Jesse Brown Challenges Beau Bayh as Debate Grows Over Wealth, Power, and Indiana Democrats

Jesse Brown is a member of the Indianapolis City County Council. He is an open avowed socialist and he was a Democrat socialist, but the Democrats don't want anything to do with him either. They kicked him out of the caucus. They don't like him. He's a rabble rouser. Now, look, I've said I like Brown, not because I agree with his views, but because I think he is by far the most honest person in city government, and he is willing to watch like we do here from the opposite end of the spectrum, call out all sides. He is willing to look at both Democrats and Republicans, his own party, point out where they are not holding up their end of the bargain to people, just like we do here. Jesse Brown and I are like, you know, the Spider-Man meme, like the guy pointing at each other, but we're from just the opposite ends of it. Like, I see it on the conservative liberty freedom side. He sees it on the socialist side, and we both hate the parties we're kind of supposed to be a part of equally because we feel they're letting people down.

Jesse Brown Calls on Democratic Delegates to Reject Beau Bayh at Convention

And so I admire that. I don't have to agree with somebody to be friends with them. I don't have to agree with somebody to like them. But Jesse Brown is a very honest person and he has some wacky views, but he's very honest and we're sorely missing. And he's very direct and he's very bold about his honesty. And we're missing that in our government. If we had, look, look at how what a dumpster fire the city is. If we had a council full of Jesse Browns, city government would be better. Joe Hogsett’s a dirty, rotten dude and he needs more people holding him in check. Jesse Brown offers that. I like that. Don't agree with a lot of his views, but I admire the honesty and we get along just fine. But anyway, he wrote this op-ed today in the Indy Star about basically saying that the Democrats should reject Beau Bayh at their convention and in all the, you know, all the hustle and bustle of the Republican drama, nobody's really paying attention. The Democrats have a contested race now. I don't think it's going to be close. The people I've talked to are kind of doing the tabulating. Don't think it's going to be close. Beau Bayh is probably going to win the election. We've had Blythe Potter, his competition, on our show. She's very nice. She's very well spoken. She may be able to do some damage. She's very likable. When you meet her in person, she is running hard to the left on Bayh. And so Brown writes this op-ed today in the Indy Star about why voters, the Democrat voters, should reject Beau Bayh. And he goes into a long thing. And it's a long article. It's a nice read. It's a nice write. But I wanted to read you towards the end of the article, some of his closing observations and he gets off of Bayh. And he's really talking about just society in general.

Debate Over Beau Bayh Highlights Larger Questions About Wealth and Political Influence

Now, look, full disclosure, if I were a Democrat delegate, I would cling to Beau Bayh like grim death to steal a Seinfeld line. You have had no statewide elected officeholders win an election in 14 years. You haven't even been close in eight years. The last person who was remotely competitive was Donnelly against Braun, and that wasn't all that close. And Bayh brings you money, he brings you a name. He brings you a look, he brings you an ability to win a lot of voters that will decide the election. And I don't think the Democrats, if you're a, you know, if you're a dyed in the wool Democrat. Now, Brown's a different story because he don't like the Democrats either. But if you're a Democrat and getting a Democrat elected is your thing, I think you got to go with Bayh. I don't think you can be picky and choosy about ideology at this point. I think you got to try to win something, but that's one person's opinion. I'm not a Democrat delegate. I don't have a say. I think Bayh gives you the only chance to win in the general election. I think gives you a great chance to win in the general election, especially if Greg Ballard is in the mix. But Brown gets off the Bayh, going after Bayh, and he goes after him pretty good. And he starts talking about society in general, and I want to read you some of what he wrote because he's on to something. He said, quote, the top 1% are getting richer and richer while they ruin our lives. The wealthy call for an end to division and anger while they continue buying our democracy and using it to make themselves rich. The working class is the victim of class warfare. Division and anger can end only when that warfare ends. Right. He's correct. Now, I'm not a person. Now, I'm sure Brown will come at it from like, wealth caps and everything else, right? Like, I'm not that. I'm not a person who believes that productivity should be punished unless you're Saddam Hussein or you've robbed a bank. If you've earned your money legally, then good on you. I don't. It's your money. You've earned it. The problem is we have a system both inside of the political system and outside because of the political system. Which emboldens and rewards the tippy tippy top at the expense of everyone else. The tax code is rigged in favor of the super rich. The tax code is rigged in favor of people who can hire an army of super lawyers. It tax code sucks. It sucks as a worker. Now that I'm back to being an owner again, it sucks even more. I'm having a. I was having a conversation with a member of the. Like. So what do you think about doing this now? And I said, the show is great. Doing the show is fun. It's everything else that I had forgotten about how much it sucks. That sucks because now I'm back in a business owner mode. And just candidly, the last time I owned a business, I was in my mid 30s. From my early 20s, my mid 30s, I was a business owner. I had lots of free time. I had no children, I had no home that I had to own myself. Now I have all of those things, and it's back to being a business owner. Like a big part of what I do every day is not the fun of the show. It's dealing with everything else. It's very time consuming. You got to keep good notes. You got to stay accurate. So at the end of the year, I can pay somebody else to put all of this in and tell me what I owe the government. And you have to have a trained professional to do that, right? Like so much time because you do. And every person should get every. There is no shame in you taking every legal write off applicable to you. You should never give the government a penny, a cent more than you're obligated to. My accountant, he's a really good guy. We've had him for 20 years and he's, you know, not one of the big firms. He's a local guy. He's got probably, I don't know, maybe a hundred clients, you know, regular people. That may be. I don't even know if he has that many but respected guy in his field. Very honest, very good. And every year we were talking about, I wouldn't turn my taxes in the last time. He goes, man, he said, every year no one is more organized than you because every year I get your stuff. It was just like, oh, if all my clients were just like this. I said, right, because I don't want you to miss something because I hate the government that much. I will spend a gazillion hours to save $5 and every person should do that. You should take every deduction given to you. But seeing and learning the code again, seeing and learning the things you can do to save yourself money inside of the lines created. You realize the system is rigged for people with a gajillion dollars who have an army of accountants. People get special breaks that I'm not able to get as a small business owner. And those breaks are given because these Uber rich people have bought the politicians, they give these huge sums of money to get these politicians elected. Why? Not because of the goodness of their heart, but because they want something and they get something. So Brown is right. He's 100% correct of his observation. And again, to come back to the property tax conversation, you pay for it. You pay every deduction that some rich guy gets. You're paying for either through your actual taxes, which you have to pay more for, or if the money gets printed, inflation, which inflation don't harm rich people, right? I mean, it does it, but they have such buying power that you think Elon Musk is like crap. Post cereal went up $0.05 again. Damn. Damn you Walmart. Do you think Elon Musk has ever been through a grocery store? If so, when was the last time? Like, remember. Remember when Bush. Yeah. Remember when Bush was running for re-election? And they, he went to the supermarket and they were showing him how to use the scanner. And that was like, I mean, it wasn't a new, new thing in the early 90s, but it was like, you know, technology for the time. And he's staring at it as though it's some sort of foreign concept to him. And there's a lot of people that think that really hurt him in the election because people are like, this guy doesn't understand me. He doesn't understand what I'm doing every day. He's disconnected from reality, you know, like a guy who asked him what his favorite drink is. He's like, I love a good blueberry wine every so often, right? Nothing says dude like that. Mike Braun, you say strong, but he's right. Regular people are getting screwed for a system that emboldens the rich and empowers the rich. Because it's written by the rich, because they buy the politicians.

