The Big Beautiful Bill - In The Tank #497 - Heartland Daily Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Linnea (00:36):
Alright. We are now live. Welcome to the show,
everyone. So Trump's bigbeautiful bill has passed the
house and there is some goodstuff in it and some not so
good, at least in my opinion.Elon is disappointed for one,
but we'll have to take a look atit and see.
This week, we're also going totake a look at a new grading
system that San Francisco isrolling out called Grading for
Equity. What could go wrong? Andthe DNC is considering shoveling

(01:01):
money into trying to create aDemocrat Joe Rogan, completely
defeating the purpose of anorganic commentator, but that's
why they will fail. Moreinformation is coming out about
the auto pen scandal. This time,a watchdog group found that the
Biden administration or at leastBiden himself didn't seem to
know about several seriousenergy policy orders he

(01:21):
allegedly signed, including theoffshore drilling ban.
We're gonna talk about all ofthis and more in episode 497 of
the In The Tank podcast.Alright. Welcome to the In the

(02:07):
Tank podcast. I'm Lynea Luken,your host, and we also have Jim
Lakeley, vice president of theHeartland Institute. Jim?

Jim (02:14):
Hey, everybody. It's it's good to be on the show again. I
I noticed, dad, this is episodenumber four ninety seven. Three
more episodes to the big fivezero zeroes. So we're gonna have
to do something special maybefor that episode.
That'll be fun. But I'm lookingforward to the topics today. I
picked a couple of them myself,so let's get rolling.

Linnea (02:33):
Right. We also have Sam Karnik, senior fellow at the
Heartland Institute. Sam,welcome back to the show.

S. T. Karnick (02:39):
Thank you, Lynea. I'm very excited to be on
this big, beautiful show today,and I hope everybody else is
ready to see an exciting,exciting podcast.

Linnea (02:50):
Alright. Absolutely. Great. And, unfortunately, guys,
Chris couldn't be here today.But before we get started, as
always, if you want to supportthe show, you can go to
heartland.org/inthetank anddonate there.
Please also click that thumbs upto like the video. Remember that
sharing it helps break throughYouTube suppression. They really
hate us. And frankly, we don'treally care all that much
anymore. We'll talk about whatwe want to.

(03:11):
And anyway, but still leaving acomment helps. And if you're an
audio listener, you can help usout by leaving a nice review. So
I want to launch right into ourfirst subject here. It's too bad
that Chris isn't here. We'llhave to go over a little bit
shallowly today until he's ableto come back so that he can help
us out with it.
So today in our unhingedsegment, we have grading for

(03:33):
equity From news week, SanFrancisco public schools convert
f's to c's, b's to a's in equitypush. San Francisco's public
high schools will implement asweeping change to their grading
system this fall replacingtraditional methods with a
policy that allows students topass with scores as low as 41%.

(03:53):
We used to call that grading ona curve when we were in college.
But anyway, this is a little bitmore extreme than that. The
initiative, part of a broadergrading for equity push, is
stirring concern amongeducators, students and parents
over academic standards andcollege readiness.
Homework and classroomparticipation will no longer
influence a student's finalgrade. Students will be assessed

(04:15):
primarily on a final exam, whichthey can retake multiple times.
Attendance and punctuality willnot affect the academic
standing. Supporters of thepolicy say that it better
reflects real student learningby deemphasizing behavior based
penalties like late work ormissed assignments. The change
comes amid ongoing financialstrain.

(04:35):
This is part of the key here anddeclining enrollment across the
district. While intended toaddress achievement gaps,
critics argue that the policymay only obscure the underlying
academic challenges rather thansolve them. And and, Andy, that
that was on the the Newsweekpost, not the voice of San
Francisco that we're gettingthrough in a minute. But anyway,

(04:57):
guys, I once again, I'm sad thatChris isn't here because he was
a teacher and he has firsthandexperience with us or for us
when it comes to educatingstudents and knowing what works
and what doesn't. But I don'tthink you have to be an educator
to recognize the problems inthis idea.
Is it really helping kids learnhow to read if you never ask

(05:21):
them to prove that they know howto read and you just shove them
through to the finish line? Isthat helping kids or is that
massively hindering theirsuccess later on? Guys?

Obviously, this is a catastrophically stupid
thing to do. It's interesting tome, though, because I think the
premise behind it is prettyclear, which is that this is
like the end game for the wholeidea of equal opportunity. The
notion that everyone should havethe best possible start in life

(05:55):
makes sense, but there has to besome sort of organizing
principle for society in anycase. And once you have people
acting in the world, they'regoing to get different results
based on who they are, whattheir capabilities are, and in
particular, how much they putinto it. I find it absolutely

(06:17):
fascinating that this, saysexplicitly that, well, we don't
want to have any kind of, effecton grades of the student's
character, But your character isgoing to affect everything in
your life.
One of the great things abouthaving, academic standards is
that it teaches children thatthey have to do things certain

(06:40):
ways in order to get on in life.And this is, this is really just
going to continue to push this,entire education system down the
drain. It's just an awful,silly, stupid idea.

Jim (06:57):
Yeah. I mean, look. Equity grading I mean, equity is fake.
Equity is not real life. Youcan't run a school or a business
or a government or a society onequity.
And I think a lot of peoplemight remember when Kamala

(07:17):
Harris in 2020 when she wasrunning as as vice president
with Joe Biden talked a lotabout equity. I think a lot of
voters were still not quite upto speed on what equity actually
means. It does not meanequality. It's very, very
different from equality. JoeBiden would say things like, and
Kamala Harris too, would saythings like, Equity is going to

(07:39):
be the base and always top ofmind as we implement government
policies in my administration.
Equity will be how we govern andmanage all the federal
departments, and that's what wesaw. And now we see it. It's
everywhere. So in the state ofCalifornia, what a surprise.
Once the home to the best publicschool system in K-twelve and

(08:05):
free for a long time, but veryaffordable, high quality higher
education was in California.
Over the last thirty, fortyyears, that's been completely
destroyed, to now we get thisidea that in San Francisco, of
course, ground zero of an entirestate that is completely run by
insane people, people who shouldbe in an insane asylum. We have

(08:26):
this idea of equity grading. Iwas a writer. I ended up being a
writer when I went to collegebecause I stunk at math. Linea,
I was graded on a curve in mytrigonometry class.
I remember that when I was ajunior in high school. And thank
goodness for that. I think Iprobably ended up with 40s on
some of those tests, but I endedup getting a D or a C minus

(08:47):
instead of an F because theclass was so hard, especially
for somebody whose brain doesn'treally work mathematically. This
is equity grading and all ofthese things that the left,
which has controlled not justDemocrats, the left, the hard
left, has controlled oureducation system for at least
one generation, maybe two. Ithink I'm an old man yelling at

(09:10):
cloud here in Gen X.
I tend to think, because I'mbiased that way, that Generation
X might have been the lastgeneration to completely get
through the system of educationfrom K-twelve to college without
being completely overrun byleftist gobbledygook from lesson

(09:30):
plans to administrations toteachers and all of that stuff.
But what this is doing, Samtouched on this, is we're
robbing these kids from a propereducation. Know, a movie that
had a big influence on me wasDead Poets Society. Robin
Williams standing on the deskand Captain, my Captain! And

(09:54):
getting those kids passionateabout poetry and about learning.
That inspired me. That's why Imatriculated toward English and
English literature and Englishwriting and all that stuff. I
have my copy of Leaves of Grassin my office. But that's not the
education system that we have.Mean, was that said?
In the 40s, I think, or maybethe 30s? But obviously it was a

(10:16):
generation or two before me. Butwe've now robbed kids. They
can't have that educationanymore. I mean, I guess you
could in places like Hillsdaleand Thomas Aquinas in California
of all places and other places.
There still is the properteaching of the classical texts
that are taught because it's notjust the material that you're

