixing. The bill, we’ve had it vetted by tons of different people. And I will tell you, Michael, the people in Tennessee who are smart on this came to us.
We shared the bill. They are the ones who provided the idea on this. This is constituents informing their congressman and educating me on some of the nuances of this that resulted in a much better bill.
Leahy: Well, what’s going to happen with this bill when you introduce it?
Green: What we’ve got to do is find four or five Democrats who are willing to buck Pelosi, which in this day and age is hard to find. It makes it hard for us to get anything done.
Leahy: Do we need to give you Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s phone number? Do you think she’ll be one of the four or five? That’s a joke. (Laughs)
Green: I don’t want that on my phone.
Leahy: (Laughs) That’s a bad joke on my part.
Green: (Chuckles) She’s the wrong one to go to. But there are a couple out there that are trying to save their seat and what’s going to happen in the next cycle.
Leahy: Will it be a Democratic member of Congress from a border state?
Green: There are a couple, actually, that are pushing for Kamala Harris to come down there. So we might be able to get those guys to say, hey, yeah, Let’s do it.
Leahy: But it could also be somebody from a state like, I don’t know Tennessee. Do you think Jim Cooper is going to jump in and say, oh yeah, we don’t want these illegal aliens shipped in here in the dark of night? Or Steve Cohen, you’re good friends?
Green: It’s hard to read where Jim is going to be on this one because of just the dynamics of what’s happening to his district. It’ll be a little bit hard to predict where Jim will be. We could sit down and talk with him about it. I would have to do that.
Leahy: I would like to be a fly on the wall when you have that conversation with Jim Cooper.
Green: Yeah, we’ve had several. (Laughter)
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.
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 retired attorney and blog creator of Misrule of Law Mark Pulliam to the newsmakers line to outline some aspects of his recent essay regarding nullification in dealing with the Biden-Harris administration.
Leahy: We are joined on our newsmakers line now by our good friend, California refugee, retired attorney, and blogger at Lawliberty.org from East Tennessee, Mark Pulliam, Good morning, Mark.
Pulliam: Good morning Michael.
Leahy: Mark, first, before we jump into the topic at hand, which is, I think, an excellent essay that you’ve written about nullification, which some people are talking about as an option in dealing with the legal but not legitimate Biden-Harris maladministration. I just want to get your reaction to the big story over the weekend. Major League Baseball decides to punish the state of Georgia for passing a common-sense election law that will make it easy to vote but hard to cheat. They’ve moved the All-Star Game out of Atlanta, Georgia. What do you make of that?
Pulliam: It’s bewildering and very concerning to see what’s happening. And I think that Major League Baseball is basically acting as the surrogate for the corporate sponsors that have gotten woke. Corporate America is a result of chasing after a consumer base that they view as having been indoctrinated and therefore susceptible to a social justice message.
And also the leadership of these corporations as a result of a generation or more of affirmative action. And then the top ranks have been infiltrated by woke social justice warriors, and corporate America is no longer concerned about making a profit for shareholders or providing a quality product for consumers. They are like a lot of other echelons of the ruling class pushing an agenda. So not even baseball is free of politics. It used to be. People would go to the ballpark to escape reality. And now it is just one more aspect of this all politics all the time.
Leahy: Yes. It’s utterly detestable to me as a baseball fan my entire life to see this ignorant politicization of the exercise of the constitutional privilege of the state of Georgia to determine their own election processes.
Pulliam: And based on a false narrative. The Georgia law, even after these changes, is no worse than the law of many other states. And then the hypocrisy of it where you have these NBA and baseball and nobody says a word about China. And China is off the charts in terms of human rights violations, lack of democracy, freedom, etc. On top of everything else, it’s cowardly and hypocritical.
Leahy: So I saw this funny meme late Friday night that said, Major League Baseball has announced they’re moving the site of the Major League Baseball All-Star Game in 2021 from Atlanta, Georgia to Wuhan, China. And I thought that’s a funny meme. Then there was an article late that night at Breitbart: “MLB Expanding Presence in China While Pulling Out of Atlanta.” It’s incredible.
Pulliam: Well, you’ve got billions of consumers in China thanks to American trade policy that now are wealthy and in a position to purchase American goods. And corporate America shows where its loyalties are when it is chasing after profits in China over the interest of the American public.
