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 former congressional candidate Natisha Brooks in studio to announce her run for mayor of Nashville.
Leahy: We are delighted to welcome to our microphones our very good friend Natisha Brooks, who is sartorially splendid this morning. Good morning, Natisha.
Brooks: Good morning, Michael. Thank you for having me.
Leahy: It’s great to have you here.
Brooks: It’s great to be here. It’s cold. (Chuckles)
Leahy: It is a little brisk out there this morning. It’s still 28, 29 degrees.
Brooks: Yes.
Leahy: You came prepared.
Brooks: I did.
Leahy: And I always talk about this. We probably, at some point, need to get a video camera here. It would not be focused on me this morning, but it would be focused on you. (Brooks laughs) You’re very stylish this morning, Natisha.
Brooks: Thank you.
Leahy: You got a beautiful hat. It’s kind of a silver hat. And then you’ve got a gorgeous dress and a beautiful colorful…
Brooks: Our blanket.
Leahy: A red, white, and blue American flag.
Brooks: Yes.
Leahy: And a splendid scarf. And you just look so stylish here.
Brooks: Thank you.
Leahy: I feel upstaged by the very gracious and stylish Natisha Brooks, you made some news the other day.
Brooks: We did.
Leahy: You’re a teacher. Is that your background?
Brooks: Yes. Home school owner and educator, educational consultant. Been doing it for we’ve been in the business for almost 31 years. Ms. Brooks says, now, listen, Michael, my hair is black, but I got it dyed just for you. There’s a lot of gray up here.
Leahy: It looks very nice. It looks very nice this morning.
Brooks: Home school educating consulting is what we are.
Leahy: And you have run for office here in Nashville before.
Brooks: Not in that. Well, for Congress.
Leahy: For Congress. You went for Congress and not for a Metro Nashville Davidson County office.
Brooks: No.
Leahy: I will tell you what’s interesting about Natisha. Do not try to get into a debate with Natisha because you’re an extraordinary orator.
Brooks: Thank you so much.
Leahy: And you know that, right? Because you go in and we’d have these debates, right? There’d be nine people, and they’d be whah, what, what whah. And then this stentorian voice would come out and there would be Natisha. It was spellbinding. You’re a very good speaker.
Brooks: Thank you so much.
Leahy: And you know that. But I think once you finished, what, fourth or fifth place in the GOP primary? Fourth or fifth?
Brooks: I believe fifth.
Leahy: So on Tuesday on this program that morning I was doing an analysis of the race with Baxter Lee.
Brooks: Yes.
Leahy: And I called the incumbent mayor, John Cooper, an ego-maniacal, tyrant, and a jerk. I called him that on the air. And of course, he couldn’t take the heat. Two hours later…
Brooks: Two hours later! What did you do, Michael?
Leahy: He decided he wasn’t going to run again for reelection. Obviously, it was caused by that.
Brooks: Thanks to Michael. We appreciate that.
Leahy: But Natisha, there you were, ready to pounce politically.
Brooks: I was ready for that debate. I dreamed of that debate with Cooper. And you made him go away, Michael.
Leahy: I know. So then, natisha I’m listening to the radio on another radio station of one of our friends on another station, Matt Murphy. And here is this booming voice and it’s you.
Brooks: It’s me. And you made an announcement. Tell us what that announcement was.
Leahy: Michael, since you just ran Mr. Cooper off, (Leahy laughs) we just went ahead and made an announcement that we are now Natisha for Nashville Mayor. Conservatives, you have a voice! We’re going to make sure that you have a voice in this race. And so we are now, Michael, running for Nashville mayor, seeking the office for mayor of Nashville.
Leahy: Do you have a website?
Brooks: The website is almost finished. We had an exploratory committee of 23 people. We just weren’t quite sure we were looking at numbers. You have to study numbers. But the website will be up conservatives! It will be up by this weekend.
Leahy: And what will it be?
Brooks: Natishafornashville.org.
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 “Natisha Brooks” by Natisha Brooks. Background Photo “Tennessee Capitol” by Carol M. Highsmith.
