Cancel culture and higher taxes during COVID-19 have burdened at least one Nashville business owner, so much so he worries about his personal and professional well-being.
Carey Bringle, who owns Nashville’s Pork Leg Porker restaurant, said this on a new episode of the Beacon Center of Tennessee’s Over-Caffeinated podcast.
Beacon is a right-of-center think tank.
“People who haven’t done this need to understand the mental toll that it takes to be an entrepreneur and to start a business. It is very heavy on your family and it’s heavy on you,” Bringle said.
“We want to do it, and we are driven and we have to do it. With that risk comes the reward if you are successful.”
According to the podcast, Bringle wrote a letter this year that said now is the worst time for Nashville officials to raise taxes. As The Tennessee Star reported in June, the Nashville Metro Council passed a budget that includes a record 34 percent property tax increase. That extra money increases funding for police and schools and gives cost-of-living raises to city employees.
District 7 Metro Council member Emily Benedict responded, sarcastically, to Bringle on Twitter in May.
Emily, YOU are a major part of the problem. How many people did you feed during the disaster? How many community events do you sponsor? How many jobs have you created? Why is every metro employee still getting paid when this shutdown forced us to furlough? Tax and spend….. https://t.co/L9IJNjA8bw
— Peg Leg Porker (@PegLegPorker) May 2, 2020
“A guy running a small biz that has a much larger savings account than his workers and the majority of Nashvillians,” Benedict said.
“But sure, he shouldn’t pay his fair share of taxes.”
Someone using the Peg Leg Porker Twitter handle responded and told Benedict that she is “a major part of the problem.”
Bringle, on the Over-Caffeinated podcast, said he could go along with a tax increase if he thought it would get Nashville out of debt.
“But this mayor [John Cooper] did not furlough anybody. He has not done any rolling layoffs or furloughs. They have not cut the budget. They have not been creative in their solutions to get more revenue, outside of a property tax, and they’ve given raises in the middle of this. When I see this, it was just a money grab,” Bringle told Beacon President Justin Owen and Vice President of Communications and Outreach Mark Cunningham.
“It’s not a money grab to save our city. It’s a money grab to get us to next year, to where we will go spend more money. The problem has not been solved.”
During the podcast, Cunningham referenced a new Cato Institute poll that said 62 percent of Americans fear sharing their political views.
Bringle said matters such as those keep him up at night.
“I’ve watched fellow business owners be called racist by employees that hadn’t been there a year. Maybe they fired the person who said something. It’s just scary,” Bringle said.
“When I wrote that letter [about taxes], I had people who disagreed with me. They published my home address. They published the address of rental properties that I have. They went after and attacked me at a personal level. And, really, I was trying to do them a favor. It didn’t matter what your affiliation is. I feed everybody.”
Bringle, in another portion of the podcast, said COVID-19 hit his business hard, but he found cause to feel optimism.
“We had to do furloughs. But even in the middle of the furloughs as I was laying my staff off, temporarily, one of my staff members came up to me and said something. He said ‘I know how hard this is on everybody. I can see how hard it is on you. I just wanted to let you know that I’m thinking about you right now and how hard this must be for you to do this,’” Bringle said.
“That was very positive and uplifting for me. It was great that I have people on my team that really care and know how hard it is — not just on them as an employee, but as an owner to go through this type of thing.”
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Peg Leg Porker Inside Restaurant” by Peg Leg Porker.
Democrats are truly horrible people who only pretend to care. Wake up people, you get what you vote for!
What John Cooper is doing, what Emily Benedict said, the doxing of Carey Bringle brings suffering to innocent people. Suffering = evil in my book.
What Cooper and most of the City Council is doing is criminal and follows right along with the Communist playbook. Recall and replace Cooper! The time is now, before we slip too far down the road to perdition!
Despite all of this I am sure the majority of voters in Davidson County will continue to vote D.
Julie, unfortunately true, the dimwitted liberal sheeple will blindly vote democrat no matter WHAT their platform is, socialism, fascism, marxism, etc.
Comrade Cooper s a democratic socialist liar and fraud. His tax increase at this time is ridiculous about like every move he has made since he has been king. If he is not being King or Napoleon, he is out talking tuff in that monotone voice going after those criminals of the east Nashville party, what a joke. He has ruined people’s lives by financially ruining their livelihood. He is ruining Nashville. RECALL COOPER!