Leahy: You know, back in the early 1690s Nikita Khrushchev, who at the time was the head of the Communist Party in the old Soviet Union said, capitalists, will sell us the rope with which we hang them. I’m paraphrasing that. And we thought, oh, my goodness, that might be the Soviet Union. It’s not so much the Soviet Union now. It’s Communist China.
Pulliam: Well, and he took his shoe and pounded it on the table and said, we will bury you! And that is, in fact, what China is doing. And at least back in the Cold War, Americans became concerned with Sputnik and realized that we were falling behind and we needed to catch up. Right now, people are so complacent about what’s going on with China, they still don’t care. There’s just very little in the way of public awareness or concern about this military and economic regression by the world’s largest, most populous, and increasingly dominant country.
Leahy: See, I’m not sure if I agree with that, Mark. I think people do care. But the way it manifests itself is perhaps not as productive as many of us would like. I think to some extent the lack of participation by Republicans and Conservatives in the Georgia Senate special election races because they were so upset about all of the electoral procedures that were not lawful in that state and we’re so upset with the way that the Republican establishment didn’t stand up for the rights of the average voter.
That led to anger which led to non-participation. But you’ve actually written a very interesting article for those of us who have a bit of a history bent about a concept that some states are looking into called nullification. First, tell us what nullification is and what the historical use of the term nullification has been.
Pulliam: Well, nullification is a term that has many meanings. At first, it recently got onto my radar screen because some of the conservative circles I travel in and it’s being offered up as a panacea solution that no matter what happens in Washington at the end of the day, the states and can simply refuse to go along with it and declare whatever happens in Washington to be invalid under the Tenth Amendment on the grounds that the states have the ability to determine what’s constitutional and what’s unconstitutional and we’re not handmaidens of the federal government.
Now that’s the most extreme use of the term. It’s been used and liberals have been using it for a long time to offer sanctuary to illegal aliens and to legalize certain drugs like marijuana that are prohibited at the federal level. And if you go back far enough all the way back to the late 1700s it was used as a way for the states to express opposition to federal laws like the Alien and Sedition Acts.
And the more recent advocates of nullification are using the earlier precedents, the 1798 precedent, and then also in the 1830s when South Carolina was objecting to federal tariff laws and was threatening to refuse to comply with these federal tariff laws. They are using those precedents to show that, yes, the states can defy federal law. The problem with those arguments is that never before in American history have states actually defied federal authority with the Alien and Sedition Acts.
It was basically an elaborate protest that ultimately led to, among other things, Thomas Jefferson who became President in 1800 and who contributed to Congress repealing this objectionable Alien and Sedition Act. And in the 1830s, South Carolina ultimately rescinded its nullification ordinance where they were threatening to defy federal law, in part because President Andrew Jackson was saying that if you try that, we will use military force to crush you. And then also, some of the more recent proponents look back and find comforting words in the Federalist Papers to show that the framers agreed that the states could thumb their nose at the federal government if they disagreed with policies.
(Commercial break)
Leahy: We’ve been talking about the concept of nullification. So, Mark, we’ve talked about the history of it. Where is it now? And why do some people think this is a good idea?
Pulliam: I think people always look for easy, simple solutions, and we are facing unprecedented challenges with what’s going on in Washington. But people should focus on the long run, not the short run. There are no easy solutions. Politics is hard work, and it takes a sustained effort to turn things around. When we’ve seen the Tenth Amendment tried to be used as a magical solution, it didn’t work.
The massive resistance to integration in the 50s. The Tenth Amendment didn’t work for the South when they tried to secede. So people, instead of getting all wrapped up in nullification efforts and passing laws that somehow there will be a magical defense against federal overreaching. They need to be on the phone pushing their representatives in Congress to oppose the Biden-Harris agenda tooth and nail and to use every procedural device to obstruct and delay, just like Chuck Schumer did during four years of the Trump presidency.
And we need to exhort our state attorney’s general to challenge each and every one of these unconstitutional laws if Congress lacks the will to oppose it. And we can’t lose focus that in the long run, people need to devote their energies where they can make a difference. And that’s at the state and local level. And so citizens need to be more vigilant than ever in becoming engaged in their communities and make sure that we are electing the right people to the City Councils, to the school boards, and partisan and non-partisan offices.
