Are Tennessee Officials Finally Listening To Voters On Unwarranted Surveillance?

0:00Welcome back to you happy live. We are here on the talk monster. I am Tennessee's voice of reason, Chattanooga's conservative conscience. Glad you have joined the show today and it's that time of the week. We always speak with Brandon Lewis. He is the founder contributor to the Tennessee Conservative and you can read all of their stuff at TennesseeConservativeNews.com. Make sure to follow them on social media. The video of this interview will show up on the website, on YouTube and of course on social media. And the podcast will be available anywhere you get your podcast Brandon. How are you sir? Man, I am outstanding. I'm glad to be here on the talk monster. So before we get to some of the news you guys have been covering, I had your friend and my friend, Steve Abramowitz on the show yesterday. Oh yeah. And he said, you and him have been debating this issue on whether to allow some state grants to be used to allow some independent movie makers to like be able to come into Tennessee and everything else. He's all for it. He's kind of from that side of the country likes movies

1:02as long as it's done correct week, he said. But he's like, you know, Brandon's against it. He's against all of that. I tend to align more with you on this, but I wanted to give you an opportunity to respond to that. You know, there are two fold, maybe three answers. The first is I would like to see some grants to help coaches for painting contractors in Tennessee because that would benefit me personally. Everybody likes, everybody likes to see grants that benefit their own industry for sure. I'm not gonna understand that it would bring jobs and things of that nature to Tennessee. However, you know, I have heard concerns about Hollywood elites and culture infiltrating areas where these grants have been placed and kind of upsetting some of the conservative views and policies that people might enjoy. So I don't know, I tend to be a little bit against picking winners and losers in any industry. I think you create a good climate. You treat everybody fairly and consistently

2:05and nobody gets taxpayer handouts for specific industries because it always seems to go to the powerful and the well healed. Well, you never see a building or Cameron sext in a random ignoly, say, hey, we're gonna give a grant to this little burger shop that's been here for 40 years. No, we're gonna give a grant to the big multi billion, corporations that already seem to have an upper hand. And so I'm opposed to corporate welfare and just about all of its forms. Yeah, I mean, that tends to be where I am. I know it's a little difficult when you're in Nashville, you're part of the legislature and you realize, well, if we don't do it, this other state's gonna do it. That's always the argument, but ideally speaking, I tend to align with you, just make an environment that's good for everyone. A business-friendly environment doesn't pick winners it's good for everyone in the state and you'll get industry that way. We just can never seem to get there. Not, and it's not just Tennessee, I mean, it's most- Yeah, if you want your industry to get special treatment,

3:06to very simple formula, you hire some lobbyists, you put 100 grand, 200 grand, a million dollars in a pack account, and then you go out and dull it to the politicians and the legislature and you'll get a 30, 40, 50 ex return with taxpayer money. It's very simple, straightforward formula. It's sad that more Tennesseans don't know about the corrupt practice and that more leaders don't speak out about it. Great, so let's get to some other news items. One, something that's going on here locally and I'm curious your thoughts on it. Hamilton County has paused their automated license plate reader program, the flock camera program. They paused it, Austin Garrett, who I like a lot, you know, he says they wanna make sure everything's working correctly. We're not abusing it or infringing on privacy, everything like that. What do you think? Well, there's a few things. I think this was first off, Hatttip, Austin Garrett. I think he's politically smart and bi-politically smart.

4:07I mean, he listens to his constituents and he changes his direction. I know that's crazy for politicians to wrap their mind around. It's okay, let me give you the simple guys. If you're out there, you're politician listening. When your constituents tell you they want something, and you run to elect them from a policy standpoint, you try to give it to them. And if they don't like something, you try to take it away. It's a very simple time-honored tradition for those that are aligned with their constituents. I also think it's constitutionally sound. You know, one of the big things that our founders had of an intense concern about privacy was to cause back in the day. If the British government heard hearsay that you were a rebel, that you were against the crown, that you had created any kind of infringement without any kind of evidence because you weren't a citizen of the crown, they could just go into your home and ransack it and find whatever they want, whether it's a place there or not. And in our modern age, I think it's very important to look

5:08at our constitutional rights in the lens of today's technology. And so what more invasive thing is there than to track the movements of your citizenry? And Cody Wont said that her office doesn't have any concerns about it. And when you're elected, it's not about if your office has concerns about it. It's does your constituency have concerns about it. And it's very obvious based upon all the pushback across the state that constituents do have concerns. And I don't think that it's something that we should be using. I've been against ticket cameras and every other type of camera that mass surveils the electorate. And I always will be, because you'd always starts out one way and it seems to turn out another. So now he did say he's not against the system completely. This was more to kind of show up the process and everything. I guess my question to you is, what do you think's gonna happen? I'm sure the legislature is gonna bring this up. Do you think there's gonna be more outright bands

6:11or we just kind of make it where there's more of a process to get the data? What do you think? I don't know exactly what will happen. You know, a lot of lawmakers have just out and out said, we need to get rid of them. And I would say that's probably where I would stand personally. That's likely where most constituents stand. And so I think that you will have people anytime there is a big ripple politically through Tennessee, the legislature tends to pick up on it. Now, it depends on what the thing is and they can be a little slow to react. And some things are so enmeshed in the policy or in the back scratching and the money related things like elite immigration that they are super slow to approach real solutions. And so I think that we will see movement in legislature on this, whether it makes it through the committee process and all of that who knows. But I imagine we will have a couple of more conservative legislators or even those that aren't wanna take a glory ride on this