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 all-star panelist Carol Swain in studio to discuss whether she would consider a run for the mayor of Nashville in the 2023 August election.
Leahy: Our good friend, all-star panelist Carol Swain, is in studio with us. Carol, yesterday, Mayor John Cooper announced that he’s not running for re-election. The election for a new four-year term will be held on August 3rd here in Metro Nashville Davidson County. There are several candidates who have been announced. They’re all pretty much far-left lunatics. (Swain chuckles) I mean, they’re nice people, but they’re far-left lunatics.
Swain: I know. Look at the National Democratic Party.
Leahy: Yeah, what’s the difference? And we’ve had Sharon Hurt, who’s an at-large council member on the newsmaker line. She’s not been in the studio yet. Freddie O’Connell, a council member is running. He’s clearly a far-left lunatic. And then Matt Wilshire, who’s pretending not to be a far-left lunatic, but he is a far-left lunatic.
Swain: He’s approaching Republicans, and I hope people are very cautious about lining up behind him.
Leahy: I can tell you he’s telling people he’s a Republican.
Swain: Just like Mayor Cooper told the Republican women that he was a conservative and got a lot of their support.
Leahy: Yes. You remember that well. Now, Carol, I recall that there was a special election; I think it was back in 2018. You ran for mayor, and then you ran for mayor again.
Swain: I would like the world to remember that I came in number two in that special election.
Leahy: You did.
Swain: Even though the conventional wisdom among Republicans in the world is that no Republican can win in Nashville, so you have to support the best Democrats you can find.
Leahy: You also ran for mayor in the 2019 general election.
Swain: Came in number three, and they changed the way they did the ballots. And so my name was at the bottom of the second page. It wasn’t on the front screen.
Leahy: It was just an accident.
Swain: Which part was an accident? (Laughs) Oh, yes, I remember those days fondly. I’ve attended two victory parties where I was the loser. (Laughter)
Leahy: Well, you handle it with grace and style, Carol.
Swain: Of course.
Leahy: Mayor Cooper not running for re-election. It’s a wide-open field. I think I heard Natisha Brooks announced it yesterday. She ran for the GOP nomination in the 5th district. She finished fourth or fifth in that. She didn’t have a lot of money, but she’s a good speaker.
But the big question that a lot of people are asking me is, and here you are. So I’m going to ask you, Carol Swain, are you going to run for mayor of Nashville Davidson County in the August 2023 general election?
Swain: Michael, I’m too old, too smart to give you a yes or no answer. (Leahy laughs) The thing about it is, everything you say you never do, sometimes you end up doing. So, I’m not going to say never, but it would take a miracle.
Leahy: We believe in miracles here on The Tennessee Star Report. Let’s outline the elements of what would be the elements that would enable such a miracle to take place. And there are several.
Swain: The most important thing is I believe God has a plan for my life, a call on my life. Everything would have to line up as far as what I felt, and how it was being laid out. And then I would need someone like Ward Baker to run the campaign.
Leahy: Our friend Ward Baker, he listens to the show.
Swain: And at least $2 million.
Leahy: At least $2 million.
Swain: And then before I would even consider that, I would have to do a deep dive into the city’s finances, the state of affairs, what’s happening with the crime, what’s happening with the police, because I have been focused on national issues, and I believe that I’m called to a much bigger arena than Nashville.
But at the same time, I do love the city. And it’s like other blue cities. It is going to hell in a handbasket. I don’t know what the solution is, but those far-left candidates can only take Nashville further down.
Leahy: There’s no question about that. As bad as Mayor John Cooper has been, the candidates that I outlined to you, Sharon Hurt, Freddie O’Connell, and Matt Wilshire would be no better and could probably be worse. That’s a really bad field.
Swain: Our cities are in a sad state right now. And I would encourage the Republican Party to stop being so fatalistic with this argument that no Republican can win and go out and recruit someone. Because I think it’s possible to win for the right person. Especially since the Democrats are in the race, I think that they’re going to sort of take each other down.