(10:39):
learning. You are learning a lotmore about the world and about
how to think for yourself andhow to absorb complex material,
which is very important to beinga well rounded, educated person.
Modern kids are being robbed ofall of this, and especially of
all places in California. Imean, we already have people
entering Ivy League schools, atleast the American students

(11:01):
anyway, who have to takeremedial math. This has been
going on for at least a decade.
They should have learnedremedial math in high school or
they should be going to acommunity college to learn that
before they apply to, I don'tknow, maybe a state school. But
we admit kids into the IvyLeague that need remedial math
courses. And you know, with theadvent of AI, let's be real

(11:23):
here, students use AI to cheat,and it's rampant because it's
easy and it's difficult forteachers to catch it. It's hard
to tell the difference between avery intelligent interpretation
of a text and somebody askingGrock to do it for them and then
putting that down on theirpaper. And so if you're not to

(11:46):
have tests that can be measured,if you're not going to make them
do homework, do they even go tolabs anymore?
Do they go to physics lab orchemistry lab anymore? I don't
know. Maybe it's probably toodangerous for them to go to
those labs if they're not beingtaught the proper stuff in their
practice to begin with. You seestories that just keeps coming

(12:07):
up on social media and in legacymedia about how professors in
colleges have students that justcan't do the reading. We live in
a very small attention spansociety as it is with the
advance of technology, but theyhave students that just really
can't do the reading anymorethat they used to.

(12:29):
To do it because of equity isactually insulting to the
students you are trying to help.Young people need to be
challenged. If you're notchallenged, you're not going to
grow. And we just keep dumbingdown education in this society.
And every time we hear a storylike this, Lynne, I think back
to the movie Apollo 13.

(12:51):
And you had people in the 1960susing slide rules and a
chalkboard. I know it was adramatic effect, but that's what
they used to bring the strandedastronauts back to Earth. Today,
that is completely impossible.It would seem almost impossible,
unless you're an engineerworking for Elon Musk, to be

(13:11):
able to figure something likethat out because our remedial
instruction, the base that youneed in order to expand your
mind. It's a beautiful thing.
It's a wonderful thing. It makesus more human to be able to
learn, we're just robbinggenerations of that. I guess the
only upshot of this is that thiswill increase the demand for

(13:32):
attendance at private schoolsand probably increase
homeschooling as well.

Linnea (13:37):
Right. And it's not like the data even bears it out,
right? It would be one thing ifit was like a fruity theory that
actually was showing that therewas learning going on somehow by
some magic quantum learning,teleporting the information into
their brains even though they'renot doing any of the work or
even showing up to class. But, Iwanted to highlight this section
from the voice of San Franciscothat says, unsurprisingly, the

(14:00):
most recent data from bothmiddle schools in San Leandro
San Leandro, is that right?Where grading reform started in
2016 documents significantcontinued disparities among
student populations when itcomes to performance on
statewide assessment tests.
In both English and math, thegaps range from twice to triple

(14:22):
to even four times as manystudents meeting or exceeding
the standard in some subgroupscompared to others. So their
whole thing, the equity issue isthey're trying to, like, level
it all out. Right? They'retrying to make sure there aren't
students who exceed and therearen't students who fall
terribly behind. And it'sactually having the opposite

(14:43):
effect.
So the gap is widening. It turnsout that if, you know, a kid
doesn't have a good, rigorouseducation minded home life, and
then they make school no longerrigorous or education minded,
the kid isn't magicallyimproving on their own. So it's
it's very, very bad anyway. So Ijust wanted to give you guys
that black pill today before wemove on to the next subject.

(15:05):
But, no, the hopefully, I mean,eventually, reality is going to
reassert itself.
There's really no other option.Right? Unfortunately, there's
probably gonna be quite a lot ofpain and a lot of kids are being
punished and suffering for some,you know, usually racial
extremists, like pet projectsthat they inflict on everybody.

Well, that's the big problem here. It's the whole
idea that certain groups, ifthey're not doing as well as
other groups, that that is aproblem that requires some kind
of forcible solution. Educatingeverybody to the best of their
ability, would seem to be commonsense. But we get away from that

(15:52):
because we look at the numbersand then we say, well, we need
this group to be up where thisgroup is. Well, is that
possible?
We assume it is, and we makethat to be our test for equal
opportunity. But there is nosuch thing as equal opportunity.
Everyone is different. We'remade different genetically.

(16:13):
We're made different by ourupbringing, by nutrition and by
our education.
It would be nice if you wouldall in California there try to
make the education aschallenging as possible. And
those who can't make it to thetop level, they don't have to be
at the top level. There is anice world out there for people

(16:34):
who are not PhDs in physics. Soit's rather silly. And being
able to use a slide rule to docalculations and to be able to
diagram a sentence and to knowwhat the history of The United
States is.
Jim just went ballistic on thatone, think. But

Jim (16:57):
those

are all really important things. And if you
know the fundamentals ofsomething, then you know what
the outcomes of actions aregoing to be. If you don't
understand the fundamentals,this goes with the economy, it
goes with the cars, it goes withanything you might wanna deal
with. If you don't know thefundamentals, then you don't
know anything. And we're gettingaway from that.

(17:20):
We're really creating asituation where more and more
people are just not ready forlife. And that is pathetic. We
really need to get our acttogether and stop talking so
much about money and resourcesand start talking about actual
teaching. This is not going toend well, as you say.

Linnea (17:42):
Yeah. And this almost certainly this kind of thing
almost certainly has to do. AndI think this is true for
Illinois schools as well withschools just trying to get more
government funding. And if theyhave more people passing, like
if they have more peoplegraduating and they don't have
people being held behind, heldback and stuff, they get

(18:03):
penalized for people being heldback and for people not
graduating. So they're doingthis in order to get more
funding to fund what youreducational standards are
slipping at best.
And Sterling is in the commentshere and he makes a good point.
He says part of this is the moveto focus on self esteem without

(18:24):
accomplishment. I think that'scertainly part of it. It's, you
know, some people like to pointa lot to the the participation
trophy thing. And I think someof that's a little bit
exaggerated, but there is sometruth there.
Not everybody deserves a trophyfor everything they do. That's
just a fact of life. And at onepoint in time, I would have

(18:47):
said, well, when they get intothe real world, it'll reassert
itself and, you know, they'llthey'll suffer for having that
attitude. But the corporateworld coddles that attitude,
too. Now it's gotten completelyout of control.
Top and bottom. Anyway, I wantto move on quick here. So this

(19:07):
is another thing that Democratsseems to be completely and
utterly deranged about. Sohonestly, this could probably go
under unhinged too. But they areabsolutely dumping me into a new
program aimed at finding aDemocrat Joe Rogan.
This is a interesting one. Soeveryone here probably knows
that Joe Rogan isn't exactly alifetime card carrying

(19:32):
Republican. In fact, he

What?

