Another Kennedy Runs For President, Florida Stops ESG

Justin Haskins, of the Heartland Institute, joined Preston for his monthly visit.

Episode Transcript

(00:09):
Five minutes after great to be withyou this morning. It's the third hour
of the Morning Show with Preston Scott. I am Preston. That's Grant Allen
Show forty nine twenty five. Aswe make our way towards show five thousands
sometime this year, God willing.It's all according to his good humor.

(00:34):
But we appreciate you joining us seriously. Thank you for making time. And
we are joined by the guy thatwe have grown very fond of around here
on the Morning Show with Preston Scott. He's the executive editor at the Heartland
Institute executive editor as well for ensuringthe op eds and the publications, and
he also is the director of SocialismResearch Center at the Heartland Institute. Justin

(00:59):
Haskins, Hello, sir, howare you. I'm doing great? How
are you? I'm good? Ijust I want to get your take on
this. Grant and I have beentalking about the decision of Robert F.
Kennedy Junior to enter the FRAY.I made this statement that he is an
old school liberal, not necessarily anilliberal of today, and that he would

(01:23):
be someone that I could actually findsome common ground to work with on some
issues. What's your appraisal about him. Yeah, I mean, I think
to some degree that's true. Idon't know everything about his platform, and
I'm sure there are many things withwhich you and I would not agree with
him, yep. But I don'tget the sense that he is an authoritarian

(01:48):
by any stretch of the imagination.And I don't get the sense that his
ultimate goal in life is to dramaticallyexpand the size of government to the point
where they control every aspect of howwe live. And so I would say
that makes him extremely moderate for today'sDemocratic Party, And I think that that
would be great if he were youknow, at least if they had a

(02:10):
conversation with it. But I thinkthey're they're rigging the rules so that there
really isn't going to be an actualcompetition between these two. So how do
you how so how are they riggingthe rules? Well, they're ensuring that
the primaries that Joe Biden will willlikely do well in are are going to
come first. That's that's one ofthe biggest things they're trying to do.

(02:34):
The State of New Hampshire is tryingvery hard to make sure that doesn't happen.
But I don't think that they're gonnaI don't know if they're going to
be successful on that. I thinkit's gonna be very tough for them to
pull that off. And then,in addition to that, just the nature
of primaries, both in the Democraticand Republican primaries. This would be true.
It just the way that delegates workand super delegates and all this stuff,

(02:57):
it dramatically favors someone who is ina kumbent president. Just the nature
of the of the party, Andof course the media, which isn't part
of the primary process officially, butit might as well be. The media
is never going to allow this manto get enough airtime to ever win an
election. And I don't think they'llhave any debates either. So all of

(03:21):
the all of that, I meancombined, I just don't see how it
will be a fair fight. I'mcurious. I know you are far more
of a well known across a wideswath of this country with your appearances with
Glenn Beck on Fox News and soforth. But away from that, have

(03:43):
you ever had a conversation with aperson in private that you know or knew
his name or her name that actuallybelieves Joe Biden is doing a great job
as president. Oh no, Preston, No, I've never met anyone.
Truly, I've never met anyone.I know many liberals people are surprised by

(04:08):
that. But actually most of thepeople in my personal life are actually left
leaning people, some of them veryleft leaning people. And um, I
don't know any of them who thinkthat Joe Biden is doing a good job.
In fact, they often make funof Joe Biden. But they But
but if put up against the Republicanthey'll they'll vote for anyone. They'll vote

(04:30):
for someone who's you know, livingout the plot of Weekend at Bernie's like,
they'll they'll do that, They'll votefor him again. So I you
know, it's sad, but Ithink that, um, they have the
media and academia and Hollywood. Theyhave so demonized the Republican Party, and
they have so demonized conservatives generally thatthere are many people who it really doesn't

(04:56):
even matter who the candidate is forthe Democrats, they will never ever in
a million years, voter for aRepublican. And you need a candidate who
can break through that and reach peopleon the other side. That's really really
hard to do, but it's notimpossible. I use that word earlier.
It's not impossible, but it's very, very difficult two decades of doing morning
drive radio differently doing it his waylike old Blue Eyes, except he has