Leahy: They will split the left-wing lunatic vote. And if you look at Nashville, Davidson County, depending upon the election, it’s probably now 70 percent Democrat, 30 percent Republican, or maybe 65 percent Democrat, 35 percent Republican. Something in that range. Would you agree?
Swain: Probably. But the city has deep problems, and corruption is one of the major ones, and I’m not sure what it would take to turn things around. I look at that homeless encampment at the corner of Nolensville Road and Edmundson, and it is spread across the street. It was on one side behind the store.
It is growing. What do you do about homelessness? We know that whatever the Democrats are doing, it’s not working. And it’s just so many problems affecting the city. And I would never, ever run for office unless I thought I could make things better.
And I don’t know that because I don’t know the state of affairs in Nashville. I have not been following it closely. That’s my honest reaction. But I can tell you that my mother passed seven days ago.
Leahy: And we are sorry about her passing. How old was she?
Swain: She was 92 and a half.
Leahy: A long life.
Swain: And she lived with me for 13 years. And so all of my decisions have been made thinking of my mother, and she was declining. And so I had cut back on my travel. And the blessing there was that I had always prayed that I would be at home when she died, and she would die at home.
She wouldn’t be in the hospital, hooked up to a machine. And I was in the room when she took her last breath. And I could have gone to the store. I could have gone to the gym. I didn’t have to be there. God answered my prayers. And so right now, I don’t know anything.
I definitely don’t know my future. I do know that, as I’ve always told people, I feel that I have been called to hold politicians accountable, not to be one. I also believe that we don’t need any more politicians. We need statesmen and stateswomen who are out there for altruistic reasons and not for themselves.
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 “Carol Swain” by Carol Swain.
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 Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles in the studio to discuss Nashville’s continuing COVID vaccine incentives, Maury County Health Department’s community response, and county-owned hospital stats.
Leahy: We are joined in studio by our good friend Andy Ogles, mayor of Maury County. Andy, a couple of local stories of note here at the tennesseetar.com. Nashville Mayor John Cooper has announced an incentive for flu and COVID vaccination. Did you see that one?
Ogles: No, I’m going to tennesseetar.com right now to try to catch up.
Leahy: Nashville Mayor John Cooper announced a new incentive for residents to get their COVID vaccine and flu shot. Cooper tweeted earlier this week that anyone needing their annual flu shot or COVID vaccination could meet, wait for it…NFL alumni today, December 14th from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. at Nissan Stadium. It’s not exactly like the free pizzas that they’ve given away in public schools in California to kids to get the vaccines without their parents’ approval. What do you think?
Ogles: I guess if you were going to get it anyway and it’s an opportunity to meet some of your NFL favorites, why not? But I mean, when you’re having to bribe people to take it, that should tell you something about the will and kind of the free market and the marketplace.
And we’ve gone past the level of absurd when there’s no data that you should be giving the vaccine to minor children. And yet there’s this push to vaccinate five and six-year-olds. They’ve got a 99.99 percent survival rate.
And now with the Omicron variant out there, which is very transmissible. But all indications are the symptoms are mild. This thing is breaking and hopefully will continue to dilute itself. And yet we’re pushing the vaccine. Unfortunately, I hate to be conspiracy-minded, but it follows the money at this point.
Leahy: This vaccine incentive at Nissan Stadium from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. today, those attending will be able to meet retired NFL members and receive a holiday photo with the Titans mascot and team cheerleaders and be entered into a free raffle of NFL alumni signed footballs along with food and giveaway. NFL members attending include Chris Sanders, Neil O’Donnell, Al Smith. Two thousand one Titans are calling.
Ogles: There you go.
Leahy: These are long retired guys. (Chuckles)
Ogles: Again, whatever. I think we’re all over COVID. You look at anecdotally the Christmas tree lighting there in Franklin had a huge crowd of I think it was 12 or 13 thousand. It should be noted that the Christmas tree lighting in Maury County had over 20,000. Ours was bigger than Franklin, but that bastion of freedom. I think people are ready to move on and get back to life. And I think what I’ve been preaching for a long time is COVID is here. It may become an annual event and we’ve got to learn to adapt and live with it and to keep life moving forward.
