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 the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to discuss how Democrats use the courts to push their agendas and where laws should be made.
Leahy: We are in the studio with our good friend, the original All-Star panelists Crom Carmichael.
Carmichael: Very interesting article here. This was from The Wall Street Journal called voters and the other Supreme Court’s. These are the state Supreme Courts. This gets back to first principles and where should laws be made? And this is a fundamental difference now between the two parties. And the Republicans are not as up to speed as they should be on this. But the Democrat Party recognizes that it’s easier to get a law a policy that you want through courts, even though there is no loss.
Leahy: Exactly.
Carmichael: Even though the laws say the opposite.
Leahy: There is a term there called lawfare. That’s what they engage in. Lawfare.
Carmichael: Well now that’s a lot of civil suits. There are 66 Supreme Court seats up in the country this year.
Leahy: At the state level.
Carmichael: At the state level. But here are some of the things that happen. Unions often ask sympathetic state Supreme Courts to enact labor-friendly policies. Now that’s good for the labor union. It’s bad for everybody who’s not a member of the labor union because the only way labor unions get more for their members is at the expense of the customer, the business owner, and employees who are not members of unions.
And in the process of doing it, they lower the economic output for everybody. And I can say that because I just simply apply the logic that virtually every industry in this country that’s been heavily unionized over the last 70 years, at some point the entire industry has gone broke. Every unionized country company in the steel industry went broke. In the old days, the coal companies would go through bankruptcies. The car companies went broke. Each one of them went broke at varying times.
Leahy: General Motors went broke.
Carmichael: General Motors went broke. Chrysler went broke.
Leahy: I don’t think Ford has ever gone broke but it’s been on the edge a couple of times.
Carmichael: And then the transplants, the companies from Japan they set up manufacturing facilities here and they choose states that are not labor union-friendly.
Leahy: Tennessee, Alabama, southern states.
Carmichael: But the labor union then if they can’t get what they want in the legislature then they then or if it’s too difficult to get in the legislature. Then they want to get the courts to do it. In another example, in cities like Chicago, Baltimore, and San Francisco. They’re turning to state court so that they can sue fossil fuel companies over climate change.
Leahy: Oh my goodness.
Carmichael: Well the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held in America Electric Power versus Connecticut in 2011 that the Clean Air Act supersedes any federal common law right to seek abatement of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel power plants. Now what that means is that if you’re going to change the law you have to do it legislatively and you can’t just make an emotional argument to the courts. The courts are required to follow the law. In this case, all nine U.S. Supreme Court Justices agreed.
But if the Democrats get control of the Supreme Court and got the Supreme Court to rule that common law in fact now no longer applies then it’s open season on every industry that is not popular with the left. And then the other thing that the left does is if they can’t get the courts to rule in their favor and if they can’t pass a law to get what they want then they turn to the regulators themselves to try to regulate. They try to intimidate banks for example into not loaning money to companies that produce firearms.
Leahy: And of course, you know cities like Chicago and Baltimore and Nashville, I’m adding Nashville to the list because it’s part of their policy to stop global warming. Because you know that’s an important part of the job of the mayor of Nashville and the mayor of Chicago and the mayor of Baltimore. It’s not like, you know keeping the streets in good repair. Not taking the garbage out not making sure the garbage taken care of. And not making sure that it’s safe.
Carmichael: Let’s talk about the two most important things that local government should be doing. One is safety. And the other and I would even put education right up there as equal. Co-equal to to safety.
Leahy: Yeah, and all three of those cities are just terrible in that regard.
Carmichael: Well Nashville’s safety is nothing like Chicago or New York.
Leahy: Yeah, it’s better. It’s better, but it’s going in the wrong direction.
Carmichael: But the education especially for minority kids in Nashville is woefully inadequate. And it’s not because of a lack of funding.
Leahy: But global warming is a more pressing issue for Mayor Cooper.
Carmichael: For Mayor Cooper.
Leahy: You can’t make this stuff up Crom.
Carmichael: Well it’s easy to be politically correct. It truly is. It’s a little bit like what you were talking about before I came on the air this morning about the shy Trump voter. There are no Trump signs up and down my street. There about seven Biden signs on about 40 houses. So the way I look at that is that if everyone on my street votes Biden will get those seven-plus about three more. And then the other 30 will go for Trump.
Leahy: Because they’re shy Trump voters.
Carmichael: And because we don’t want to get our houses egged or have it spray painted.
Leahy: Now that might happen in Nashville but it wouldn’t happen probably most parts of you know, Williamson County or Wilson County or Rutherford County.
Carmichael: I’m talking about Nashville. I would be willing to bet that they’re people that put up Trump signs in 2016 that feel even stronger this year who won’t put up a Trump sign.
Leahy: Yeah, because the cancel culture is even worse.
Carmichael: It’s much worse now than it was before.
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.
Photo “U.S. Supreme Court” by William Warby CC BY 2.0.
