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. – guest host Ben Cunningham welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio who weighed in on Joe Biden’s claim that white supremacy is America’s greatest threat and a myriad of Democrat Party power plays.
Cunningham: And joining us in the studio this morning, Grant Henry with Americans for Prosperity. Grant, thank you again this morning for driving up from beautiful Spring Hill, where you kind of have a new battery plant down there? General Motors?
Henry: All kinds of things going on through there in the Columbia area. It’s the up-and-coming site in Galeton.
Cunningham: I drive every day. We’re talking about Facebook. I drive by the construction entrance to the billion-dollar Facebook data Center in Gallatin when I’m going to take my walks.
Christina Botteri, the Chief Technology Officer of Star Media in from California, to join us in the studio. Christina, thanks so much for coming in this morning so early. I appreciate it. And the original All-Star panelist, Mr. Crom Carmichael. And Crom, we have got the question of the day for you. Are you ready for the question of the day?
Carmichael: Okay.
Cunningham: Is white supremacy the major threat to the United States of America, above China, Russia, Al Qaeda, you name it. White supremacy is the greatest threat, our President just told us. Is that true Crom? (Laughs) Think about it.
Carmichael: Well, I’m having a hard time identifying the name of a white supremacy group that is burning down buildings and mostly peacefully protesting.
Cunningham: Yeah.
Carmichael: I’m having a hard time finding that.
Cunningham: Peacefully jumping on top of police cars.
Botteri: I think you’re talking about Antifa, right? (Chuckles)
Carmichael: That would be Antifa. And they are not a white supremacy group. Neither is Black Lives Matter. And that is another protesting group that’s mostly peaceful. The only thing that I can say is they generally need to have lots of fires going on around them.
Cunnigham: To warm them?
Carmichael: So they can see. They don’t want to be blinded by darkness.
Cunnigham: The illumination.
Carmichael: They illuminate the landscape by setting things on fire.
Cunningham: But really, seriously, how depressing is that our President of the United States just elected, recently and talked about unity and he takes every opportunity he can to split us apart and to create this Marxist class separation between the virtuous victims and the evil oppressors. It’s depressing.
Carmichael: There are so many other things that are similar that are going on in California. The House passed a bill called the Equity Act in California.
Cunningham: That sounds ominous.
Carmichael: The Senate has not passed it, but in California, they have passed it. And what they’re doing in California under the Equity Act is they are transferring transgender prisoners who are formerly men who now claim to be women.
They are now transferring them to women’s prisons even if they have not done anything to transform themselves, including even taking hormone pills. If the men simply claim to feel like a woman, they are being transferred.
Some of them are as tall as 6’5 and weigh 300 pounds. They’re being put in rooms with female prisoners with eight in a room. And they are confined in there together 24 hours a day.
Cunningham: How did we get this far? This insanity.
Carmichael: But they’re no feminists.
Cunningham: Grant was just making the where are the feminists defending the women? And what we now know is that the feminist organizations, the way old ones actually did care about women.
The newer ones in the last 10 to 15 years care only about liberal far-left policy. They don’t care about women at all. They just care about far-left policy.
Cunningham: How can you be a person and deal with that kind of cognitive distance within your own mind and believe two separate things at the same time.
Carmichael: It’s not difficult at all. If what you lust for is power, if that’s your primary objective, then whatever it takes to get power is what you should do. And that is the nature of the left.
I’ve said since Michael started having me on the show that the Democrat Party is the party of government. That’s all it is. Plain and simple. Anything that expands government is good.
Anything that shrinks government is bad, period. And anything that expands unions is good. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but unions now currently are taking 11 million dollars a year in dues and those are compulsory dues.
And under the ProAct, which is the Labor Union Expansion Act, which is also past the House, it would go up to 20 billion dollars a year. 20 billion dollars a year.
Cunningham: And most of that recycles back to Democrats.