Leahy: Mayor Cooper loves incentives for people to get vaccinated. Earlier in the year, they partnered with American Airlines to refer to win. They had a program there. It explained that anyone receiving a COVID booster shot could write down the name of whoever recommended they get the booster shot and then be entered to win a set of American Airlines plane tickets.
You’ll have to wear mask, though of course, if you go on that airline. Once you won that there were over 300 destinations the winner could choose from. Yeah. Okay. The contest ran from November 8th to the 22nd. But the winners were never announced.
Ogles: (Laughter) Wah, wah, wah.
Leahy: They had another refer to win raffle which promised Nashville residents with prizes such as Predator season tickets, multiple different gift cards, and one-year memberships at local Nashville attractions.
There are right now today, as we speak in Davidson County, 1,595 active cases. There have been 1,226 deaths and a total of 123,000 recovered cases reported.
Leahy: Now, Andy, have you been tracking this new Omicron variant?
Ogles: Omicron. That’s right.
Leahy: You know which letter proceeds it? Xi. They skipped that over. I wonder why?
Ogles: Well, because it’s the China virus, and they didn’t want to state the obvious.
Leahy: Can you imagine if it came out as the Xi variant? Because that was like the next Greek letter up for these variants.
Ogles: Yeah. Obviously, emergency management and aas County Mayor, the governor has vested a lot of authority with your County Mayor when it comes to public health. Then the General Assembly reaffirmed that authority during their special session.
And so, yeah, it’s something that I’m grayer because of. Following the data, talking to the doctors, there is hope in the medical community that the Omicron is the variant that ushers in the end of COVID as far as how lethal it is.
Leahy: The reporting is that it is not as nearly as lethal as the other variants. And also, although I did see a report that said it’s not confirmed that the first Omicron death in the United Kingdom has been recorded.
Ogles: That’s right. Yes, I saw that. Without getting into the pathology and all the others. But the Delta variant was much more aggressive. It particularly loved the fat cells in your lungs. Whereas when you look at your comorbidities in order, typically in the previous variants, it was heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and then pulmonary issues.
But with the Delta variant, there was an emphasis on obesity. And so you had individuals that were even mildly obese, were much more susceptible to extreme illness with Delta. And again, the protocols, the treatment, the therapeutics, all the things that doctors have, which really spurs a whole nother conversation.
You’ve got these nurses and doctors on the front lines giving everything they have to save lives. And then with these mandates through CMS, they’re suddenly discarded. Now, fortunately, the courts in Louisiana stepped up and said, we’re going to put a stay on this when it comes to forced vaccinations and firing our frontline workers.
But our nurses and doctors and CNAs and all these people working in our health care facilities are heroes, and they should not be discarded because they don’t want the vaccine. They’ve been working in this environment for almost two years without a vaccine. And now, as it’s waning, you’re going to fire them?
Leahy: Yes. This is kind of crazy. Let’s talk a little bit about the relationship that you have with the public health department in Maury County, the public health department of the state of Tennessee. There are 95 counties in the state, right?
Ogles: That’s right.
Leahy: And in six of them, there are separate independent public health departments that have been constrained by recent legislation but have been historically somewhat independent. How does it work? Maury County is not one of those six counties. How does it work in Maury County?
Ogles: So we have a county department of health, and it’s run by a board. I’m on it. I actually serve as the chairman. But just like Maury County, because of where we’re situated geographically, our infrastructure, our hospital is a regional hospital.
We serve nine counties, and our department of health serves much in the same way. So whether it’s AIDS treatments or TB clinics or some of those more significant illnesses that require much more in-depth treatments, they’ll come to our health department because we have this regiment and the capacity to handle it.
And so everything that we were doing in Maury County, both from a hospital side, which is county-owned, and the health department, which I’m the chairman of the board impacted more than just one county. It was impacting the entire Southern Middle Tennessee.
Leahy: How is the operation of the Maury County public health Department different from, let’s say, Davidson County because that’s one of the six that’s been independent.
Ogles: I can’t speak to the inner workings of Davidson County’s Nashville Health Department. But I can tell you that Andy Kenny, who runs the health department there in Maury County, has really done a stellar job.