(05:23):
a little more hair. The MorningShow with Preston Scott Justin Haskins with us
from the Heartland Institute, and youwere just talking about the need to communicate
and reach to the other side.I'm struck by the fact justin that,
whether it's some of the Prager Youvideos or campus reform back in the day,

(05:46):
when you get to talking to peoplejust calmly explaining, you know why
good guys with guns are needed tostop bad guys with guns and whatever the
issue might be, and you makethe points, people go away going,
wow, I guess I need toreconsider my position. We need to communicate.
Yeah. The funny so, aspart of the Socialism Research Center,

(06:10):
you know, a lot of whatwe've done is directed towards younger people,
and we've had lots and lots andlots of conversations with very concerned parents and
people who are just concerned citizens aboutwhat's going on with America's youth. And
the thing that the sort of sparkof hope that I want to give everyone
who's a parent out there are olderperson is just concerned about the rise of

(06:32):
socialism with younger people, and leftwing thinking is that the more you talk
to younger people about these ideas,the more you realize it is not deep
seated. They really don't. Theybelieve these things without having ever thought of
them, because that's all they've everbeen told in many cases, and really

(06:53):
most ideology just comes down to,well, the other side must be racist,
or the other side must be homephobic, or the other side must
be sexist, and they really haven'tthought about the issues very much at all.
And when you actually start citing dataand you start talking to them calmly
and you talk about compassionate ideas withinconservatism, they change real quick. The

(07:15):
demeanor change is very very fast,and so it's really disturbing what has happened,
no doubt about it. And ifwe don't do something as conservative people,
then our country will be lost,to be sure, but younger people
are not dying in the world socialists. Most of them can't even define what

(07:36):
socialism is. It's just they're believingit because that's all they're getting day after
day after day from the establishment.I'm curious what your thoughts are as we
are hearing about this negotiation inside theBeltway between the President and the House on

(07:57):
the budget. What's the practical ragmaticposition to take on all of that.
We can't keep going into debt,but we seemingly are. Yeah. I
mean, to be totally honest,it just seems like this cycle is never
going to end until the negotiation resultsin firm rules that are permanent going forward.

(08:22):
The problem is, whatever rules youhave about reducing spending over time or
something, the Democrats will come inwhen they have power next with the Democratic
president, and they will get ridof all those rules. And I would
almost rather see Republicans spend their capitaland their time, their political capital trying
to convince Americans that we need likea constitutional amendment to control spending, that

(08:48):
we can ask you that or something. Justin I was just going to ask
you. This circles back to theConvention of States because one of their issues,
one of the main issues that's onevery on all the legislative bills that
have been passed to support a constitutionalConvention of States, is a balanced budget
amendment. Right. In fact,most of the few there's a lot of

(09:13):
different ways to call for an Articlefive convention of states for a new amendment,
but the most popular one that's beenpassed in the most number of states
specifically calls for it to only dealwith or for it to be one of
the topics that term limits and thebalanced budget. Yeah, exactly, And

(09:35):
so they're they're really actually not thatfar away from calling an Article five convention,
which is really interesting. An Articlefive is a way for states,
for those that don't know, topass a constitutional amendment or to start that
process without having Congress involved in theprocess at all, at least at the
beginning. So can that be done? Yeah, it's actually not that far

(09:58):
away. They really don't need thatmany more states to do it. I
don't have the count in front ofme, but it's not inconceivable that they
could do it. If all thered states did it, you wouldn't need
too many blue states to go along. The problem is that Republicans spend all
their time congressional cycle after congressional cycle, fighting battles over things that are short

(10:18):
term. They're not long term thinkers, and Democrats are long term. The
bar Left in particular is long term. They're long term thinkers and that's what
we need to start doing. WLAon your phone with the iHeart Radio app
and on hundreds of devices like Alexa, Google Home, Xbox and Sonos.
Yes, and I Hearts Radio station. Justin Haskins with me from the Heartland

(10:54):
Institute. Justin before we move on, got a listener question. Would love
to know why there is an anannual or buy an you will vote on
holding a Convention of the States onthe same date. Pin states down these
legislatures, pin them down, makethem vote on the same day every two
years. We've had folks on withConvention of States. But I just I

(11:16):
think it's force feeding right now.You're trying to force people to do something
that elected people don't want to do. They don't want to leave it open
to the people. Yeah. Well, that's an interesting suggestion. I could
understand why someone would would think thatthat would work. The problem with that,
logistically is that the way states operate, it's completely different in every state.

