My guest today is American entrepreneur and politician, Christopher Collins. Chris served as the U.S. representative for New York's 27th congressional district (Buffalo NY area) from 2013 until 2019. Prior to his time in Congress, he ran for Erie County Executive in 2007 on a platform of smaller county government, lower taxes and operating efficiency and he defeated the Democrat incumbent with 63% of the vote in a county with 140,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans. Quite an accomplishment.Unlike many of our elected representatives in our 3-tier constitutional republic, Chris was a successful entrepreneur and business guy long before he ran for public office. That means he built something of value to society that employed others in our free enterprise system. After earning his BS in Mechanical Engineering and MBA, Chris started his career as a mechanical engineer at Westinghouse Electric. In 1983, Westinghouse spun off their gear division, and Chris rose to be CEO of the Nuttall Gear Corporation located in Niagara Falls, New York. In 1997, Collins sold Nuttall to Colfax Corporation.Chris moved to Florida a couple years ago and he and his wife, Mary, have three children and three grandchildren. Full disclosure: Chris’ younger brother Ted and I were fraternity brothers at Syracuse University.Welcome to the Locally Grown Podcast Chris Collins.

Laz Lopez joins me today to tell his family's story of escaping communist Cuba and achieving the American Dream as a successful business owner in the U.S. In these challenging times, it's just the reminder we need about how precious and tenuous our American freedom really is.

Elon Musk recently labeled NPR and PBS as “government-funded media” on Twitter, angering both organizations. Is he right, and does it matter anyway?For many years, I supported PBS and NPR financially. I just loved their music, movies and documentaries and their news and opinion programs, that while left leaning, were conducted in a civil tone. They at least made token attempts to cover both sides of a debate but things have changed and they are now peddling activism as journalism.  Listen as I unpack this for you in great fact-based detail.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.”  63 years ago, a great American, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. called out injustice and held America accountable to its constitutional principles. Now there’s a new ideology permeating all corners of our society that demands we judge “not by the content of character, but by the color of skin.”

Inflation and interest rates are inflicting painful damage today. Yet seemingly without notice the national debt is working like a cancer sapping the nation’s long-term economic vitality. Whether we reach the “doom loop,” or just become mired in stagflation, unchecked government spending and mounting national debt will drain all growth potential from the national economy sooner rather than later. This is everyone’s problem.

I was introduced to Larry Lawton through Congressman Bill Posey's office as someone with a compelling story that can help point at-risk kids in the right direction. Man what a story ! Larry was was one of the biggest jewel thieves in American history who ultimately spent 12 years in prison for his crimes. Upon his release in 2007, Larry moved to Florida and began his career as a successful author, motivational speaker, and You Tuber. He is also the founder of the Reality Check Program that educates at-risk kids on the consequences of a life of crime. Larry is the host of his own very successful YouTube channel that boasts over 1.4 million subscribers. Geez, I wish my audience was that big.   Don't miss this show!

Climate? Guns? Abortion? Equity?  Nope. Listen Up for America’s Biggest Issue.

It’s been a month since my last podcast where we spoke with Florida Congressman Bill Posey. I’ve had a lot of family stuff to deal with which I will get to later.  But I wanted to get this out by Memorial Day because it is such a powerful transitional holiday, and I am definitely in a transitional point in my life.

I am so pleased to have as my guest GOP Congressman Bill Posey who represents Florida's 8th Congressional District. He serves on the House Financial Services  and Science, Space and Technology committees.  Prior to that he served 8 years in the Florida State Senate and 10 years on the Rockledge, FL city council and prior to that, he was the founder of a large real estate company. Having been an entrepreneur, and then elected to all three branches of our American government, makes Bill pretty unusual as a politician. We have read each others books and share a common belief that much more of government should be done at the local level as our founders intended. Join us as we weigh in on all the big issues our country faces, as well a little bonus chat about UFOs!

Ultimately, our freedoms and rights power the innovative culture that makes the United States the most successful political experiment in history. Even with its historical warts, America has improved the living standards of its citizens more than any human culture that has ever existed. Democracy, protection of individual freedoms, harnessing the power of diversity while creating a strong collective identity. These are strengths that China and Russia will never have without a revolution. This makes me optimistic that we still have what it takes to win The New Cold War. We just need the right leaders, united in mission, to galvanize the public into believing in the power of a United States of America. It’s been said that politicians only act when there’s fire in the living room. Guess what? There is fire in the living room. We can do this!

My guest today was a guest on this podcast about 18 months ago and we talked about how rising geo-political risks threaten the 75-year-old Pax Americana where global domestic product has increased by a factor of 20 times. Well, it appears those risks are now a clear and present danger as Russia has invaded Ukraine.  Not only this, but China has also publicly stated that its partnership with Russia “has no limits.” The challenge to the US as the pre-eminent super-power is not some future event. It’s here now and we will unpack this with retired U.S. diplomat to Ukraine, David Hunter.

Dr. Rikki Eriksen is a marine biologist focused on the health of our oceans. She grew up in Florida, living on the water with the amazing marine wildlife. Summers were spent on a sailboat in Denmark with her grandparents and winter school breaks sailing in the Caribbean. As a teenager, she started noticing the marine ecosystem was choking to death and that she had to do something about it.