Linnea (19:36):
Yeah. Exactly. In fact, he said in the past that
Democrats lost him by being soextreme. And it's also pretty
clear that right wingers arejust generally more popular
online than leftists, not acrossthe board. There are some
exceptions in the podcastingworld, but not many.
People like Joe Rogan becomepopular not because they have so
much political expertise. Imean, sometimes you see a take

(19:59):
and you wanna tear your hairout, but it's actually for just
being likable and willing totalk about topics that are
difficult or talk to people fromacross the spectrum who do have
interesting things to say,whether or not you agree. So
Democrats took one look at thisprogram or this system and his
organic success, and they saidto themselves, but can we make

(20:22):
this in a lab? No. So from thefederalist, we have Democrats
are pursuing not one, not two,but a whopping 26 initiatives
aimed at replicating DonaldTrump's appeal with podcasters
and influencers in the digitalspace.
The party's goal is to developinfluencers in a political

(20:43):
spaces like sports or lifestylepodcasts who can resonate
organically with audiences whilesubtly building online
enthusiasm for Democratcandidates. They're hitting up
donors to the tune of tens ofmillions of dollars to do it.
The Times profiled several ofthese burgeoning initiatives,
all with similar vaguelyempowering names that say

(21:04):
nothing substantial at all. Andthe solution would require,
though, for them to succeed, theFederalist writes, it would
require them letting go of thereins of power and allowing the
marketplace of ideas to workfreely or even especially when
it leads to new ideas that buckparty consensus. Think with

(21:24):
Donald Trump and RFK, forexample.
Rogan and other independentpodcasters don't take their cues
from on high. They're actuallyjust naturally curious and bring
people on from all walks of lifeto explore ideas that they find
interesting. So meeting peoplewhere they're at. This is what
democracy is supposed to beabout. It makes what shows like

(21:46):
the Joe Rogan experience soappealing to people in the first
place.
Yet it's the one thing that theDemocrat party with its
obsession with rigid conformitythat crushes people for the
mildest descent cannot accept.And this is so true to quote to
quote our wonderful president.So true. The Democrats and

(22:11):
people who are leftist or likesocial justice social justice
warrior minded in general, theirentire worldview depends on
building very rigid lines of howyou can talk about certain
subjects, or you're canceled, oryou're ostracized in some way or

(22:31):
another. And it's led to tons ofpeople who would otherwise
probably be Democrats leaninginto the right.
And and so it's the way thatthey approach politics, the way
that they approach life ingeneral is almost impossible to
replicate organic likeimpossible to make an organic

(22:52):
allowable kind of like fun showthat all people from all walks
of life are going to enjoy. Theyjust can't. I mean, imagine a
Democrat Joe Rogan trying toallow someone on who will talk
about like how harmfultransgender surgery is to kids.
They're not going to be able todo it. They just can't.

(23:15):
Regardless of whether or notthere's broad support from like
normal voting Democrats andRepublicans that this stuff is
bad for kids. Democrats cannotallow a representative of theirs
to talk about It's they'reasking for something that is
counter to their entire, like,policy positions. Go ahead,

(23:40):
guys.

Jim (23:42):
Well, the last go ahead, Sam. You go first. I have one
bit of random to do.

Okay, good. And I'll just set you up then. The
left really starts with results.They know what result they want
and then they decide this is howwe're going to do The perfect
example is the previous examplewe had grading for equity in San
Francisco. We want young peopleall to have the same level of

(24:08):
achievement.
So we will just simply, oh,we'll just obliterate
achievement and then everyonewill have the same level. And
this is what's going on, herewith this, with this action is
that there's saying we need tohave, an influence in this space
where all these frankly, whereall these young males are and

(24:31):
and especially the the, ones whoare drifting toward the right
and toward conservatism. And sothe idea is, well, we need to
get into that space and showthese people how awesome the
left is and how great our ideasare and how, for example, wrong
it is for men to think that,let's say, an attractive woman

(24:55):
has some appeal to her or thatcars are pretty darn cool things
when they have internalcombustion engines. That walking
around out in the woods andshooting at deer is a fulfilling
and good thing to do. So we needto change their minds about all

(25:16):
those things and many more.
And so we'll get somebody outthere who's really influential
and we'll build them up so thatthey will be the biggest thing
ever. And then we'll get a wholebunch of little minions who will
also, work toward that end. Andthen we'll have what we want.
Whereas the right, you mentionedthe term organic and that's

(25:36):
really what happens. Right isall about organic things because
what the right starts with isprocesses.
And then they they you expectthat the results will be the
best because most people want toto have a good life. So they do
they do the kinds of things thatwould give them a good life. And
that always involves, alwaysinvolves benefiting other

(26:01):
people. You don't get to be the,you don't get to be Facebook,
for example, by, by notbenefiting people. You get to be
mad at by, by doing that.
And say you don't get to be oldGoogle by not benefiting people.
You get to be current Google bydoing that. And these are fading

(26:21):
efforts and they will declineover time and it may be very
fast. So if you look at how thetwo visions for our country, one
is that we, the experts willfigure out what's best. The
progressive vision, the expertswill figure out what's best and
they'll impose it on everyoneand that'll be that.
Whereas, and that's a goaloriented. We know what we want

(26:44):
and we're going to, completelytwist the world into, into, into
a little piece of ball, a littleball if we want to, if it takes
that to get it there andeveryone will be stupid and poor
but we will have equality whichis the thing that we want.

(27:06):
Whereas, on the right, the wholeidea is that we will put in
place the right processes and,decent processes that are fair
and that are blind, for example,or visually impaired processes.
And then people will put out theeffort and whatever happens,
that will be what, we end upwith. And as I said, the

(27:29):
important thing is that becausepeople want to benefit
themselves as as Adam Smithobserved, it's not their desire
to benefit other people thatmakes people make bread or
nowadays automobiles or planesor whatever or software, it's
their desire to benefitthemselves and their family.

(27:49):
And so this approach of havingan organic way where you just
believe in processes and letthem roll is in a complete 100%
contrast with the idea ofimposing from above. So you
would think that this effortwould fail spectacularly.

Linnea (28:11):
Yeah. And Chris Shattuck asked the question, whose money
are they using to find a DEMalternative, to Joe Rogan? And
that is donor money. I mean,they're they're courting donors
on specifically, doing, likeinfluencer peddling. So what
what's interesting here?
Let me I'll let you take it fora second, Jim, because I'm gonna
pull that article back up again.

Jim (28:33):
Well, it's gonna take me more than a second. But

Linnea (28:36):
No. No. Please.

Jim (28:37):
Well, yeah. Mean, just let me say, look, right leaning, if
you want to call them that,right leaning podcast rose
because they were shut out ofthe legacy media. When I saw
these stories, I thought of thesame thing. Again, I'm old
enough to remember the rise ofRush Limbaugh and conservative
talk radio. Rush Limbaughinvented an entire industry by

(29:01):
himself because of his successin the late 1980s nationally
syndicating with his own companya talk show in the middle of the
day from twelve to noon easterntime when everybody in the
industry told him that thatwould fail miserably because
people are at work.
How the hell are they gonnalisten to you in the middle of
the day? And he proved them allwrong, but he existed. He was

(29:24):
able to succeed because hefilled a need in the media. He
filled a void in the marketplaceof ideas because conservative
voices were largely shut out oflegacy media. And that's the
same thing here with rightleaning podcasts, and they are
successful because they havebeen shut out of the legacy
media or even worse, calleddisinformation or misinformation

(29:47):
and attacked and censored.
And all of that does is just addmore fuel to the fire. But
Democrats can't pod becausethey're not interested in having
conversations with people.They're interested in running
ops, in running operation youknow, information operation
campaigns. They're about pushingpropaganda. You know, they they
have called podcasts.