When other counties, Williamson County, not to pick on them, we’re having trouble getting people signed up and tested, it was Maury County that filled the gap. I mean, we were having people in droves coming from Murfreesboro, Nashville, and Franklin because we had the ability and the facilities to test more people.
And so we really became kind of that stopgap where others were struggling. And then everybody came online. We were learning as we were going.
But that team there in Maury County, if you know anybody that works for the health department in Maury County, you need to give them a hug because they have done an amazing job these last two years.
Leahy: In Williamson County, the county basically owns the hospital.
Ogles: That’s right. Same setup in Maury County.
Leahy: How many counties in Tennessee is a local hospital owned by the county?
Ogles: It’s becoming rarer and rarer as you see more consolidation with Vanderbilt. And there’s a big system out in East Tennessee that’s by rural hospitals and now one in West Tennessee. So I would say Williamson and Maury, especially the size that we both are, is more of a rarity these days.
Leahy: And do you see that continuing, the county ownership of the hospital in Maury County?
Ogles: Yes. I think so. Again, we serve nine counties. We have satellite hospitals and triage centers. It works well in rural America, and we’ve kind of figured out how to do it. And so, obviously, healthcare is a fluid industry, and the influences could change, that would change that. But right now, I see no end in sight for our ownership of the hospital.
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Nashville attorney Jim Roberts to the newsmakers line to confidently assure listeners that despite metro government’s fear-mongering the Nashville Taxpayer Protection Act will 100 percent be on the July 27 ballot for a vote.
Leahy: We are joined by our good friend Jim Roberts, going to get an update on the Nashville Taxpayer Protection Act. Good morning, Jim.
Roberts: Good morning to you.
Leahy: How goes the litigation from Metro Legal and the very Nashville Business Coalition? Where does that stand now?
Roberts: Those folks have used a lot of your tax dollars trying to keep the Nashville Taxpayer Protection Act from being on the July 27 ballot, but we are still on for the election that day.
The court has not ruled and suggested that it would rule today. So we’re all watching the court filing system with anticipation. Truthfully, only a dishonest opinion would keep this off the ballot.
The Davidson County Election Commission has made the decision to let the people vote on it as they should have and accept the vote on July 27, and only just the dishonesty of the Metropolitan Government is the only thing standing in the way. And they don’t have a very good argument.
Carmichael: Who is the attorney that’s arguing in favor of the referendum?
Roberts: That’s Jim Blumstein and the folks of the vote comments that are supporting his team. The Election Commission is on our side this time. They understand what we did, how we did it exactly as recorded rules, and they’re defending their decision, as they should.
Carmichael: One of our listeners sent me a text and the name of the listener will not be revealed, but this is what the listener says. I think you’ll get a kick out of it Jim. I am one of the few nerds who watched the Metro Council meetings.
If anyone has watched those meetings at all since the passage of the 34 percent tax increase, you’d realize they’re spending money as if there’s no tomorrow and throwing it out the window.
They even talk about how much money they have and their huge budget. The more money a government agency has or government entity has, the worse it becomes in serving the people.
That’s a Crom axiom. (Roberts chuckles) If we want good government in Nashville or the best government we can get under the circumstances, the amount of money they get needs to be constrained to a four to five percent increase a year.
Which is at this point the natural increase. And it may even, given all the teardowns and all the building that’s going on, it may actually be in the five to the six percent range. I don’t really know what it would be in the absence of the tax increase.
But I’m very happy to hear Jim that you are optimistic that the court will rule in our favor because all of the law is on our side. And then the trick is going to be because the forces that want Metro to have more money, they’ll spend probably over a million dollars to convince people to vote no.
If they vote yes, they constrain the government and give us a better government and force the mayor and the City Council to make some decisions that they should make. But they have no constraints to make them make these decisions.
And they need to be forced to make some tough decisions. And the only way to do it is for the voters to step in. I don’t know if you heard this, but Cooper actually said that the problems for the state of California had to do with the fact that their voters out there get to do things by referendum. Did you hear him say that?