(11:39):
The way that they their calendar,the legislative calendar is different. In
some states they don't even take upnon budgetary issues every year. Some states
are only in session for a fewmonths, some are in sessional year.
The way they do committees, allthis stuff is completely different, so coordinating
something like that would be almost impossible. And to your point, yeah,

(12:00):
it's just not Look state lawmakers.There are a lot of really good ones.
Okay, the average state lawmaker isbetter than the average federal lawmaker in
terms of wanting to do the rightthing, no doubt about that. But
there's still a ton of state lawmakersthat don't want to do the right thing.
And leadership in particular tends to bein a lot of states establishment types

(12:20):
that are just trying to get ahead, trying to move up to Congress or
trying to move up to the WhiteHouse or whatever, and you need massive
support from the public to move alongsomething that's controversial. And that's why Florida
has been so successful is because you'vehad Rhonda Santis and other people sort of
leading the charge on these things inFlorida and building momentum behind it and using

(12:41):
the bully pulpit to do or importantthings. But in other states, the
Republican leadership doesn't want to do it, so it doesn't happen, and the
average person is not calling for aConvention of states. Most people, even
on the right, don't know whatit is. So that's part of the
problem too. There needs to bea huge grassroots for it, and that

(13:01):
would mean the media would need tobe heavily involved in a lot of them
don't even know what it is.So there's just so many issues with that.
It's a great idea in theory.It's just how can we make you
know, how do we get themedia and the public and everybody on the
same page. It's just so difficult. Tell me this. You you mentioned
Florida. Of course ESG has passedthe state legislature. Your thoughts, Yeah,

(13:26):
the anti ESG legislation is what you'retalking about. Is it's a huge,
but the most comprehensive bill that hasever been passed and in the United
States of America has passed in Florida. Recently, Ronda Santas has signed it
into law. We've talked about itbefore, but it's it's just an absolutely
incredible bill. What it does isprotects individuals from financial institutions imposing social credit

(13:52):
scores and ESG and other things onthem and their families, as well as
small businesses, as medium sized businesses, big businesses. They're all being protected
in the state of Florida from financialinstitutions using that social credit scoring system against
them. That's the backbone of thegreat reset, the ESG scores, and

(14:13):
so this is a huge, hugething. It also makes it very difficult
for local governments and state agencies actuallyimpossible in some cases to use ESG in
order to when they're getting contracts governmentcontracts, or when they're issuing bonds,
or they're doing investments and all ofthat, so that your money as a

(14:33):
taxpayer is not going to promote ESGcauses. So this is there has never
been a bill like this. Wellthere's been bills like this, but they
have never been passed anywhere. Theyhaven't survived exactly. Leadership is usually the
one that tries to kill it.So is are other states now, I

(14:54):
mean, are you hearing from peoplethat are you know, in positions of
authority in state legislatures that now lookat Florida and are looking at this bill
saying, okay, now we've gota blueprint. Yeah. I mean,
there's no doubt that there are lotsof state lawmakers on the ground who've been
wanting this going back to early lastyear January of last year, but it

(15:18):
just couldn't there was just too muchpushback from big leaders, establishment types,
etc. And we are getting itdoes seem like the rumblings are that things
are going to change a lot ofthe legislative sessions are actually wrapping up this
year for states, so we won'tfind out until next year in many cases
whether that's going to happen, butI think that it will because it's so

(15:41):
much easier to sell the idea ofa legislation that is sort of new ideas
new legislation when it's already been passedsomeplace, especially a prominent place, especially
with the support of someone who's probablygoing to be running for president. It's
just a much easier sell. Whatthese state lawmakers have been told in other

(16:02):
places is that some of this stuffis illegal and it's unconstitutional, or it's
anti business, or it's all kindsof things that I just think are not
true at all, but that's whatthey've been told. And so now that
there's a use case, there's agood chance that this is going to catch
on elsewhere.