(30:08):
They they spent four yearscalling Joe Rogan's super
successful podcastdisinformation, trying to get a
deep platform, trying to getSpotify after he signed his
contract to take him off theair. These things happened and I
remember them and I think mostpeople should remember them. Joe
Rogan certainly remembers them.He just had another podcast with
AJ from The Y Files, another nota right wing podcast, but a

(30:31):
super successful independentcontent creator on YouTube.
Fantastic conversation.
You should check it out. Andthey talked about this. But the
thing about podcasts, and I'vementioned this a couple of
times, is that authenticity isthe coin of the realm in the new
media. Robert Meyer Burnett hadthat great quote. And the left
and the Democrats don't have anyauthenticity because they're

(30:51):
running they're running psyops.
They're not and they're doingpropaganda. They are not having
actual conversations. You haveto build an audience
organically. There aren't anyshortcuts. God bless the young
consultants who are going to bestealing money out of the
pockets of rich democrat donors,but you can't buy what has been

(31:12):
created by Joe Rogan and othersbecause there's no shortcuts
because you rise and you fall onyour ability to attract and keep
people interested in your showand what you are saying.
Two good examples of this, and Ihave more to say, but I'll just
put these examples out there foryou, Lanea. Megan Kelly, former
Fox News star, has a supersuccessful podcast. I watch it

(31:35):
almost every episode becauseit's fun, it's interesting, and
she keeps my interest. MeghanMarkle, the former duchess of
Sussex, also has a podcast thatis failing. She tried to buy
influence.
She tried to buy an audience,and you can't buy it. Michelle
Obama has a pod everybody has afreaking podcast. You know, we

(31:55):
started that. We're almost 500episodes in, five hundred weeks
into this thing. But MichelleObama has a podcast.
Have you listened to herpodcast? Anybody here? I I've
not listened to a whole episode,but I've seen clips. She's
miserable. There is no joy.
She's almost always complainingabout something. Who wants to
sit and listen to that? And shewas even on Amy Poehler,

(32:16):
comedian Amy Poehler has apodcast, of course. Michelle
Obama was a guest. You could seethe fear in Amy Poehler's eyes.
She's not gonna ask, you know,Big Mike any real questions. You
know? And so compare thatinterview to Joe Rogan having
Donald Trump on his program.They just talked about whatever
the hell Joe wanted to talkabout for three hours, and then

(32:36):
Trump would bring up UFC, andthey talked about that for forty
minutes. You know, I skippedthrough that.
I don't care about that. But,you know, look, you you know,
you you succeed and fail on whatyou actually bring to the
audience. And the audience doesnot wanna sit there and listen
to democratic propaganda everyday. And there is nobody on the
left that I've ever seen thathas the talent to do that. The

(33:00):
reason this is going to fail,and hit this perfectly, Linea,
is that there are things you'renot allowed to talk about on the
in the Democratic Party.
And you there are all these nogo zones that ordinary people
like to talk about or thingsthat interest them or things
that trouble them. Like, know,transgenders playing girls

(33:20):
sports, you know. You can't talkabout that on anybody else's
podcast on on the left. So, youknow, they they won't succeed
because they can't. They don'thave the talent to do it, but
they cannot actually talkgenuinely to people.
And and so they're they're lost,and I hope they stay lost.

Linnea (33:37):
Yeah. And I mean, it's it's not just that, you know,
oh, well, if you have right wingcontent on your podcast, it'll
be popular online. That'sdefinitely not true. But if you
look at, you know, some of themost popular podcasts that the
Democrats or at least the leftin general have been trying to
rip down recently, there's likethe unsubscribe podcast, which

(33:57):
is just a bunch of, like, copsand military veteran, like, gun
tuber bros sitting arounddrinking alcohol, talking about
whatever they feel like talkingabout. They've had guys come on
and talk about, like, ghosts andcryptids and stuff.
Like, it's just it's silly,goofy, fun stuff. And it's
wildly popular. Why? Becausethey're genuine. They're doing

(34:21):
stuff organically.
They care about the stuff thatthey talk about, and they're not
being, like, paid by politicaloperatives. Right. So I want to
give some context to theaudience here. The Federalist
does a good job of listing someof the programs that this money
is going towards. The first oneis called a n d media, achieve
narrative dominance media, whichplans to fund influencers while

(34:45):
co producing their content.
And it's raised $7,000,000.Another project bullhorn will
back creators while working as amatchmaking service to book them
with influential YouTubepodcasts. Channel zero will
provide back office services tocontent creators, while Double
Tap Democracy will help to grow2,000 smaller apolitical

(35:08):
accounts. And Project Echo,which has pledged $52,000,000
war chest to a vague influencerprogram, most of which it aims
to obtain from donors. So that'sall those guys.
And Federalist says that, youknow, there's a predictably
swampy who's who of professionaloperatives and corporate elites
all as promising donors. Andthey're promising donors a major

(35:31):
return on investment. So goodluck. Even the New York Times on
this topic said that the quieteffort amounts to an audacious,
skeptics might say desperate betthat Democrats can buy cultural
relevance online despite thefact that casually right leaning
touchstones like mister Rogan'spodcasts were built not by

(35:54):
political donors and did notrise overnight. So yeah.
I mean, this stuff takes foreverto grind out. I mean, if you
weren't if you're like a new anewer YouTuber and you're trying
to grow in the, like, I don'tknow, like, political podcaster
space, I guess it might be alittle bit easier for Democrats

(36:17):
because they're not suppressedby YouTube's algorithm, like,
not targeted specifically. AndI'm talking about, like, general
politics, not like the HeartlandInstitute with our with our, you
know, think tank space, but,like, someone trying to be the
next Matt Walsh or something isgonna have a heck of a fight on

(36:38):
YouTube now compared to fifteenyears ago. Right? So it's kind
of like it's harder to become aninfluencer, and I hate that word
so much.
But it's harder to grow in thatarea and have influence now than
it was if you got in when getthe getting was good. And so
that the Democrats are tryingto, like, force this like a

(37:01):
square peg in a round hole. It'sjust not gonna work out for
them. I wish them luck. I wishthem many, many donations.
I wish them spending lots ofmoney on this effort. But I I
think it's doomed to fail. Andyou look at they've been they
did it during the last electiontoo. I mean, the amount of money
that they spent on, like, Sisanand a bunch of other TikTok

(37:23):
influencers and stuff wasimmense, but nobody really likes
it. It's it's just gross,especially when you find out
that someone you've beenfollowing is now, like, being
paid to pitch politicalpropaganda.
On the right and the left, itcomes off as gross. Anyway, I
thought you guys in the audiencewould enjoy to hear about that

(37:43):
and to kind of chuckle at itwith us a little bit because
there's just the structures ofthe left just aren't capable of
producing that kind of organicinfluence. Alright. So Biden's
auto pen presidency. We talkedabout this a few weeks ago, how
it was discovered that Biden orsomeone was using auto pen, the

(38:07):
auto pen signing machine to signa very large number of his
executive orders.
And this alone isn't proof ofanything. It's legal. And Trump
has used the auto pen from timeto time, although not anywhere
near as often as Biden did. Noone can sign that much stuff
without their hand, like,breaking off. But what's
different with Biden is that hedoesn't seem to have any clue

(38:29):
whatsoever what it is that heactually apparently signed.
We saw or asked the auto pen tosign. We saw it tons of times
when he was pressed on veryspecific executive orders that
he denied ever signing. So incomes this watchdog group, Power
of the Future, which took a lookat eight executive orders having
to do with energy policy. AndFox News reports on what they

(38:51):
found. Power the future, anonprofit organization that
advocates for American energyjobs, reviewed eight Biden
executive orders that it sayswere significant shifts in
domestic energy policy and saidit found no evidence of the
president speaking about any ofthem publicly, raising concerns
that the orders were signed byAutopen and that he was not
aware of them.
These are not obscurebureaucratic memos. These are

(39:14):
foundational shifts in Americanenergy policy, yet not once did
Joe Biden speak about thempublicly. Daniel Turner, founder
and executive director of Powerof the Future told them, the
executive orders reviewed byPower of the Future include an
Arctic drilling ban in 2023, a2021 executive order committing
the federal government to netzero emissions by 2050, an

(39:34):
executive order mandating cleanenergy AI centers, and an
offshore drilling ban executiveorder shortly before leaving
office in 2025. Now I know wetalked about this at on this
show, if not also on the climaterealism show. If you guys
remember when Biden insistedthat he never signed a pause on
LNG exports, like the very daythat he did allegedly appear to

(39:58):
have signed a pause on LNGexports.
And everyone was extremelyconcerned that he had apparently
no idea or he was just soblatantly lying when he was on
the White House website. He didit or that they were bragging
about the pause on LNG exportsfor climate reasons. So, guys

Jim (40:20):
Do you want do you wanna see that clip? I have that clip.
Oh, good. Yep.