Roberts: (Laughs) I did hear him say that. And the problem with California is the politicians won’t listen to the people even when they vote by referendum.
Carmichael: That’s exactly right. There’s a sense of desperation because I think that the mayor knows that the voters of Davidson County don’t want a 34 percent tax increase and will vote yes on the referendum.
Roberts: That’s right.
Carmichael: But then they’re going to spend a lot of money trying to convince the citizens of Davidson County that a 34 percent tax increase is necessary.
Roberts: Let me take one issue, though. I don’t think they’re going to spend any money trying to convince people that it’s a bad idea. What they’re going to do is try to scare people.
If you look at the advertisements from the pro-tax folks, it’s all scary, fear, police, and firefighters are going to be on the streets, and old people are going to die. There is no intellectual argument. It’s just dishonest fear-mongering.
Carmichael: That’s a very good point. And by the way, that’s exactly what Governor McWherter did when he was trying to pass the state income tax. He said things are so terrible at the state that will have to stop the school buses on April 1.
Don Sundquist, when he was trying to pass the state income tax, all of the media claimed that in the absence of a state income tax, that the state bond rating would fall to a junk rating or interest rate rates would skyrocket and our state would completely disintegrate.
And, of course, the income tax did not pass. And Tennessee has one of the highest bond ratings of any state in the country. So all of the fear-mongering, all of the things that these people say are, just as you say, are just merely fear-mongering.
And if the voters vote yes, then it’ll be up to Mayor Cooper to do his job and make the best decisions he can under some constraints that he doesn’t want to have put on him.
Roberts: That’s right. Last night I sat down and I looked up the budget from Metro from 10 years ago. I was trying to compare Memphis to Nashville. Our budget 10 years ago was about $1.5 billion.
Last night or two weeks ago, or when the Metro Council met, they voted a $2.6 billion budget. That means spending in Davison County has gone up to $100,000,000. a year for a decade.
What do you think is going to happen in the next 10 years? Another $100 million a year, at least. They’ve been on a spending spree that is well beyond our growth. Our population has increased.
Everybody knows that. But it’s gone up about since 2010. But our budget has more than doubled.
Carmichael: Wow!
Leahy: Jim, a question for you. What do you think the odds are that the people win? And what’s the probability that the decision will say the election is on for July 27th?
Roberts: I think it’s 100 percent. This is one of those situations that I just really believe in my heart that the court will know that it’s doing the wrong thing. If the court appeals it we will probably have to straighten it out if it does.
But I don’t see that. This is a good chancellor. And this is the chancellor that ruled in the FOP. He knows the law. He knows how it applies.
Carmichael: Let me say this, I think our judges are very good. I think our judiciary, the chancellors. This is not Chicago. This is not New Orleans.
We’ve got good judges here, and we should be thankful for that because our judges don’t get paid as much as they could make if they stayed in the private law business. And so I’m confident that the ruling, in this case, will be the right one, because I think we have good judges.
Leahy: When will we know something about this Jim? What time today?
Roberts: We’re waiting. The judge could have rolled the trial on the Metro, sued the voters originally. That trial was last week, and the order could have gone down any time. There was a second lawsuit by Metro against the Election Commission trying to get the Bob Mendes confusing ballot initiate on the ballot. As you know, the Election Commission chose not to put that very deceptive and confusing initiative on there.
Listen to the full 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.
Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to compare the propaganda of former Governor Don Sundquist to that of Mayor Cooper’s effort to falsely claim disaster if the Nashville tax referendum succeeds.
Leahy: We are joined now as we almost always are, at this time of the program, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday by the original All-Star panelist, Crom Carmichael. Crom, good morning.
Carmichael: Good morning, Michael.
Leahy: Well, just for our listeners and just to remind them of why we call you the original All-Star panelist, you’ve been on the radio here in Nashville since the 1980s.
Carmichael: ’84.
Leahy: 1984, you were part of the original panel on Teddy Bart’s Round Table.
Carmichael: Well, Teddy had a show for years before he formed a panel. So I was one of the originals on his panel once he decided to have it.