The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect different results.  Much of recent American federal government policy seems to fit into this paradigm. Like let’s print a  whole lot of money then act surprised when we get inflation.  Or stop enforcing our immigration laws and be shocked when millions of foreign people including criminals, terrorists and those who don’t share our values, flood our southern border.  I hope most of would agree that hyperinflation and more drug and sex trafficking on our streets are bad things. And yet policies from the current federal crew are encouraging exactly those things.  I think the rub is that they do not expect different results. They want and expect these results because they think these policies will increase their power. Now that is not insane. All people act in their own self-interest, most of the time. That logic trail traces all the way back to Charles Darwin.  And so it is with our education policy. Our public schools seem to be getting worse, or at least not better. But the cost of the bad performance has outpaced inflation for decades.  Why would we let the same people responsible for our diminishing public schools, be the ones to fix them?  Now that's the definition of insanity.

History repeats and unfortunately, we are on the downhill run of the latest cycle. But remain optimistic because we have a system with a demonstrated track record of success. China has emerged as a powerful rival, but its authoritarian system will remain its Achilles Heel.  Stay vigilant and start thinking about what happens after we get through the coming hard times. And remember, United We Stand, Divided We Fall, Each One for the Other, and All for All.

Today my guest is Cecil Grant, the host of the new “Changing the Narrative” podcast which you can find on Apple, Pandora and other places. His podcast focuses on issues seen through the lens of a middle-aged African American man who deeply cares about his country and is alarmed by what he sees. He has the moral authority to really challenge bad government policies that hurt the people they are supposed to help. For example, his July podcast entitled, “Gun Violence versus Gang Violence: The Problem in Chicago”, he takes Mayor Laurie Lightfoot to task,  for failing to call out the root cause of gun violence in Chicago which are gangs.  His August 20th Episode, “Remove that Racist Rock!”, takes a fun approach to highlighting how many of our political leaders are enraptured with the false notion that America is an irredeemably racist garden made for whites-only that must be pulled-up root and stem in favor of… well we’re not sure yet.

The Biden Administration is busy. Very busy. Busy making sure all we hear about is racial politics, the dreaded COVID Delta Variant, climate change, diminishing our election laws, defunding our police, and turning our schools into indoctrination centers. So I guess it's understandable that they have missed the growing threat that our adversaries pose to our place in the world. China and Russia both hack our companies and government while invading their neighbors with impunity. We are about to reward Iran with a re-start of the sham nuclear deal by the same State Department crew who "negotiated" it during the Obama years. China's Navy is now the largest in the world and Russia just introduced a new Mach 7 missile that completely obsoletes our nuclear defense capabilities. What will we do when China decides to invade Taiwan? Or when Putin decides to take the rest of Ukraine he doesn't already control? Or when any of our adversaries flood their operatives into the U.S. through our porous southern border? I'm not optimistic when I hear our President say that "white supremacy is the most lethal threat to the homeland today." I'd fall down laughing if this wasn't so serious. It's obvious to even the casual observer that our adversaries are NOT defunding their police, NOT opening their borders to all comers, NOT focused on climate change, NOT changing their schools which are already indoctrination centers, NOT changing their elections processes because they are already rigged, and NOT changing their military from a fighting force that can actually win wars, into a race-gender-sexual orientation safe space. For anyone that thinks America is a nation of bigots, I would invite them to spend time in China or Russia or just about anywhere else on this planet. It feels like we are living in an episode of the Twilight Zone.My guest, retired US diplomat David Hunter, joins me to unpack all this Geopolitical risk. Hold on to your hats!

Today my guest is Andrew Shelley, author of the book, “American Butterfly”, an excellent exploration of the roots of the American culture wars through the lens of a deep-fried southern fish out of water.  We explore Andrew’s transition from a boy born to a conservative southern family to a northern liberal living in Boston and how that has helped him empathize with and find value in the conservative voices that are increasingly shut down in our divided political environment. Don’t miss this fascinating dialogue between a liberal and libertarian searching for common ground in America.

Just like e-commerce internet companies in the 1990's, most crypto projects won't succeed. However, the ones that do transform our world. In the last decade, Bitcoin and Ethereum emerged as two of those transformers. If you invested $2000 in ETH five years ago, you'd be retired now. This is because the ETH improvement on blockchain architecture is the platform upon which other disrupters will build their applications. My guest Putnam from Stormborn Partners and I will try to unpack all this and more. Join us!

The fact is that middle ground in America is to the Right of where we are now, not further Left. The pendulum swings back and forth in politics but a razor thin Democrat majority in the House and an equally divided Senate, is NOT a mandate to discard the Constitution and re-do America as a socialist utopia. At best this is going to continue to alienate a least half the country and that is not unity by any definition. Doing what I say, or else, is not a negotiation. I pray that Joe Biden shakes off his obvious cognitive decline long enough to resist his party’s worst impulses.

Anti-discrimination laws have historically targeted a company’s intent but in 2015, a Supreme Court ruling allowed certain types of outcomes to be considered discrimination even if there was no explicit intent to discriminate. This is called disparate impact and we think this is really bad policy. It has the opposite affect of what our government intends. My guest Werner Kruck talks about how this dynamic actually raises costs and limits choices in the financial services industry for poor and minority folks. There are better ways to address inequities in our country. Join us in this fascinating  “root cause” analysis.