Linnea (40:24):
Let's do it.

Speaker 4 (40:27):
And I said, mister president, thanks for the
moments. You know, this is veryimportant. I got some big
national security things I needto talk to you about that I
heard, and I think you know, andwhat do we do? And but first,
real quickly, mister president,can I ask you a question? I
cannot answer this to from my,constituents in Louisiana.
Sir, why did you pause LNGexports to Europe? Like, I don't
under you know, liquefiednatural gas is in great demand

(40:50):
by our allies. Why would you dothat? Because you understand we
just talked about Ukraine. Youunderstand you're fueling
Vladimir Putin's war machinebecause they gotta get their gas
from him.
You know? And he looks at mestunned with this and he said I
didn't I didn't do that. And Isaid, mister president you yes
you did. It was an executiveorder like you know three weeks
ago. He goes, no I didn't dothat.
He's arguing with me. I said,president respectfully can I

(41:12):
could I go out here and ask yoursecretary to print it out? We'll
read it together. You definitelydid that. And he goes, Oh, you
talk about natural gas.
Yes, sir. He said, No, no, youmisunderstand. He said, What I
did is I signed this thing towe're gonna conduct a study on
the effects of LNG. I said noyou're not sir, you paused it. I
know I I have the terminal, theexport terminal in my state.

(41:33):
I talked to those people thismorning. You're this is doing
massive damage to our economy,national security. It occurred
to me Barry, he was not lying tome. He genuinely did not know
what he had signed. And I walkedout of that meeting with fear
and loathing because I thought,we're in serious trouble.
Who is running the country?Like, I don't know who put the
paper in front of him, but hedidn't know.

Linnea (41:53):
Yeah. And and speaker Johnson's position or comments
on this are not the only timethat we've seen this either. It
there were a multitude ofespecially energy related
executive orders that Bidenwould go right in front of
television cameras and say, no.I didn't sign that and, like,
wave reporters off when theyasked about it. But it's on the

(42:14):
White House website saying thathe signed it.
It's yeah. It was very bad. Whatdoes this mean? I mean, I have
no idea how you would even provethat the president didn't
actually sign off on this stuffwithout him coming out publicly
and saying, hey, I just foundout that my cabinet had been

(42:36):
forging my signature basicallyfor years. Not only is he not
going to do that because he justwanted to do what well, in
insofar as he had the mentalcapacity to agree with his party
on things, which is dubious, Ithink.
He's not gonna backtrack on themnow when the Democrats are

(42:59):
scrambling to become reunifiedto try and beat Republicans in
the next election. So, I mean,we already knew the Biden
presidency was illegitimate incertain respects, especially
with regards to his mentalhealth. But what does this
actually mean for all of thethings that he signed into law?

(43:23):
I mean, can we even do anythingabout this?

No. Nothing will be done. These things will all
stay. It's a pity. But one thingthat has happened is that the
whole left has been tarred bythis lack of authenticity.
This is very important to theAmerican people that their
leaders in particular beauthentic and be true to

(43:48):
themselves truth. What we hadthere was a situation where the
president of The United Stateswas clearly incapable. We all
knew it, we all saw it and wewere told that's disinformation,
he's doing great. And then theysaid, these EOs are all coming

(44:08):
from the president. Well,they're not, they weren't.
But this happened more than ahundred years ago in These
United States under PresidentWoodrow Wilson. Wilson was
incapacitated by, I think it wasa stroke and he was not
functioning, he was just in bedand his wife was running the
government and signing all thebills and the orders. So this

(44:32):
has happened before. And thestrange coincidence is that they
were both heavily progressiveleaders at the time who were
used to create an extremelystrong government and transfer
power from people to government.And so this is, as I say, it's

(44:53):
happened before.
Let's hope it won't ever happenagain. But the only way that
these things can be fixed atthis point is for Congress to go
and legislate them out ofexistence. That those just
whatever is in those EOs,executive orders, they just come
up with legislation that wouldcancel it. That's the only thing

(45:14):
that can be done. No court isgoing to, and certainly not our
courageous Supreme Court isgoing to come through and say,
well, yeah, these look hinky.
This whole thing is suspicious.So unless we have proof that
these executive orders arelegitimate, we're not going to
allow them to be enforced. Well,that's not going to happen. One

(45:38):
of the big element here is thatthis is all Congress has control
over these things, but Congressdoes not exert control. And
that's a real problem.
We have to get our Congress backin control because then they'll
be responsible when these thingsgo wrong.

Jim (45:56):
Yeah. I mean, one of the ironies here is that we have
courts stopping executive ordersthat Trump signed in public with
his big black Sharpie in frontof everybody, and those things
are not legitimate. But we'regonna be told that everything
that Biden signed with his autopen is legit and the law of the
land for forever or for as longas they can make it happen.

(46:18):
Look. From from that clip withspeaker Mike Johnson, if you
take it at face value if youtake it at face value, Biden was
told by his staff that what hewas signing was just a study
about perhaps banning LNGexports.
Obviously, it was not. This wasa full on ban that he had signed

(46:39):
and either Joe Biden didn'tremember or Joe Biden was lied
to by his own staff so thatthese unnamed, unelected staff
members could impose theirpersonal personal policy
preferences and not that of thepresident or the American
people. I don't know. That seemslike a pretty big deal and
perhaps even a crime in thiscountry. Joe Biden signed more

(47:02):
than 4,200 pardons andcommutations.
That's as many as were signed byevery single previous president
going back to Clinton's firstterm, which began in 1993. I'm
going to do the math. I said Iwas bad at math. That's twenty
eight years. He signed more ofthose in one month, basically,
than all the previous presidentsgoing back twenty eight years

(47:23):
had done.
I don't know how you investigatesomething like this. I suppose
we're going to havegrandstanding congressional
hearings. But it seems quiteobvious, and there's a lot of
this in Jake Tapper's new bookOriginal Sin, that the hard left
leftist staffers that weresurrounding Joe Biden, they were

(47:43):
the ones coming up with andwriting these executive orders
and writing these policies thatwere signed by Autopen, and that
Joe Biden obviously did not hewas not briefed on every one of
those pardons and commutationsthat he signed in his only term
as president, considering thathe only worked about a five hour

(48:03):
day at most, he would have donehe would have had to do nothing
but read every one of thosepardons and commutations for the
entire four years in order tohave considered all of them
individually in that manner. Solook, the the auto pen, how it's
how it's supposed to work, it'sit's supposed to be used for,
like, routine stuff, like naminga post office, you know, sign

(48:25):
the sign the resolution naming apost office after somebody, you
know, in Missouri. That that'sthe kind of stuff it was used
for.
Or when a president istraveling, but, you know, the
system, what a shock, was abusedby the leftists when they got
power in in Washington DC. Andthen at the same time, they are
they are canceling everylegitimate executive order. The

(48:48):
use of executive power thatTrump is is exercising
legitimately, all of that has tobe opposed and a lot of it is
being stopped while the abuse ofexecutive authority by people
who are not president is justbrushed off and allowed to
happen. You know, this is aproblem. And I like I said, I
hope I'm sure Jim Jordan orsomebody in the House is going

(49:09):
to do some hearings on this andtry to get down to the bottom of
it.
And absolutely nothing nothingwill be done. In fact, if
anything is done, they'llprobably restrict Trump's power
to sign executive orders by theby the time it's all done.

Linnea (49:20):
Yeah. Well, and I I wanna move because I know Sam's
gotta leave us in a couple ofminutes here, a couple of
seconds here, maybe even. But,Sam, before we before we have to
let you go, I do want you tocomment really fast on our on
our last topic, which was aboutthe big, beautiful bill. There
is some there there's room to beskeptical, hopeful, frustrated,

(49:40):
happy, angry, all of it at thesame time with this bill, it
seems. I've been leaning prettyhard on the epic times coverage
for it, but I wanna know whatyour takeaway is from this bill.
Are you happy with it, Sam?