7:11and see something done. So I would be very surprised if we didn't see legislative action which may make the entire point beside the point in Hamilton County and the city of Chattanooga because all of the authority for state or for local government comes from state government. So we'll see what happens with it. Speaking with Brian Lewisy is with the Tennessee Conservative. Move on to your next story here where we have that fact that ICE has detained over 120 illegal immigrants during the rate at a Memphis nightclub. Part of the problem that they had crying in Memphis maybe, stuff like this. Yeah, you think, well these are just some good law-abiding folks. Some larceness, people with drug possession and dealing, little domestic violence, driving violent, toxicated assault, child endangerment, prostitution, you know. The folks that we wanna see drive past the Ellis Island statue of liberty and post for good family. That's all it's right. Yeah, it's almost always aggressive,

8:15while breaking men. As is the pattern all throughout Europe and almost everywhere you see this, where folks come here some, I'm glad to see that they're sneaning all of this up and of course there'll be a lot of pan-ringing and gnashing of teeth on the left. But you know this is, we have stopped short of essentially just sending everyone home that is here illegally and they have seemed to primarily focus on the worst elements of it. However, I think it sends a message that if you're here and you're illegal and if you're doing illegal things, well I guess you've already done an illegal thing, but you're doing more illegal things than there's a good chance that you may be apprehended. And I think that is enough in the state of Tennessee and other places when you have enough incidences of things like this and a lot of legislation that have been passed. Again, it's about making Tennessee look less and less appealing

9:16when you have 50 states to choose from as a place to reside and do your criminal activity. Well, and that's really, and I keep bringing this up too, that's the reason why ICE is out there and being extremely aggressive is because having of offenses not enough. You have to have strong enforcement inside the country also as a deterrent. There's a reason why people aren't trying to get in right now. It's not just because there's offense there, but because they know if they get in, they'll probably be deported because we've been so public about deporting illegal immigrants through ICE and it's kind of the same thing on the state level. Yeah, there are countries all over the world that have virtually no problem with illegal immigration. Middle Eastern countries are well, you got two things going on there. Number one, there are places no one wants to immigrate to. Right, yeah. And but then there are a lot of prosperous European nations that are more homogenous in their culture and beliefs and they're just like, no, we've seen this program play

10:20and it's a bad rerun. It ends up collapsing the culture and the economy and the safety of your country. And you can look all over Europe, Britain, Spain, et cetera. And while in the world, anyone ever clung to this belief in the first place is amazing to me, but other than for political power, which is the chief reason, but no, it'd be no different than if you just opened up your house or your neighborhood and just went out and randomly gathered people that first act upon entering your neighborhood was breaking the law and said, hey, sleep on the couch. I'll feed you, I'll close you, et cetera. What could go wrong in the family and neighborhood dynamic? And so I've often said that good policy at the state and local level, if you really just came back and said, would I do this in my own home, would I do this in my own neighborhood? The answer is most often no, but illegal immigration is always somebody else's problem. It's always somebody else paying for it.

11:21It's very nebulous and it really doesn't touch you until something hits close to home. Like the 40 something, I think Tennessee ends in 2025 that were marked by illegal aliens in our state, not counting all the assaults, rape, drug trafficking, burglary, DUI, car accidents of uninsured, looked at the numbers pretty significant. What you always cover pretty well at TennesseeConservativeNews.com, really one of the only places that does that. And Trump gets a lot of flat for saying this, but I agree, you can't have a country without borders. I mean, you don't have a country without borders. And it's simplistic, but it's right. I mean, he's exactly right on this. So I want to move on to another story real quick because I have not covered this as much on pure issue thoughts. There's a Tennessee teacher that seeking religious accommodation and wants certain books removed. It's some of that LGBTQ plus books and stuff. Yeah, basically there was a first grade teacher

12:22at Kitt National Charter School who was supposed to, and these books aren't supposed to be in the school to begin with, which just goes to show you how slow compliance is. And it's often these liberal leftist teachers that want to indoctrinate our children will, they just go on with it until somebody complains through the proper channels or there's a big blow up that makes the institution look bad. And that's what happened here. Eric Rivera, just like, he's like, this is not something that I agree with. I think it's harmful for the kids. And probably harmful for the kids, but took the more, I guess, cautious and smart step as a teacher to claim religious exemption. And all he asks is, hey, let's not want to read this garbage to the kids. Can we get somebody else to read it? But the principal was basically, will terminate you if you don't do this. And first Liberty Institute, Cine Letter, to get accommodation under title seven

13:22of the Civil Rights Act and said essentially, this does not create a hardship for the school to have another teacher read this. And then eventually, they brought the concerns to Scrametti's office and they've removed more than 20 books in the curriculum. They're not just sitting around dusty and library shelves. These were in the curriculum and they've been removed. And it tends to be that when these institutions get publicly embarrassed and get a good slap on the wrist, they clean up their act for a while. But this stuff is ubiquitous throughout Tennessee schools. It's just very little of it ever makes it to the news. I think you're right on that. Brandon Lewis is with the Tennessee Conservatives. You can catch this interview, all these stories at TennesseeConservativeNews.com. Brandon, appreciate it as always. I know we'll talk to you again next week. All right, rock on the effing. We'll see you.