Leahy: Obviously the original All-Star panelist. And I never met you until I moved to Nashville in 1991. I didn’t know anything about what was going on politically. And I listened every morning to the Teddy Bart’s Round Table.
And there was one voice of reason and logic in what was largely a bunch of Liberals. I mean, nice people, but Liberals there. And I kept listening. And there was that voice of reason and logic was Crom Carmichael. That’s why you are the original All-Star panelist.
Carmichael: Thank you.
Leahy: And we continue that tradition, by the way, with this program, because just as when I moved here and by the way, I moved from guess where?
Leahy & Carmichael: California.
Leahy: 1991. And just as I moved here and learned about Nashville and Tennessee politics by listening to Teddy Bart’s Round Table with the original All-Star panelist, Crom Carmichael.
Now today we have a wave of California refugees coming to Nashville, and they are learning about Tennessee and Nashville politics by listening to The Tennessee Star Report with the original All-Star panelist.
Carmichael: And hopefully they’re getting some insights that will help them think about Tennessee in Nashville by having a historical perspective on some of the things, which is what I want to get into when you are ready this morning.
Leahy: Well, I am ready after we talk about some fun stuff, some fun stuff Crom. Now I was out last week.
Carmichael: Having a big time.
Leahy: Going down to the beach, enjoying the beach. I love the beach. By the way, I love the waves coming in.
Carmichael: Very good.
Leahy: It comes from growing up in upstate New York, wherein the summer you would go to the lake. We didn’t go to the ocean. Too far away.
Beautiful Lakes, many of them made by glaciers. Very pristine. Not like lakes in Tennessee, which are kind of like damned muddy rivers sometimes. But nonetheless, I’ve always loved the waves, be it of a lake or of a gulf or of an ocean.
So it was a lot of fun. Now Crom, while I was away, and I’m gonna do this myself. Of course, we are big fans of the Glock Store here in Nashville. Lenny Magill, another California refugee, got sick of California who wouldn’t, by the way, moved hid headquarters here to Nashville.
And we were there at the Grand opening. Nashville Glock Store. They have graciously given us a Tennessee Star Glock 17. I think it’s about ready for you to pick it up.
Carmichael: Just about ready.
Leahy: Just about ready.
Leahy: You’re getting one. I’m buying one. And you and I are going to do some training there.
Carmichael: I’ve already started.
Leahy: So you started. We did a little shooting episode. It turned into a contest. You were better than I was.
Carmichael: I didn’t even know it was a contest.
Leahy: It wasn’t until after I discovered how much better you were than me. So that made me competitive to try to get better than you. That’s how it became a contest.
Carmichael: I got it.
Leahy: It didn’t start out that way. But, you know, I’m a little competitive. And it just riles me when somebody’s that much better than me at anything. And there you were better than me as a shooter. So they’ve invited us to come and do some training. So you did some training independent of me.
Carmichael: I’ve had a one-hour session.
Leahy: So you’re even more ahead of me.
Carmichael: With a different trainer. Not Mario. This was John. And John is a former military former police officer. A great guy and really understands firearms. And I learned some additional techniques.
We practiced on the three targets again. That’s what’s really neat about if they do out there, it’s not just a tunnel type of target.
Leahy: You watch all the cop shows and the police procedural shows. And when they go to shoot, it’s a range. It’s a very narrow range. It’s only one target. This is a shoot 270 situation. 270 degrees.
Carmichael: It’s 180. You’re having to move left Center, right, left, center, right or right, he tells you, go right, go left-center. So you got to move quickly.
Leahy: Got to be paying attention. You got to be paying attention.
Carmichael: But you also have to learn how to focus, how to focus and aim quickly.
Leahy: I thought you were quite good when I observed you. Very focused.
Carmichael: Anyway, I had a wonderful time, great instructor, and look forward to additional training sessions.
Leahy: I’m even further behind.
Carmichael: My office, by the way, it’s about a mile down the road, so that makes it very convenient.
Leahy: Well, if you wanted to be, what do they call these run and shoot competitions you could run from your office and then go and shoot.
Carmichael: At my age, I would do a brisk walk.