I'm happy with it as far as it goes. It's it's
big and beautiful, but notenough of either. But it never
was intended to be be any anymore than what it is. And I I
was writing about that at at myLife Liberty Property,
newsletter for Heartland, aboutthat months, months ago, you
know, saying that this isnecessary. We absolutely have to

(50:16):
get the the tax, the 2017 taxcuts extended.
If we don't do that, we will,the economy will absolutely
crash. So we had to do that. Butthe only way to do it was
through a reconciliation bill.So complaining that the bill
doesn't have, for example, Dogecuts in it is silly. You can't

(50:38):
put those in a reconciliationbill.
In a reconciliation bill, theonly kind of spending that you
can change is mandatoryspending. And that's the one
thing they weren't going toreally, really going to touch
very much. But to the extentthat they did put spending cuts
in there, that's what they were.So things like food stamps and

(51:00):
Medicaid. So right from thestart, and if you knew what was
going on, you knew that thisbill was only going to extend
the tax rate cuts and that thosetax rate cuts in order to be
expended had to in order to beextended had to be allied with

(51:20):
some spending cuts.
But that's all the spending cutsyou were going to get because
you needed those tax cuts. Youyou have to get that through
Congress. So if you say, well,we're gonna cut spending by
$4,000,000,000,000 which I'mfine with, I would love to see
that, but you're not going toget that bill through. So you
can't do it throughreconciliation. So what you need

(51:42):
to do then is have another bill.
And that's what I said from thestart is that this is the
beginning and the hard workbecomes when you start to make
cuts. But that starts now. AndI'm sure that they've already
put in a lot of work on thatbehind the scenes. But as far as
congress goes, you have to getthe reconciliation bill done

(52:03):
first. You have to get thatsigned.
So we avert an absolute horrificeconomic catastrophe because
raising taxes by the amount thatthe loss of the tax cutting
extension would do would be aneconomic catastrophe. It would
be the biggest tax increase ofall time, and that would smash

(52:23):
the economy. So you had to getthat done. But now once you get
that done, which is we'relooking, think probably early
July before it's actually, inlaw. And those those extension,
the tax cuts end in September.
So you have to get that done.And it's not going to be
everything we want. But why doesit have to be everything we

(52:43):
want? It's a big beautiful billon its own. It's not enough of
of either to be ideal, butthat's more work.
You just you have to do thatthrough other bills. And I
believe that that is that workis is ongoing. We definitely
better see it happen becausespending must be cut and it must

(53:05):
be cut by we're talking in thetrillions of dollars, at least a
couple of trillion per year. Sowe have to have that. But you
can't get that through thereconciliation bill.
So people who are complainingabout it not cutting spending
enough are being absolutelydisingenuous in my view. This is
big. It's beautiful. It's notenough of either. But there's

(53:26):
there are other venues to getthe rest of it done.
Let's get it done after we getthis finished.

Linnea (53:33):
Absolutely. Thank you, Sam. In fact, the White House is
sending Congress a recessionspackage to try to claw back some
of that $9,400,000,000 inappropriated funds. The Epic
Times reports that they arelooking at a total of
$8,300,000,000 to be cut fromthe US Agency for International

(53:54):
Development, which is USAID, andthen the African Development
Foundation. And then another1,100,000,000.0 are going to be
rescinded from the Corporationfor Public Broadcasting, which
we will all just cry when NPRand PBS are no longer getting
federal funds.
So they are trying to do morebesides just pass this bill.

(54:17):
It's not like Trump has passedthe bill and then is saying,
okay, we're done. You know, theElon Musk is disappointed with
it. I think it's understandablethat he's disappointed with it
because I think he was reallyhoping that a ton of stuff was
gonna happen while he was ingovernment or helping Trump, and

(54:38):
his time in the White House wasalways going to be limited. So,
Jim, on what we have so far,like, on what on what Sam has
said, what are your thoughts?
And I have an epic time storythat goes over some of the
things that I definitely do notlike in this bill along with

Jim (54:59):
Go over that first. Yeah.

Linnea (55:00):
Extra little goodies that are super, super good or at
least very promising. So thelesser known provision story,
we'll go over, but I want to getyour take first, Jim.

Jim (55:14):
Yeah. Well, you mentioned Elon Musk, he wanted to maybe
see more done while he was stillin government. We should
remember that when Doge and ElonMusk's involvement and then his
smart people to staff Doge wasannounced, the plan, as
announced, was that the Dogecuts and Doge is really going to

(55:35):
be sprinting hard to geteverything done or as much as
they could through our 200birthday celebration in July of
twenty twenty six. So, you know,it's very easy to forget that we
are not even two hundred daysinto a new administration, and

(55:55):
we're starting to maybe complainthat everything isn't done
already. It's still quite early,and they are doing a lot.
And, yes, they're going to, youknow, trip over a couple
hurdles. They're going to haveto brush, you know, bugs out of
their face as they continuerunning forward. But so I'm
trying to be patient. And I alsotry to put it in perspective.

(56:16):
Two other notable times were thereconciliation bill, which is
the budget reconciliation bill,which means it's filibuster
proof.
In the Senate. It only needs 51votes or a majority that just
need to win by one vote or get atiebreak vote. In other words,
it could even be tied and thenVance would break the tiebreak.
And so the last two times thereconciliation bill was to do

(56:38):
something big that I recall. Wegot Obamacare and then we got
the Green New Deal under Biden.
I'm sorry, they called it theInflation Reduction Act, but it
was the Green New Deal. At leastthis one, this use of the
reconciliation bill, as Sammentioned before he had to run
off, locks in Donald Trump's,you know, twenty seventeen tax

(57:00):
cuts and then puts in a fewmore, and that's a good thing.
This is something that we shouldall be celebrating. It's pretty
much washed off. Don't eventhink about that.
We're just thinking aboutspending. We're concentrating on
Doge. And then about Elon Musk.You know, there's a bit of a
tragedy about this, and you cankind of see it in Elon Musk's

(57:23):
body language over the lastcouple of weeks. You know, he
risked everything.
His business, his publicreputation, his personal safety,
and perhaps even his veryfreedom to support Donald Trump
to defeat the Biden, the ObamaBiden regime, and to try to
reset our federal government,reset the way we think about

(57:43):
federal spending, get a handleon how much spending is actually
happening. I mean, one of thethings that he did, he went into
the Treasury Department, andthey're not tracking any of the
spending. In fact, they've neversaid no to any spending button
that was hit. They never saidno. Just goes out.
There's very little tracking. Wedon't know what's going on. He's
already exposed so much graftand grift and let alone spending

(58:07):
on wasteful projects, but peoplethat are basically using
politically connected Democratsmostly using the federal
treasury as a personal piggybank. A lot of that has already
been exposed. There's still alot of work to do on that, and
that's a good thing.
And as you mentioned, youcouldn't do everything that Doge
has identified in thisparticular bill. And as you

(58:30):
mentioned, there's a rescissionspackage coming up that cuts
$9400000000.0.8300000000.0 ofthat is USAID, USAID money, and
$1,100,000,000 is for theCorporation for Public
Broadcasting. So almost theentire rescissions bill is just
those two things. That's a goodthing. We'll see if we can get

(58:51):
that passed in the House and theSenate.
And that would start to go along way. That would be the
first time anything like thathas ever been done in the
lifetime of anybody listening tothis podcast. So cutting
spending to that level is justunheard of. So there are things
to be happy, I suppose, about.You can't get everything done in
a reconciliation bill.