Carmichael: 99 percent. 99 percent.
Cunningham: 99 percent.
Carmichael: 99 percent of all political contributions made by unions. There are many other contributions that unions make to the Democrat Party that are not financial, that are simply time.
In fact, that might even be stronger and more politically powerful is that they employ tens of thousands of people at the local, state and national level to advance the Democrat Party agenda.
And that’s why Nancy Pelosi can pick up the phone and call the heads of five unions. I call them the five families. And call them and say this particular Democrat in the House is getting out of line.
I want them primaried and beaten in the next election. And that’s why Nancy Pelosi can treat her Democrat Party members more or less as indentured servants. One might even call them slaves.
Cunningham: It’s like an on-call hitman ready to take out your enemies.
Carmichael: Or compliant. Whatever you want to call it. They’re just compliant.
Cunningham: And what’s scary to me is that the unions are getting even bolder in their far-left policy.
Carmichael: This is government unions. We need to separate because the private sector unions to the extent they still exist, and they’re not that many of them.
Cunningham: No. It’s like eight percent now?
Carmichael: What I’m trying to get at is in the old days, the automobile unions ran the factories. They literally ran the factories. If management came up with a better way to build a car and if the union didn’t agree with it, it did not get implemented, period.
Well, once all of the car manufacturers went bankrupt, the unions gave up that privilege. They gave up running the factory floors. Now they still negotiate on behalf of all workers for the big three. The transplant companies are not unionized. For example, Nissan here in Smyrna is not unionized.
Cunningham: Right.
Carmichael: And so the private sector unions, they’re not terrible. In fact, many of them supported Trump or they support Republicans.
Cunningham: Absolutely.
Carmichael: Like the Teamsters, for example. They represent truckers. And then the Keystone Pipeline. Biden just snapped his finger in 11,000 union jobs disappeared. Those union jobs were worth over $80,000. each.
Henry: And that distinction is important there. It’s all about compulsory action. The ProAct you’re talking about. It would do away with right-to-work States and for listeners right now, a right-to-work state says if you want to join a union, fine.
But you can’t be compelled to do so at the condition of your employment. It’s a major distinction of the aspect of free choice, free will.
Cunningham: So this act would, in effect, nationalize the no right to work. You don’t have a right to refuse union membership.
Carmichael: That can only pass if 10 Republicans go along with it, and that’s not going to happen. And so there are certain acts in HR1 and S1 Senate bills. This is the one that they’ll essentially nationalize all election law and just ignore what the Constitution says. The Constitution is the document of convenience for the Democrats. That’s all it is.
Cunningham: If that.
Carmichael: They are perfectly happy to cite it when it’s convenient. When they don’t like it, then it’s inconvenient and they disregard it. But I don’t think the Democrats are going to be able to accomplish nearly as much as they would like to.
But this should be an eye-opener to everybody about what the Democrats would actually do if they had 51 senators. Here’s what they would do if they had the Senate and the House and the presidency. They would destroy the country as we know it.
Cunningham: That is their fervent wish to destroy the Republic.
Carmichael: And Republicans do a terrible job. I have to say this. Republicans do a terrible job of understanding the nature of the opposition and how to respond to it because they will not respond in kind. And I will tell you something. An armed Army facing an unarmed Army. I will go with the armed Army all the time.
Cunningham: Every time.
Carmichael: They will win.
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 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 the Director of Policy for Beacon Impact Ron Shultis to the newsmakers line to weigh in on the PRO Act bill, occupational licensing, and the pushback it’s receiving from Rep. Diana Harshbarger of Tennessee with her new bill.
Leahy: We are joined now on the newsmaker line by Ron Shultis Director of Policy for Beacon Impact. Welcome, Ron.
Shultis: Good morning. Thank you for having me.
Leahy: Tell us what’s the difference between Beacon Impact and the Beacon Center of Tennessee?