Leahy: We’ll have to call that a new sport. Brisk walk and shoot. We will expand our competition. It will be Mike and Crom’s brisk walk and shoot.
Carmichael: Let’s talk about what the world is going on and for our friends from out of state. I want to give a little bit of perspective as to why the idea of Mayor Cooper’s gigantic tax increase is such a terrible idea. They don’t need the money. They need discipline.
Leahy: There’s a lot of revenue coming in, but a lot of bad expenses going out.
Carmichael: Let me just give it a real simple example. Let’s say you have a ranch house. The way the tax law works here in Tennessee, and Metro has to adhere to it on property taxes, and you’ve got 150 feet frontage on the street.
Somebody will come along and buy that ranch house if it’s in a nice area and they will now pay seven or $800,000 for the house, and it’ll be a teardown. But that person who is living in that house was probably paying about $4 to 5,000 in taxes.
And then because you can’t, Metro can’t raise taxes on somebody’s house if it’s unimproved. If they improve it, I think if they were to make an addition or something like this, where they have to get a city permit, a building permit to make an addition, then the city can increase the taxes that they charge for the house.
But you get a house and somebody buys it for $800,000. They tear it down, and then they build two houses and they sell those two houses for a million five each. Well, now you have $3 million on which to tax which generates at a one percent rate to keep math pretty simple.
And then Nashville, that is close enough for this discussion. The taxes on that parcel would go from $4,000 which is what it was before the $30,000.
Leahy: That’s a big increase.
Carmichael: It’s a big increase. And we’re seeing that all across the city. So Metro’s tax revenue is increasing dramatically without a tax rate increase. And what you have is a bunch of people who are very irresponsible. And I want to go back to when Governor McWherter was Governor.
Leahy: Ned McWherter. A Democrat and a good old boy from West Tennessee.
Carmichael: And he wanted to raise taxes. And this is when the Democrats were in charge, and he wanted an income tax.
Leahy: This would be in the ’80s.
Carmichael: And he claimed that things were so bad, so bad in Tennessee that if we didn’t raise the income tax, And I think there was irony in this by April first because I remember it was April Fool’s Day.
Leahy: April Fools Day. I remember saying April Fools Day? wouldn’t he pick a different day than that? But he said April first the buses would have to stop. The school buses would have to stop.
And so this reminds me of what Mayor Cooper and his buddies are running these ads claiming about all these terrible things that will have to happen if they don’t get this massive tax increase.
So you had Governor McWherter who then said the school buses will have to stop. And low and behold, the income tax didn’t pass, and the school buses, the school buses did stop. And then a person was run over and killed in a school parking lot.
The next day, the school buses started again, which showed that what McWhorter was saying at the time was just a big, fat lie. Now, Let’s fast forward. Don Sundquist. Don Sundquist was a Republican, and he joined with the Democrats because, at that time, the Democrats still controlled the House and the Senate.
And just like Cooper, Sundquist ran for reelection, saying that an income tax would pass in this date over his dead body. When he came to Teddy Bart show, and I asked him if he was going to accommodate. (Leahy laughs)
And he did exactly what you just did. He laughed out loud. And I said, governor, I’ve supported you twice, and you fooled me. Good for you, good for you. You’re nothing but a dishonest political hack. And I said this two feet away.
Leahy: You said that to the then Governor.
Carmichael: I’d say that to the mayor because Grant Henry read the quote of what Mayor Cooper said when he was running. And by the way, when Cooper was running, he was a Councilman at large, so he had access to the whole budget.
And so when he said, we can live very nicely if we just manage our fiscal affairs, he was right. And now he’s just like Don Sundquist.
Leahy: And we’ll continue this after the rest of the break. But here I do want to give you this quote of what he said when he was at his church. John Cooper said. “You are creating a path for anarchy in Nashville, Tennessee that will not end well, all because there’s this path of a super small weaponized, kind of Trump-oriented divisiveness that enters into Nashville.” That’s what he said.
Carmichael: What a disgusting thing to say when you’re that irresponsible but not surprising. Not surprising.
Leahy: It gets worse. We’ll talk about that when we get back.
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.