Tax Policy, Inflation, and Corporate Influence Become Central Themes in Brown’s Argument

Brown goes on to say, whether they are skyrocketing our gas prices by starting wars for profit or skyrocketing our utility bills by using AI data centers. The elite in our society do not have good intentions for the world as we regular people experience it. They must be stopped before we can all just get along. Perfect. No problem with any of that. It's hard to argue, isn't it? Who gets rich off wars? The military industrial complex. Who pays for wars? Us. We're paying. We pay at the pump. We are paying right now so that other people can make money. That's what's happening with the Iran war. I challenge anyone to prove me otherwise. Either that we're not paying more for gas, or a bunch of rich military contractors are making money. Hard to argue. You can socialist Jesse Brown, whatever you want. You can make fun of him all you want. Hard to argue with anything he's written so far. The data centers. I think that's kind of been proven out right. Utility bills continue to skyrocket. AI data centers use a ton of electricity and water. Now look, we've said on this program we're not hypocrites. We are thankful for data centers. We are grateful for data centers. Now, what I have said is we've got to get parameters around the data centers that work for the data center that provides stability and certainty for data centers that provide certainty and financial benefit for local governments, local communities, and that don't endanger taxpayers and potentially either cut off altogether or skyrocket the cost of resources for taxpayers that they can afford. But Brown's right. Look at the deals right now with the data centers. They come in, they get all the tax breaks, they get all the financial benefit. And what do you get out of it? Potentially higher utility costs if you can get them. He's not wrong on that. He's not wrong on that at all.

Secretary of State Race Exposes Divide Between Electability and Ideological Purity

He closes with regular people see all of this pretty clearly, regardless of the political labels we use for ourselves. If Democrats want to win back regular people to the party, why not prove it by picking a regular person for our nominee? Okay, so he closes obviously with his case is Bayh's not a regular guy. Bayh's a rich kid. Bayh comes from a life of privilege he doesn't understand. You vote for Potter. Right, right. I get that, but the Secretary of State's office, even though nobody on the Republican side can seem to figure out what they do other than David Shelton. The Secretary of State's office is not about financial decisions. They're not about taxing the rich or whatever the cause or phrase of the day is. It's about being an administrator to the will of the General Assembly. It's a paper pusher position by design. Now again, Diego has bastardized it and made it something it's not. And now this Engling guy is out screaming about truckers and closing the primaries and something he has no control over. But the actual job of the Secretary of State is an administrator. And if you're a Democrat and you've done absolutely nothing for 14 years, you've got to pick the person who gives you the best chance. Beau Bayh is not leveling taxes on people or choosing who pays taxes or who doesn't. So I disagree with Brown from that standpoint. He's advocating his clothes is Bayh's a rich guy, Bayh's a rich kid, Bayh comes from wealth. Bayh come. That's all true. Right? All true.