(59:12):
There are spending on thingsthat you can go over them here,
Lynneha, that we might not like.Discontinuation of programs. But
look, politics is the art of thepossible, and it's not possible
to do everything at once. Weshould keep the pressure on on
our elected leaders, especiallythe Republican Party, to

(59:33):
actually cut wasteful spendingas they've been promising to do
for literally decades. We needto keep the pressure on so that
that comes to be comes to pass.
But we also, I think, shouldexercise a little bit of
patience while we apply thatpressure.

Linnea (59:47):
Yeah, that's fair enough. I think so. But I also
don't want to be blowing smokeon our audience here. So I I do
think that there are some thingsthat especially are listed here
over at the times over therethat are not ideal or at least I
don't quite understand whatthey're going for with it or how
it benefits us in any way. Itseems like some sneaky rhino

(01:00:10):
pork.
The first one is with regards toAI. The bill would begin to
integrate artificialintelligence into various
sectors of the federalgovernment while restricting
state's ability to regulate thetechnology for a ten year
period. The text of the billreads, no state or political
subdivision thereof may enforceany law or regulation regulating
artificial intelligence models,artificial intelligence systems,

(01:00:34):
or automated decision systemsduring the ten year period
beginning on the date of theenactment of this act.
Additionally, the bill delegateshundreds of millions of dollars
to use AI and governmentfunctions like examining
Medicare payments, navalshipbuilding, and audits of the
Department of Defense. I haveconflicting feelings about this

(01:00:54):
one.
On the one hand, we're notusually in the business of
promoting additional regulation.However, there's some there's
some serious concerns that Ihave with integration of
artificial intelligence intofederal processes. Whose model?

(01:01:17):
What what kind of inputs is itoperating on? I don't know.
It it seems a little bit hasty.Not really sure about that one.
We'll have to have Donnie on andsee what he thinks about that
one. Jim, do you have strongopinions about it to begin with?

Jim (01:01:34):
No. I mean, you know, if Elon Musk was teaching the
federal government how to use AIto find inefficiencies in the
government, I would be verycomfortable with that because
he's already done it with Doge.But, yeah, we'd have to see the
details on that.

Linnea (01:01:49):
John z, so funny. I've got major concerns about AI.
I've seen AI Darth Vader on theFortnite game. Thank you, John.
Very cool.
Alright. Courts barred fromenforcing content amid the
administration's ongoing dependdisputes with the judiciary,
particularly over issues relatedto Trump's mass deportation
operation, such that it isanyway, the bill would limit

(01:02:12):
federal court's ability to holdmembers of the administration in
contempt. Specifically, the billwould require plaintiffs to
provide a band a bond before ajudge could enforce contempt
orders. So this one, one, theexecutive is the executive and
the judiciary is the judiciary.At first glance, I think this
sounds reasonable, but changesto things like this always make

(01:02:38):
me a little bit uncomfortable,even if right now it's a huge
pain in the ass.
Oh, I'm sorry. I just said thaton air. A huge pain in the butt
when the, you know, judiciary orsome random district court judge
is able to block everything thatthe executive tries to do. That
definitely needs to stop. ButI'm not entirely sure that this

(01:02:58):
is the way to stop it.

Jim (01:03:00):
Well, think the I think the law actually requires plaintiffs
to provide that bond. In otherwords, you know, when when
you're suing to stop agovernment action, and I think
judges routinely waive it sothat it really has no effect at
all. And this and this would puta stop to I mean, every single
executive action that Trump hasmade has been has been

(01:03:21):
challenged in court. And a alowly district court judge is
are issuing what they should notbe doing. They don't have the
authority to do it, but they doit and say, dare Dare you to
stop me.
You know, a nationwideinjunction from a judge in
Hawaii. That's not how ourjudiciary and executive branch
conflicts are supposed to work.So I am actually pretty fine
with this. In fact, it's gettingincreasingly frustrating that

(01:03:44):
the left has such an expertiseand hold on the judiciary, the
federal judiciary in thiscountry, despite the fact that
Trump has appointed quite a fewfederal judges in his first
term, that they are just able toand this is the strategy, and
it's working. And this is whyI'm not I'm pretty pretty okay
with this, is to delay as muchTrump stuff as possible, then

(01:04:06):
hopefully win the midtermelections, and then you impeach
him and get him out of there.
And and, you know so this is alla flood the zone, slow it all
down as much as possible nomatter what it takes until 2026.
That strategy needs to bethwarted because the American
people voted for what we'regetting.

Linnea (01:04:23):
Yep. Here's a good one that we should be happy about.
So I'm guessing that this is anRFK related kind of thing, but
HSAs boosted legislation wouldenhance health savings accounts,
which are federal accounts thatallow taxpayers to save tax free
money for eligible medicalservices by making gym
memberships also eligible forthe program, you know, within
reasonable limits, of course. Itis that seems like a fair a fair

(01:04:49):
thing. HSAs are pretty nice.
This is another good one, estatetaxes. The bill would extend the
twenty seventeen estate taxcuts, allowing single owned
estates to pass on up to$15,000,000 tax free and
allowing couple owned estates topass up on $30,000,000 tax free.
I think all estate taxes are anabomination, but this is a good

(01:05:11):
step forward.

Jim (01:05:13):
Yeah. We're taxed to we're taxed to death while we're
alive, and then we're taxedagain after we're dead and
before our you know, before youcan leave on something to
somebody else. I mean, estatetaxes are are are morally wrong.

Linnea (01:05:26):
Yes. Absolutely. There's some kind of a tax filing tool
that Biden put in place thatthis bill repeals. I have no
thoughts about that whatsoever.I don't think very many people
were using it.
I'm not sure, though. Trumpaccounts. The bill adds a pilot
program for Trump accounts,which is a type of federal trust
account that would offer parentsa thousand dollar bonus per
child when they sign up for theprogram. That's good, depending

(01:05:49):
on what the limitations on thatare. You wouldn't want to
encourage, like, single parentchild homes and stuff.
There are there are areas whereyou can debate that. This one's
kind of weird. Tobacco industryperks repealed. Another
component to the legislationwould strip a tax write off that

(01:06:10):
some US tobacco companies relyon. Under current law, tobacco
companies pay an excise tax whenthey manufacture or import
tobacco into The United States.
But a loophole has historicallyallowed them to recoup much of
the tax through a process knownas substitution drawback. I
guess this might be like aprotectionist thing for domestic

(01:06:31):
tobacco, which there isn't awhole lot of. What do you think?
I mean. Well, all I

Jim (01:06:37):
think is whenever I see the word loophole, I get triggered
because there's no such thing asa tax loophole. There is tax
law, period. That's it. And ifsomebody is if an entity or an
industry or an individual iswithin the current tax law, that
should be the end of it. Youwant to, you know, repeal the

(01:06:57):
tax or rewrite the tax, but thatthe whole idea that it's a
loophole is is absurd.
You know?

Linnea (01:07:05):
Yeah. There's the revocable tax exemptions for
terrorists supportingnonprofits, which would enable
the administration to revoke taxexempt status of a nonprofit
organization deemed as terroristsupporting. I thought we already
did that, so I'm not really surewhat this changes. Don't know.

(01:07:27):
Anyway, we don't like thePatriot Act generally.
Right. Right. In the HeartlandInstitute. So I don't think
we're particularly pleased,although federal funds probably
or at least tax exemptionprobably shouldn't be going if
there if there was like HamasUSA or something, we probably

(01:07:48):
shouldn't let them be taxexempt. But I do not know what
exactly they mean by this.
And then this is a good one, butit's not as good as I thought it
was. So this is ending theexcise tax on firearm silencers.
Legislation includes a provisionto remove the requirement to pay
a tax on silencer attachmentsunder the National Firearms Act

(01:08:10):
of 1934. So this is part of thelike Hearing Protection Act,
which makes sense. Europe iswell, at least The UK have
always classified or for a longtime have classified suppressors
or silencers as hearingprotection devices, which they

(01:08:30):
are.
The fear mongering around like,oh, it's going to make it harder
to find a shooter or somethingis total nonsense. And it is an
infringement on the secondamendment to even ask for
attacks on, like, any firearmpurchase. But also the idea

(01:08:50):
that, like, accessories need tobe specially penalized is is
very dumb. There's there wasyeah. Go ahead.