Shultis: Sure. Beacon Impact is our sister advocacy arm of the Beacon Center of Tennessee, which is the state free-market think tank here located in Nashville. Under Beacon Impact is where we do all of our advocacy on bills and trying to support free-market legislation.
Leahy: I think that the Beacon Center is a 501 (c) (3) and Beacon Impact is a 501 (c) (4)?
Shultis: That is correct.
Leahy: One of the bills that you’re talking about is the PRO Act. Tell us what it is and tell us why it’s bad.
Shultis: Sure. So this is one of the many terrible bills going through Congress right now. It’s already past the House. It’s sitting in the Senate. Essentially what it does is it will totally set back our economy in the midst of while we’re having shortages and all kinds of things by doing a couple of items that totally tip the balance in favor of large labor unions.
The first thing that it does is it abolishes the state right to work laws, which essentially would mean if you don’t want to join the union, you would be forced to pay union dues or you could be fired. Currently, in a right-to-work state like Tennessee, it’s your choice whether or not you choose to join the union or not and pay union dues.
So it protects the worker on both ends. If this were to pass, that would no longer be the case. If you chose not to join a union, you would have to force the pay dues whether you choose to or not, or you could be fired. Another thing it could do is totally sit back our gig economy by implementing California is what’s called their ABC Test, which makes it much harder for somebody to work as a gig worker.
Which if you think about, for example, last year during all the lockdowns and shutdowns when so many people had to work as, for example, an Instacart delivering groceries or Uber, that becomes much more difficult. And what that does is it nationalizes what California did, which is obviously never a good thing with their ABC Test. And that’s just a couple of things that it does.
Leahy: That bill is working so well for California. Not. What a disaster that is.
Shultis: Right. Exactly. And when California passed it, you can go back and look into some of the liberal media articles in 2019 about all these writers for liberal publications and Vox complaining and realizing that then they were fired because they were freelance writers.
And then once that passed while living in California, they had to become an employee. And then that place where they would contract with had to let them go.
So they had to add all kinds of exemptions for freelance writers, DJs for weddings, and all that because so many people rose up in arms against it. But the national version, the PRO Act, doesn’t have those extensions. So it’s even worse than what California did.
Leahy: Now here we have a newly elected state representative U.S. Representative named Representative Harshbarger. And she introduced a bill that basically is designed to push back against this kind of stuff. Tell us about that bill.
Shultis: That’s right. She introduced a bill that we’re supportive of. And what it does there are these new grants that the federal government created and states can apply for these grants. But the problem is that sometimes the federal government incentivizes states to adopt bad occupational licensing, which is essentially the government’s permission to do a job.
Well, if you want to get these grants, then you may have to create a new occupational license, which makes it harder for a Tennessean to get that job, which is kind of the exact opposite of the point of these grants. And so what she did is introduced a bill called the Freedom to Work Act, which directs the federal government to review its policies around the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act grants and say, are we incentivizing states to adopt these unnecessary licenses and repeal those rules and incentives in the system?
And then also, it requires a report to Congress to look for better ways to do so. And when states apply for these funds, they would have to show, how their state like here in Tennessee and how we are working to remove unnecessary regulatory barriers to get a job.
For example, here in Tennessee, we require a government license to do over 100 low-income occupations. In recent years, we’ve gotten rid of some. We used to require a license to shampoo hair, something most of us do every day. It used to require 300 hours of schooling to learn how to shampoo hair as an example.
And so what we could do is show how we remove those barriers, making it easier for people to get to work or get a job, start a business, and qualify for those funds.
Now in a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, that bill introduced by Representative Harshberger from the First Congressional District of Tennessee. That bill’s going to go nowhere, isn’t it?
Shultis: You would think so. But hopefully, this has one issue around occupational licensing that has gotten some bipartisan support. For example, both the Obama administration and the Trump administration, through the Department of Commerce, have told the state to look at these and peel back some of these requirements.