People need to be getting involved in their local Republican parties and become citizen activists. And that is how we’re going to turn the ship around. Not by passing magical laws as somehow if we pass them will immunize us from the effects of what’s going on in Washington. That has historically proven to be an illusory solution.
Leahy: So let me play devil’s advocate here. Okay, so step one is to tell your representatives to oppose the agenda of Biden-Harris. Well, they are opposing it right now, but they’re not succeeding, at least in the House of Representatives, because there’s a slight majority, and every single Democrat walks in lockstep with anything Nancy Pelosi wants to do.
There’s not a single constitutionalist among any elected federal Democrat that I can see. And then in the Senate, it’s 50/50 and any tie can be broken by Kamala Harris. Look, you know what’s going to happen. The big deal right now is this Corrupt Politicians Act, otherwise called by the Democrats the Fair Practices Act, something like that. HR1, S1, which is basically going to nationalize federal elections and make it impossible if it were to pass and be implemented to elect Republicans because they’re going to codify the cheating that was done in 2020 and make it even worse.
So when we play Devil’s advocate here, I don’t think that the House is very effective at stopping the unconstitutional laws being passed by the Pelosi-led House. I think Schumer is going to pull every trick in his bag of tricks to jam through this unconstitutional HR1 and then it will be the law of the land. So when that happens, what’s your response to that?
Pulliam: Well, the House has always been a simple majority wins body. Democrats have the majority there and they can pass anything they want, and they have passed virtually anything they want. And this stuff is always stacked up where the log jam occurs in the Senate. And the Senate is not a simple majority-run institution.
We have a very powerful impediment to the majority, imposing its will in the minority with the filibuster rule where it takes 60 votes to invoke cloture to stop debate so effectively at the present time and this has been the rule for 100 years that it takes 60 votes to make anything happen in the Senate. And what we have to do is make sure that our Republican senators do not lose the resolve to vote no on all of these bills.
And there’s a whole list of them. HR1, the ProAct, the Quality Act, the statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico. All these trillion-dollar stimulus bills. There’s a long laundry list of bills that would be disastrous if they were passed. In addition to the filibuster rule, there are all kinds of other procedural rules where you can extend debate. You can delay votes, et cetera. And this is why President Trump, even though he got a lot of federal judges confirmed, a lot of them weren’t confirmed because it took so long to get a vote on each one of these judges.
And we need to use those rules to our advantage, just like the Democrats did when they were in the minority. And so we need not only Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty because I think they’re pretty solid but the entire cadre of conservative Republican Senators Rand Paul, Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, Mike Lee, and the whole cast of characters know that basically, they are the line between us and progressive hegemony in Washington, and we expect them to fight and to fight hard to keep this agenda from being enacted.
Leahy: But, Mark, they’re going to fight. All 50 Republicans are going to oppose this Corrupt Politician Act that makes it easy for Democrats to cheat and nationalize the elections and gives them extra money from the federal government to cheat. That’s basically what that law does. They’re going to oppose it. I promise you that you’re gonna see some shenanigans going on on the Democratic side. They’re going to do a filibuster carve out. They’re going to do reconciliation. That bill is better than 50/50 that it’s gonna pass using those shenanigans.
Pulliam: Well, I certainly hope you’re wrong, because if the filibuster is breached, then we do have a serious problem. But in that case, these nullification arguments, some of them boil down to simple civil disobedience. How did civil disobedience work out at Ruby Ridge? How did civil disobedience work out at Waco?
It’s not a viable strategy. Look at what happened at the capital on January sixth. We cannot expect that simply by resisting this agenda, that somehow we’re going to prevail and some of these other things that are being proposed, that would pass a law that would create a sanctuary. All of the sanctuary states can up to a point, refuse to cooperate with the federal government, but you cannot prevent the federal government from enforcing federal law.
So I think patriots need to work harder than ever to fight this through legitimate means, through the political process, and through the courts. And I think that a lot of these bills that are being proposed by Biden-Harris that even if they pass, they’re going to be vulnerable to constitutional challenges. And this is why litigation will be important.
