Budget And Tax News Podcast

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg did what the left has wanted for years, served Trump with an indictment. Under what charges? Bragg’s case states that Trump’s payment to Stormy Daniels in exchange for signing a non-disclosure agreement violated campaign financing laws, a flimsy argument at best.Chris Talgo, editorial director at The Heartland Institute, joins The Kristian Garic Show to discuss the indictment and what Americans can expect going forwards.

 The other day, Heartland Vice President Jim Lakely was a guest on The Mark Reardon Show on 97.1 FM Talk in St. Louis. I was invited on the show to talk about the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank and how much woke politics had to do with it.That bank and our federal regulators were a lot more interested in advancing left wing political goals, such as donating to Black Lives Matter, seeking investment equity, and fighting for "climate justice" -- whatever that is -- than it was hiring a risk assessment officer. Silicon Valley Bank had a Diversity Equity and Inclusion executive, but not a risk assessment officer for the last three quarters before it collapsed. So how much did woke politics have to do with it? Listen to this brief clip and find out.I was invited on the program because of this piece on Heartland.org, which was a rough transcript of something I said on Heartland's weekly In the Tank Podcast.https://heartland.org/opinion/silicon-valley-bank-was-a-woke-bank-and-wokeness-is-what-brought-it-down/ 

 At The Heartland Institute's 15th International Conference on Climate Change on February 25, 2023, U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado gave a keynote address. She spoke about the concessions a group of 20 conservatives, including her, got from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy before they would put him in that post. She also talked about how she fights for sensible policy from her perch on the House Resources Committee and the other freedom-oriented policies she fights for in the House of Representatives.For more information about The Heartland Institute, visit: https://www.heartland.org/ 

Larry Correia's book, "In Defense of the 2nd Amendment," provides a powerful and accessible explanation of the positive role firearms play in our lives. It explains why good guys with guns are a critical layer of defense and why the 2nd Amendment was adopted. The book argues that you are your own first line of defense in critical situations and that firearms make this defense possible.Correia explains that those who want to ban guns do not necessarily hate guns themselves. Often, proponents of eliminating the 2nd amendment hate the freedom that guns make possible in the face of continuous attempts by elites to exercise near-unlimited power over the lives of average people. Guns, if available and used properly, are the best check against bad actors, whether they be criminals or tyrants.

Cities across the United States are in a persistent financial crisis because their governments are unable or unwilling to define who and what they are. In fact, many cities’ finances are so poor that they’re going bankrupt. The fundamental problem is that city governments attempt a scope of service provision that is impossible to deliver on. Policy Analyst Mark Moses, author of The Municipal Financial Crisis: A Framework for Understanding and Fixing Government Budgeting, joins the Budget & Tax News podcast to discuss this problem. More from Mark Moses: Website: https://munifinanceguy.com/Twitter: @MuniFinanceGuyLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-moses-municipal-finance/Mark’s book: https://www.amazon.com/The-Municipal-Financial-Crisis_-A-Framework-for-Understanding-and-Fixing-Government-Budgeting/dp/303087835X/

H. Sterling Burnett joins the podcast The District with Teresa Mull to discuss the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act. Burnett highlights how this bill is simply a renamed version of the Build Back Better plan. Biden and Congressional Democrats are taking advantage of the pain that Americans are feeling due to inflation their own progressive policies created. They truly didn’t let this crisis go to waste.Check out more episodes of The District here: https://spectatorworld.com/radio-category/district/

The government wants you to think its policies are reducing inflation. This isn’t the truth. Inflation is going away because government money infusion is over. Inflation is always a monetary problem of too much money chasing too few goods. The COVID lockdown saw the greatest infusion of money in the shortest time in the history of the world at a time when the economy that was shut down. That spending is over and the economy is turning out goods and services again, so the cause of the inflation has ended. Neither the inflation reduction act nor the Federal Reserve raising interest rates is responsible for the waning inflation, but they could bring it back.

Kevin McGary of the Fredrick Douglas Foundation of California and Every Black Life Matters says liberals and progressives are wrong. The 2nd amendment is absolute and essential for African Americans. More, public schools and socialism are terrible for the black community in America. Individual initiative and free choice are critical to success. African American's should embrace gun ownership for self-protection and protection against tyranny; school choice; and a ban of teaching Critical Race Theory, which embraces the "virtues" of socialism in our public schools. The culture of dependency pushed by liberals is the biggest road block to black Americans' succeeding.

As a defense against the federal government sinking into tyranny, the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States prohibits the government from abrogating or otherwise interfering with the average person’s right to keep and bear arms. Elites have been chipping away at this right ever since. Courts, often composed of elites, have failed to defend American’s Second Amendment rights.Stephen P. Halbrook, Ph.D., Senior Fellow with the Independent Institute and author of The Right to Bear Arms: A Constitutional Right of the People or a Privilege of the Ruling Class?, explains why the courts are trending towards supporting the right to keep and bear arms.