So hopefully that this is something that both our Democrat House and Senate will take a look at as something that can be, yey, these funds are supposed to make it easier for people to get jobs and how the federal government incentivizing states to make it harder. So hopefully this is something that we’ll get.
Leahy: But, you know, I doubt that there’s a single Democrat co-sponsor of this bill is there?
Shultis: Not that I’m aware of it.
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 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 who discussed conformity among Democrats and corporations citing its detrimental effects on innovation in America.
Leahy: We are joined as we almost always are every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at this time. We welcome back our good friend Crom Carmichael, the original All-Star panelist. Welcome back, Crom Carmichael.
Carmichael: Hello, Michael. How are you, sir?
Leahy: I am great. I am looking forward to you and I having a bit of an adventure together. Today we are Mike and Crom’s great adventure. Mike and Crom’s great adventure. We are going to the Clock Store. Our friend Lenny McGill, who’s moved his headquarters from San Diego to Nashville. We’re going to go to his facilities and get a little training on how to use them.
Carmichael: Oh, we are going to get some training?
Leahy: We are going to get some training.
Carmichael: Oh my.
Leahy: Crom, I’ve never told you this but I told our audience earlier. Never in my life have I fired a gun.
Carmichael: Oh. Well…
Leahy: Never.
Carmichael: You won’t be able to say that tomorrow.
Leahy: Tomorrow I will not be able to say that. And this is the perfect time. I’ve always thought about it. But now is the time. I grew up in upstate New York.
Carmichael: That’s the next best thing.
Leahy: What’s that?
Carmichael: Shooting a gun.
Leahy: What?
Carmichael: Thinking about it.
Leahy: (Laughter) You got me again Crom. Crom comes in sharp.
Carmichael: That’s because I’m better rested than you.
Leahy: And I fall for your jokes every time Crom.
Carmichael: Well thank you. I appreciate that. My mother appreciates that.
Leahy: I heard your mom listens to the program too.
Carmichael: She’s 93. She used to get up in time to listen to the show. But now she sleeps in. (Leahy laughs)
Leahy: We’ll make sure that she gets the recording. Because she needs to track her young son.
Carmichael: Yes.
Leahy: You are going to give us a lesson on the dictionary today.
Carmichael: A word. A word that I don’t remember exactly which article I was reading or who I was reading but there is a word that describes the Democrat Party and the goal of the Democrat Party. And it’s extremely important to understand this in its entirety. And that word is conformity.
Leahy: Conformity.
Carmichael: Conformity. It wants everyone, everyone to conform to its world view. Everyone and in every way. So think about this for a second. If you are a teacher in a government-run school in a state where you are required to be in a union, you can’t do anything that the union does not allow you to do. So everyone who teaches in a union-dominated state teaches the same way. They conform or they have to quit.
Leahy: Conform or quit.
Carmichael: Conform or quit.
Leahy: Conform and submit.
Carmichael: And if you don’t then you can’t conform. I mean, you cannot conform if you’re not submissive.
Leahy: It’s interesting you bring that up, Crom because I was thinking along those lines a little bit, as I’ve reported on all of these stories about how the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, that would be Joe Biden, the mainstream media and the Democratic Party and Big Tech has characterized the common sense of election reform laws being passed in Georgia under consideration in Texas and Arizona. The CEOs who are condemning this loss aren’t even reading the laws. They don’t know what’s in the law, but they’re calling it a racist Jim Crow two-point zero.
Carmichael: Because they must conform
Leahy: They must conform.
Carmichael: If they don’t conform, they will lose their jobs and the amount of money that they make. So the question is, and this is true. And let’s look at the history of conformity. The history of conformity and this is true in the private sector unions, private sector unions serve a purpose up to a point, and then their purpose becomes destructive because here’s what historically has happened in private-sector unions.
