On Wednesday’s Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast live on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am – Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the show to discuss his home town of South Bend, Indiana and how it’s fared under Mayor Pete.
Leahy: I am joined in the studio by the original all-star panelist, Crom Carmichael. Good morning Crom.
Carmichael: Good morning.
Leahy: We’re talking about Pete Buttigieg, Mayor of the town you grew up and were born in, South Bend, Indiana.
Carmichael: I still go up there a good bit.
Leahy: Your mom still lives in South Bend.
Carmichael: I have family up there, so I get up there quite a bit.
Leahy: He’s been Mayor for seven years?
Carmichael: Yeah, that sounds about right, yeah.
Leahy: Is South Bend better, worse, or indifferent since he’s been, Mayor?
Carmichael: Well, he has a checkered record. The city itself, as the economy has gotten better South Bend has gotten better. It’s lagged the national economy. The one thing that he has done is he has made the downtown area. He’s done a lot of kind of re-modeling of the downtown area putting in those little circles, those roundabouts. He’s made the downtown area prettier.
Leahy: How about the surrounding neighborhoods?
Carmichael: Surrounding neighborhoods, have not. Especially the black community has not done well. The schools are terrible and he is not at all liked at all by the black community in South Bend because of his policies have…
Leahy: Not helping.
Carmichael: He’s just kind of ignored it.
Leahy: And none the less Crom, we have a report and poll from Iowa at Monmouth University that polled 450 likely caucus attenders. Because the caucus attendees are the only ones that matter in Iowa. They hold caucuses there in the first week of February. 2,000 caucuses and about 170,000 people will likely show up.
It’s not a primary to stay with a population of three million. And in this poll, Monmouth University with a mixed record. They were off by 10 points in a couple of major polls that I’m familiar with, but nonetheless, they do have a poll that shows Pete Buttigieg currently leading in Iowa with 22%.
Biden in second place at 19%. Warren third place with 18% and Sanders in fourth with 13%. The margin of error is 4.6% which means basically in this poll, Buttigieg, Biden, and Warren are all tied. What do you make of old Pete? Is he a moderate or is he simply less of a lefty than Elizabeth Warren?
Carmichael: Well, the media is trying to call him a moderate alternative to Biden. And Pete Buttigieg if you look at what he stands for or at least what we know he stands for because he has said these things. And he’s put these things out. They’re on his website and on his proposals. He is a very very far left person.
But what he does is he has this wonderful voice and this wonderful way. It’s a little bit like (Soothing voice) Governor Ralph Northam when he said, ‘And we’ll just place the baby over on the side while the mother and the physician decided whether or not the baby shall live or the baby shall die.’ And Ralph Northam said that in such a calm way that the listener barely understood exactly what the meaning was.
Leahy: So he’s a far leftist with a calm demeanor.
Carmichael: Oh, he has a wonderful demeanor about him. But let me give you some examples of what his policies are. And by the way, this ties back to what we were talking about. So many of these things we talk about Michael, they all tie together. So it’s important, for example, we talked about Florida and Texas and how people change their behavior at the upper-income level.
When taxes are raised marginal tax rates. Well here’s one. Buttigieg wants to have free universal high-quality learning centers for lower-income families. And he wants to spend 700 billion dollars on that. Well so, lower-income families. Well, what is a lower-income family?
Let’s say that his definition of a lower-income family is $50,000.00. Well once again, if you have children and you can get free daycare and your families making 60 or $65,000.00 you’re going to want to take a pay cut so that you can get the benefit of the free childcare. Then his next one is he wants 500 billion dollars to make college affordable.
Free tuition at public universities. Well, college is expensive even at public universities. And he says for people making $100,000.00 or less, they’ll get free tuition for their children. Well if you’ve got two kids in college, one of the two family members is going to stay home and not work because you can make more money…
Leahy: They’re better off economically not working.
Carmichael: You’re better off economically not working. Because as you make more money your marginal tax rate goes up anyway. And so his ideas while he says them in a calm reasonable voice, they make no sense. Now one of the other ones he wants to do, we’ll talk about when we get back. At the federal level, he wants to do away with of all the state 27 state right to work laws.
Leahy: Really?
Carmichael: Yes. We’ll talk about that when we get back and what that means.
Listen to the full third hour:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 am to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Pete Buttigieg” by Pete Buttigieg.Â
