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 all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to discuss Democrat elitist mindsets and their undeclared war upon small business in America.
Leahy: Crom Carmichael, I sent you over the weekend this article about what Democrats really think about small businesses. This Congressman Ro Khanna has said ‘we don’t want some small businesses to survive.’
Carmichael: Yeah. It’s just breathtaking. Other than he’s a congressman from California, do you know much about his personal background?
Leahy: He’s a far-left guy.
Carmichael: Well, I know that, but I mean has he been a lawyer? Where did he go to college? In other words this he strikes me as an elitist.
Leahy: My guess is probably a Harvard Law School guy, but I’ll check on that.
Carmichael: Okay, I’d be interested to know what his background is because here’s a guy who, and this is what is great about our form of government and how it is it supposed to be that a guy in Congress who has really dumb ideas can impose dumb ideas on the rest of the country. That’s supposed to be the way we’re organized. I’m not going to argue whether or not the minimum wage in California should be $15. because I don’t care. I don’t live in California. So I shouldn’t have a vote on that.
Leahy: Well, you nailed it on his background. He has a B.A. in economics from the University of Chicago and received a law degree from wait for it… Yale University.
Carmichael: Okay. Well, then this is an elitist. And he’s probably had his life handed to him on a silver platter since some time in high school. He might have worked very hard academically, but these days if you make good grades, really really good grades that might be a sign that you’re so woke that you are now ignorant.
Leahy: You’re following the indoctrination line. You’re regurgitating it perfectly. An indication perhaps you’ve lost your critical thinking capabilities or perhaps never had them?
Carmichael: Yeah. But what we know is here he is from California and in Washington, D.C. trying to tell small business owners what they must and must not do in regard to wages in the state of Tennessee.
Leahy: He’s increasing barriers to entry and making it harder for small businesses to survive. Here’s what he says. We have evidence that a national $15. per hour wage works. Amazon and Target did it nationally and they have created more jobs. I mean goodness gracious.
Carmichael: At Yale and Chicago, if they have any integrity, they ought to be embarrassed by the stupidity of that statement that is evident once again, this is the exception that has become the rule. Rather than look at small businesses and the plight of small businesses that Washington has foisted upon many small businesses. If you want to help small businesses pay more money, maybe you decrease the regulations on small businesses. Maybe you make it less expensive from my Washington standpoint for small businesses to be in business.
Leahy: Government has increased the barriers to entry for survival with all of these regulations and with the need for compliance officers. A large corporation like Amazon and Target has tons and tons of lawyers and compliance officers who don’t produce stuff. They just respond to the government.
Carmichael: And by the way, they were considered essential businesses. So they weren’t shut down. Target wasn’t shut down.
Leahy: No.
Carmichael: Walmart wasn’t shut down and Amazon wasn’t shut down. And so here’s the logic of this guy. That nationwide he knows for a fact that hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of small businesses were shut down. Certainly, millions of employees of small businesses were laid off or furloughed because the law required the businesses to shut down.
Well, where do people then buy things? Where will they go when the government shut down where they normally go? Well, they went at least in the short term to places like Target and Amazon. So how do Target and Amazon respond? They have to hire more people. So essentially what this guy’s evidence is is that if we crush the economy and we crush small businesses it will help the mega-companies.
Leahy: Yes.
Carmichael: And here’s a Democrat who says I care about the little guy. And in the piece he was asked by the interviewer well, are you willing to compromise on this? And his answer was the moderates are the ones who need to compromise.
Leahy: What does the word compromise mean to a far-left Democrat progressive?
Carmichael: It means he will not compromise. He expects the people who disagree with him to change their opinion and agree with him, which of course isn’t compromise at all.
Leahy: Let’s all be united together by you coming over to my far left.
Carmichael: Let me give an example. Let’s say that I want to cut taxes across the board by 20 percent and you want to increase taxes across the board by 20 percent. What’s the compromise?
Leahy: You increase taxes by 20 percent.
Carmichael: That would be your compromise.
Leahy: That’s the compromise from the left.
Carmichael: And a logical person would say meet in the middle.
Leahy: Yeah, zero.
Carmichael: Which means you don’t change anything. Now that doesn’t mean that’s the right spot to be. All I’m trying to do here is define the word compromise and what the left says is compromise means capitulation. They both begin with C, I think capitulation begins with C.
Leahy: Yes it does.
Carmichael: Thank you.
Leahy: You are welcome. Here’s what’s an interesting point to me it is when we get to the world today and we look at language, the left says unity. That means you come over to my viewpoint and we don’t care about your view. And they say, compromise, which means again you capitulate.
Carmichael: Yes, and equity is now another one of their new words. And the next Republican president should sign an executive order requiring Hollywood to pick actors for every production on a lottery system. That everyone who wants to act gets to apply and equity is that they have to pick by lottery. That there is no audition and that there is no tryout and that there is no effort to find out if there are any good at it or not. And then the argument is well Hollywood you all are so good at things you can train them. You can just train them. And then do the same thing by the way with professional sports.
Leahy: Oh that would be interesting.
Carmichael: So do the same thing with professional sports. And the next one is I would say any company covered protected by Section 230 should have to hire people, especially in their executive ranks exactly the same way.
Leahy: That sounds like a great proposal.
Carmichael: And that would be equity. That would be equity.
Listen to the full third hour here:
– – –
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.Â