Jim (01:08:58):
No. I was just gonna say, I first of all, I wanna
congratulate you for not pullingout your firearm while talking
about this on the air so that wedon't get demonetized again.

Linnea (01:09:07):
You don't wanna see the you don't wanna see a can come
out on screen on air while we'retalking about suppressing the
the thing is there's been a lotof conflicting information about
what exactly was ending up inthis bill with regards to the
silencers issue. They were alsotalking about removing silencers

(01:09:28):
from the NFA in general. And Ithink the NFA should be repealed
entirely, but the suppressorsshould definitely not be on it.
Suppressors are not a weapon.Suppressors are not a firearm.
They are an accessory, so theydo not belong in the National
Firearms Act. But it seems tohave disappeared somewhere
between when it was proposed andwhen it was passed. And I know

(01:09:52):
that they are working on it.They're trying to get that and
to get short barreled riflesremoved from the NFA in the
Senate version. But I do notknow if that's going to go
through, but hopefully.
I don't know. So those are kindof a lot of the iffy or the
better than hoped or worse thanpromised type situations that

(01:10:16):
are in this bill. There's a lotto debate in it. I mean, it's,
as we said, big, beautiful bill.It's gigantic.
It's another one of those thingsthat would be agony to read the
entire thing or maybe evenimpossible for a layperson to do
so. So, yeah, it's it's it's notnot perfect, but we can't

(01:10:38):
sacrifice good for the perfect.Right?

Jim (01:10:42):
Absolutely. Absolutely. And just to go back to the gun
thing, with the silencers, itstrikes me as you're reading
through all that, Lynea, that somuch of our anti gun legislation
in this country is fueled by theway the left thinks about
firearms, and they learn all ofit in movies. Like, they think a

(01:11:04):
silencer is like, you know, likea little like a they think
that's the sound it makes when awhen a silencer is on there.
That's not real.
That's that's Hollywood and TV.That's not the way those things
actually work.

Linnea (01:11:17):
Yeah. But I mean, even if it did, it it would still be
stupid to regulate that.

Jim (01:11:22):
It would be 100% stupid to regulate that. But it's
regulated and it gets attentionbecause so many people who vote
on these policies have a fantasyworldview of firearms and not
any experience with firearms.And so a lot of the gun laws we
have in this country are basedon complete unreasonable fears

(01:11:47):
based out of ignorance, not onany actual knowledge of the
subject.

Linnea (01:11:51):
Yeah. Our producer Andy in the background is pointing
out to us that that's whatsilencers sound like in Call of
Duty, though. So it must betrue. And he's absolutely right.
I recant everything I just said.
Just kidding. No, I don't. Theyeah, the firearms issue is very
complicated, not because itshould be because all you need

(01:12:11):
to do is say shall not beinfringed and leave it at that.
But, you know, people alwayswant to just add a bunch of
stuff. The Sterling is right.
He's in the in the commentsagain. He says the NFA was a
response to the prohibition mobuse of Tommy guns. That is one
of the original justificationsfor it was that they wanted to
take, like, machine guns off thestreets because the mob was

(01:12:36):
using them. Of course, althoughthe mob did use some, that
wasn't primarily what they wereusing to do hits. So it didn't
even fix anything there.
I think part of it had to dowith a particular massacre that
is rather famous. And it's yeah.Just very stupid. Like I said,

(01:12:58):
Great Britain, where you canit's very, very difficult to
have permission to own a firearmcompared to The United States.
Does not regulate silencers.
You can just buy them over thecounter because they are a
hearing protection device. Soyeah. No. I could go on about
that for a while, but I'm, like,strangling myself from saying

Jim (01:13:17):
things. We're we're gonna have to have a guns episode.
We'll have a guns episode. I'llhost it. You can talk.
I'll drink lots of coffee andsit back, and then you could
just go crazy. Yeah.

Linnea (01:13:28):
Fun. Anyway. Yep. Okay. Andrew Godridge says that they
are regulated under the FirearmsAct of 1968, but I'm fairly
confident that it's lessregulated than ours.
Like, with ours for a whilethere, you couldn't even get
them. But anyway, and it takesmonths and months and months to

(01:13:49):
get them, and you can get themover the counter there. Yeah.
Sterling can come on as a guest,too. All right.
Thanks, guys. Sorry for our theend of our show kind of slipping
into just casual chatting withthe audience here. But, Jim,
overall, what's your take oneven some of the, like, worst
parts of this bill? Is this thekind of thing that we're gonna

(01:14:10):
have to put up with forever whenit comes to getting bills
passed? I mean, Sterling in thecomments mentioned that we need
to stop passing these, like, bigomnibus bills and that things
need to be passed individually,which I very much agree with.
But I almost wonder if that'seven possible at this point. I
hope it is, but I don't know.

Jim (01:14:28):
Yeah. Like I've said, you know, a hundred times on this
podcast, I used to covercongress for The Washington
Times. I know how the systemworked as designed for the most
part back then in the early2000s. It's been completely
abandoned, that's because thissystem of government works.
Until it doesn't, it willcontinue to be used and abused
by both parties.

(01:14:49):
It's actually shameful the waythis has happened. But again,
there's a lot about this and theway it's happening that is
distasteful. There's a lot ofthings in this bill. Like I
said, I think Grok wouldprobably give up trying to read
this bill and summarize it forus. It's monstrous and bad.
But, you know, I am just tryingto be patient. It has been two
hundred days. This is the wayour government works now. This

(01:15:12):
is frankly the way, the only wayDonald Trump is going to be able
to get his tax cuts renewed from2017. That in itself is going to
have enormous economic benefitfor The United States, people of
all incomes.
And so, you know, as distastefulas it is, I'm trying to be
patient. I'm trying to hold mynose past this one. And we can
hold our elected officials' feetto the fire to, one, do things

(01:15:33):
the right way and, two, dothings that they were elected to
do, which is cut the size ofgovernment, increase our
freedom, and grow the economy.

Linnea (01:15:42):
Well, guys, I think that's all the time that we
have. I'm sorry that ourpanelists dropped out like flies
as we were going along. I wouldask Sam if he has anything to
pitch, but he had to go. Jim,what do you have for us this
week?

Jim (01:15:53):
Well, tomorrow at the same time, one p. M. Eastern Time on
this very channel, the ClimateRealism Show, we will be
interviewing Heartland PresidentJames Taylor and the Executive
Director of Heartland UKEurope,Lois Perry. They are on a tour
of Europe right now, helping todefeat the Net Zero movement on
that continent and in The UnitedKingdom. They've had a very

(01:16:15):
successful trip so far.
They're gonna be checking in tolet us know how it's going over
there. And I gotta say, there'sa lot of good news.

Linnea (01:16:24):
Alrighty. Well, thank you everyone for tuning in this
week. We are live every singleweek, Thursdays at noon central.
So the same time we are onRumble, Twitter, YouTube,
Facebook. I'm sure you guys arewatching from all over the place
anyway, so you already knowthis.
Anyway, so for audio listeners,please give us a nice rating on
whatever service you're usingand leave us a review. And thank
you so much to everyone. Jim isthe only one left, so I guess

(01:16:50):
goodbye, Jim. Thanks, everyone.We will see you again next week.

All Episodes

The Big Beautiful Bill - In The Tank #497

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Big Beautiful Bill - In The Tank #497