Freedom of speech is an unalienable right. It is not granted by government. It preexists the government itself. The Founding Fathers established the United States of America to protect our unalienable rights. Today, freedom of speech is under a direct threat. In the United States, there are three corporations that control 97 percent of social media activity. One company controls 75 percent. Three companies controlling 97 percent isn’t problematic in and of itself, but the suppression of Americans’ right to free speech is.The problem worsened when the White House press secretary admitted that the White House directs Big Tech on what should be censored and removed from the internet. This is antithetical to the vision the Founding Fathers had for the purpose of government.James Taylor, president of The Heartland Institute, testifies in Ohio in favor of protecting freedom of speech on social media platforms. States across the country must draw a line in the sand and prohibit social media companies and the federal

Our second-favorite socialist, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, recently weighed in on the inflation debate, saying we need the government to spend MORE money to counteract inflation. In addition, she also gave her two cents on the recent elections in Virginia. Stopping Socialism's Donald Kendal and Chris Talgo break down her insane comments in this episode of "Stopping Socialism."

Fox & Friends co-host and New York Times best selling author Brian Kilmeade joins the Heartland Daily Podcast to discuss his new book, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Their Battle to Save America's Soul.This is Kilmeade's third time on the Heartland podcast talking about his popular history books. Hosts Jim Lakely and Chris Talgo talk to Kilmeade about the relationship between Lincoln and Douglass, the development of their special friendship, the state of race relations in the 19th Century compared to today, the zealotry of abolitionist John Brown, the lack of proper history teaching in America's schools, the "calamity" of the assassination of President Lincoln, and what Douglass would have thought of the Black Lives Matter movement and riots in the summer of 2020.

The government The Founding Fathers envisioned was a force for good. Its limited role was to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If alive today, they would balk at what our government has become. Rampant government intervention seen today skews markets and limits the freedom of the individual.H. Sterling Burnett joins the Great Talks With podcast to describe how The Heartland Institute discovers, develops, and promotes free-market solutions to social and economic problems; fighting back against big government.Find out how the free market has helped accelerate the economic development of western democracies in this podcast.Check out more Great.com Talks With podcasts.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently signed a bill into law that aims to protect social media users from being censored or de-platformed. Jim Lakely joins the Jeff Katz show to discuss how this law is a step in the right direction for protecting free speech online. Until now, big tech companies have had free rein to censor whomever they choose, with users having little to no recourse to fight back. The Florida law aims to change that.

Who is the most informed on key issues? Is it viewers of Fox News? How about CNN, MSNBC, or other left-leaning media? Many have hypothesized on this question, but it’s been impossible to quantify until now.In conjunction with Rasmussen Reports, The Heartland Institute conducted a poll that asked participants key factual questions. These participants were also asked about where they receive their news. It became exceedingly clear that viewers of CNN are wildly misinformed about many issues, including the national debt, climate change, and police shootings.Jim Lakely speaks with Tony Katz on the results from the poll.Check out the poll here: https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/rasmussenheartland-poll-news

H. Sterling Burnett joins Merrill Matthews from the Institute for Policy Innovation to discuss gun control.President Joe Biden is, rather unsurprisingly, pushing for more restrictive gun control laws. Aside from calling for legislation to unconstitutionally limit the ownership and sale of firearms, he offered a series of executive orders he says are first steps to reduce "gun violence." His proposals amount to virtue signaling on the gun issue and will do nothing to prevent crimes committed with firearms. For instance, Biden is directing the DOJ to treat so-called ghost guns as machine guns, requiring taxes and registration with the government, yet no ghost gun has ever been linked to a crime.

There are many lessons we should take away from the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated economic shutdowns imposed by governments. First, lockdowns don't work. They didn't halt the spread of the virus, and any many ways resulted in unnecessary suffering and death. It turns out masks do work. The economy declined by a huge amount, yet because the cause was exogenous to the market, and the lack of spending meant people saved more than they ever had, the recovery has been quick and is likely to result in an economic boom. However, the way people work has likely changed forever.

Heartland Institute President James Taylor explains why we must all must fight to protect free speech on the internet. State legislators, too, have a role in protecting the right of their constituents to speak freely on line. As he said in a recent live Heartland Webinar, Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act does not address or preclude state action to protect political free speech on the Internet."Section 230 does not give the tech giants, the tech cartel, the right to censor political free speech. Again, this Section 230 explicitly says the purpose is to maximize user control -- not Facebook control, not Google control, not platform control," Taylor said."[Online speech] must be sexually obscene or excessively violent, otherwise you do not have blanket authority to play God in terms of what you do or don't allow on the Internet. Yes, we do have the right to insist that we can speak freely, especially on political topics and cultural topics, on the Internet," he said.

H. Sterling Burnett joins Dr. Merrill Matthews on Point of View radio to discuss gun legislation in the Joe Biden era. Joe Biden has promised to enact more strict legislation regarding gun ownership. As a supporter of the 2nd amendment, H. Sterling Burnett discusses why this legislation will fail to end gun violence but will encroach upon the freedoms America was founded on.

Heartland Institute Publications Director S.T. Karnick was invited on the flagship news program on Chicago's PBS station to talk about how beloved children's author Dr. Seuss is at the center of a cancel culture controversy over what some have characterized as racist depictions in many of his books and cartoons.