When times are good, they ask for more. When times are bad, they don’t ask for more, but they won’t take less. So when times are good again, they ask for more. And then when times are bad, they don’t ask for more. And eventually, that cycle ends up with bankruptcy. General Motors has gone bankrupt. I don’t know if Ford went bankrupt. Chrysler went bankrupt.
Leahy: Ford did not go bankrupt.
Carmichael: Ever?
Leahy: Ever.
Carmichael: Okay. Chrysler has gone bankrupt. General Motors has gone bankrupt. Virtually every steel company went bankrupt. Many of our airlines have gone bankrupt. They’ve reorganized. But when they reorganized, the unions are set back. But it’s not until the bankruptcy. So the shareholders are wiped out by unionization.
The Democrat Party in the House is the definition of conformity. If you don’t conform to what the Democrat Party wants in the House, then you are thrown out. Now you may lose the next election to a Republican. So the Democrats are doing everything they can to rig the election so that can happen so that they can maintain their conformity.
Leahy: It is a soul-crushing destruction of the American character.
Carmichael: And not only that, but it also will be the end of prosperity as we know it because non-conformity is part of the innovation process. The process of innovation requires that people who don’t conform intellectually are allowed to search for new ways of doing things.
Leahy: Most great advances in the industry, in every aspect of life, has come from the non-conformity.
Carmichael: Correct. Correct.
Leahy: Because they see the world, not as it is but as it could be. And they create possibilities. And some of them don’t work. But some of them do. And those that do transform our world dramatically.
Carmichael: And sometimes they see a problem that others don’t even see as a problem at the time because the way they do things falls into a routine (i.e. conformity). And people are used to doing things a certain way, and somebody comes up with a new and better way. 3M turned down the original idea of the Xerox machine because they believed at that time that carbon paper was sufficient. IBM turned down the original personal computer. Bill Gates shopped his company for a few million dollars and found no takers before the personal computer took off and Microsoft took off alongside it.
Leahy: Had he found a buyer, all of the innovations that came from Microsoft probably wouldn’t have happened.
Carmichael: Well, that’s conjecture, I don’t know. But Bill Gates would not be the multi-billionaire that he is. You’d think that IBM would have recognized the advance of the personal computer. But they didn’t because a personal computer also was contrary to its business model of selling system 34s and system 32s.
Leahy: By the way, when you and I were growing up in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, there was one dominant computing company, IBM.
Carmichael: Now there were others, but IBM was the dominant player. So this word conformity is very, very important for us to understand. Now, let’s look at what’s going on now with this Georgia law. Now, many of the executives who have denounced the Georgia law are members of Augusta National. They should resign.
Leahy: That’s what Marco Rubio suggested which was that Rob Manfred, the Commissioner of MLB baseball should do.
Carmichael: Is he a member?
Leahy: Yes.
Carmichael: He should resign. In fact, they should demand that he resigned every day. They should shame him. And they should shame the board of Augusta for not kicking them out publicly.
Leahy: Exactly. Kick him out.
Carmichael: Same thing I would imagine with the CEO of Coca-Cola. I would imagine that the CEO of Delta. Captains of industry are members of Augusta National. Now, Augusta National is ignoring the politics. But these people who won’t ignore the politics who cave to conformity, they should be kicked out. And freedom-loving people like you and me should be invited to join.
Leahy: By the way, a little interesting twist on all of this Crom.
Carmichael: You went right over that part where I’m trying to get in Augusta.
Leahy: Because you love golf.
Carmichael: Because I’m a freedom-loving person. Don’t just gloss over that. It’s my day in the sun. (Chuckles)
Leahy: Because you want to be in Augusta, I got it. To me, I don’t care about Augusta.
Carmichael: But I don’t want to exclude you. Forget what I said about Michael becoming a member. (Laughter)
Leahy: What’s that old Groucho Marx line? I would not want to be a member of any club that would let me join it.
Carmichael: That’s a good one.
Leahy: That’s my story on Augusta.
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.