I know a lot of people have lost their confidence in the Supreme Court as a result of the election, but I think that we still have a sound originalist majority on the Supreme Court. And if some of these bills pass, they will be vulnerable to challenge. And we have to rely on our state attorney general to fight those battles in court, and in the long run, I think they will prevail.
Leahy: Yeah, but I understand what you’re arguing. I understand your nullification. I understand all of your arguments. I’m just looking at the reality. I would say the odds that the Senate will pass this Corrupt Politicians Act that federalizes all elections throughout the states, which is unconstitutional in itself.
But I think the odds that the Senate actually passes it on 50 to 50 with Kamala Harris providing the tiebreaker by some carve out of the filibuster. The odds that happens in the next 30 days, I think are better than 50/50. So let me pose this question to you. Okay, this law passes. They begin to codify the federalization of state laws.
You start filing challenges in court. That’s a bit of a toss-up it seems to me. Why don’t you think about that a little bit Mark over the break because I think that this is where we’re headed, and I don’t think that just asking senators to pretty please work hard against it is going to be sufficient. So think about that.
Listen to the full first 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 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 State Senator Mark Pody to the studio to discuss states rights and the federal government’s continued usurpation of authority.
Leahy: We are joined in studio by our good friend, State Senator Mark Pody. Mark, the big question for you now with the legal but not legitimate Biden maladministration in power in Washington, it’s more obvious to those of us who love the Constitution in our country that the pushback has to come from states who have for a century allowed the federal government to usurp their powers. And that comes from the state legislatures.
Pody: That’s exactly right. And the Constitution, how we were set up. If we go back, remember that you had 13 original individual states that said, we’re going to come together on certain issues to form the federal government. And they were very specific about what powers and authorities that the states are delegating to the federal government. The federal government does not delegate any power and authority to the states.
And the states said anything that we’re not giving you as a federal government and the 10th Amendment says it remains with the state. It remains with the state. Including in the Constitution, it says the states are supposed to be the ones that set up how elections are done. Well, if we watch what’s happening in Washington, D.C. right now, they’re trying to set how elections are going to be done.
Leahy: That’s unconstitutional.
Pody: That’s exactly right. So the states have to stand up. We have to say that you are overstepping that power and authority, and we reject that. We literally would need to as states to reject it. Even the state legislators, they’re the ones that created the individual cities and counties. It wasn’t that the cities and counties in Tennessee form together to form the state.
The state said, we’re going to make these counties, and here are the authorities and boundaries that you have. And here are the rules that you got to abide by. It is the state legislatures that are actually the strongest entities. If we would use that bond together, we could step back against the overreaching federal government. And if we don’t, every single year, the federal government comes and they’re going to take a little bit more and more and more of our power and authority. And they do it by one thing.
They bribe us. They give us money and everybody’s afraid. Well, we’re going to lose federal funding. I can’t tell you how many times I hear that. Well, we’re going to lose federal money. I would wish that we don’t get any of this kind of federal money. Let’s do it on our own. I just don’t want to be responsible for that federal debt either. Do what we do as states and push back.
Leahy: Now, you brought up the topic of federal money. I’m going to throw you a curveball.
Pody: Yes, Sir.
Leahy: Are you ready?
Pody: Yes!
Leahy: I’m winding up. Here it comes.
Pody: All right. This is going to be all about money.
Leahy: Yes. So I have this idea. One of the reasons why our K-12 public schools are doing so poorly is because the federal government is setting forth a series of rules and regulations that are just stupid and forcing K-12 public schools to follow those rules and regulations. Now, as you know, in the financing of our K-12 public schools, about 40 percent of it is local. 50 percent is from states. And 10 percent from the federal government.
Pody: Yes.
Leahy: So here’s my theory. Here’s my idea. I’m trying to see if I could get members of the state legislature to consider this. And by the way, if you looked at the compliance costs of complying with all these stupid federal regulations, my guess is that they give the state 10 percent. But probably the compliance costs are about another four percent. So the net is maybe six percent. This is my theory. I haven’t investigated it yet. Here’s what I would really like to see.
I would like to see the Tennessee General Assembly pass a bill that says, you know feds, that 10 percent you give us, you can keep it. Take your 10 percent and keep it. And meanwhile, all your regulations, we don’t want to follow them and we’re not going to follow them. And I float this idea out and many state legislators kind of roll their eyes like that could never happen.
Pody: What do you think? I think it would be a terrific idea. I’m going to give you just a prime example. They were in committee and we were going to get $5 million literally, almost $6 million from the federal government. And in that bill, in that money they were going to give us, they said, you have to start now. This was to the Department of Health. They said you have to start using this name-brand condom. And it was going to cost us $80,000 more. And I went and I said, wait a minute.
Leahy: How does the federal government get to tell, where does this come in in terms of this particular brand?
Pody: I’m going to get you here.
Leahy: I mean, they purchased for the distribution of free condoms to the citizens of Tennessee.
Pody: And Tennessee was just using generic ones as well. You can’t use generic free condoms you have to use these name-brand condoms, even though it’s going to cost you $80,000 more.
Leahy: I didn’t know. Where is it said that it’s the role of the state government to distribute condoms?
Pody: It’s not. It is not our role.
Leahy: Apparently, they’ve been doing it with offbrand condoms
Pody: Yes. So federal funding was giving this. So the argument was Pody, do you want to get this $5 million? If you do, you have to accept that somebody, and I’m sure there has to be a contract somewhere, somebody with these name brand condoms in Congress. But they said, you have to use these condoms. So the question is, do we pay this extra $80,000 to get that $5 million? But there are so many incidents like that that when you’re trying to get so-called free money, it’s not free money.
Leahy: It’s always got strings on it.
Pody: It’s always got string. The same thing in the Department of Education, just exactly like you’re talking about Here’s the money and you have to use it exactly this way, that way. And in education, I’m going to tell you, no matter how much money we give, they’re going to always find ways to have needs for more. And it’s not up to us to do every single thing for every single person in Tennessee. That’s not government’s role. A government’s role is to protect our institution, individual rights, and freedoms and not to do for the people, the things that we’re supposed to do for ourselves.
Leahy: Now, one thing that I’ve noticed and I think this may be new to you that we started The Tennessee Star, the only conservative news outlet in all of Tennessee surprisingly four years ago. Been doing great. And we’ve been doing this show here to The Tennessee Star Report for about two and a half years. We’ve expanded to other states.
Pody: Florida. Congratulations.
Leahy: Oh, okay. I was going to tell you, we just launched Florida. We’re going to launch Florida, April 21 St, The Florida Capital Star. And the reason we’re launching it seems to me the leader in the pushback movement against the federal government usurpations is Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida.
Pody: Yes.
Leahy: That’s one of the reasons. And we’re told by the people down there that the legacy media is not getting him a fair shake. We believe that to be true. One of the bills that they’ve considered down in Florida has to do with pushing back against Big Tech censorship. There is a similar bill under consideration here. I wonder if you could give us an update on where that particular bill is? What are its components? And where does it stand?
Pody: Sure. And I will tell you that as legislators on the Senate side, the Republicans, we actually try and communicate with each other on a fairly regular basis. Just within Tennessee. So it’s not uncommon for us as Republican senators, just to be saying, hey, what’s going on and who’s carrying what? And so when this was heard that this was happening, Senator Mike Bell kind of texted and said, hey, I’m going to be interested in running this bill, and we all kind of said, okay, we don’t need 10 bills doing the same thing.
Leahy: Smart.
Pody: So we said, go ahead and you take care of that. So I’m not sure where Senator Bell’s bill is, but he is working on a bill, something like that for Big Tech.
Leahy: Okay, good, good. I’ll be curious to see that. And we’ll get Senator Bell in here in studio to talk a little bit about it in the near future. Speaking of which, the Tennessee General Assembly has another month or so to go?
Pody: We should be out by the end of April. I’ve been up here now for a while that I get to kind of see as committees are shutting down, and we’re going into final calendars and such the number of bills that we have are starting to be heard to get through. And almost all of my bills. I only got a couple left that I got to go through committees with, and we’ll be done. We’ll be just voting on the budget.
Leahy: You have a couple bills still in play?
Pody: I do. In fact, I had one bill that went to summer study yesterday, and it was a great bill. It was terrific.
Listen to the full second hour here:
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