To introduce today’s Creating Wealth Show, Jason Hartman considers the changes the role of disintermediation has brought about in terms of consumer empowerment, before inviting another attendee of the Birmingham, Alabama Property Tour to share his real estate experience. Scott from Washington DC is an experienced investor who is interesting in branching out and expanding his portfolio into new markets. His main query for Jason is ‘How can I maximize my depreciation in commercial and residential properties?’
Later, Jason interviews director and producer, John Sullivan, the brains behind 2016: Obama’s America, America: Imagine The World Without Her and his latest film, Unfair: Exposing the IRS. They discuss many of the issues arising in the various movies as well as touching upon broader topics such as the growing anti-American sentiment and the impact of people’s ideologies and philosophies.
Key Takeaways
02.25 – By becoming a Member before registering for any of Jason Hartman’s events, you can take advantage of huge members’ discounts.
09.11 – Thanks to changes in technology and society, more power is in the hands of the consumer.
16.00 – A big drawback of commercial properties is the much longer depreciation time (39.5 years to the 27.5 years of residential properties).
18.30 – Jason Hartman gives his guest and his listeners some advice on maximizing their depreciation.
22.53 – Unfair: Exposing the IRS takes what we think we know about the IRS and delves even deeper into it.
28.00 – With so many new laws created every year, how can anyone keep to every single law every day?
32.20 – Among Americans, especially students, the perception of America itself seems to be changing.
34.05 – Jason Hartman asks the key question: What would the world be like without America?
26.10 – John Sullivan poses the interesting notion that the main anti-America sentiment is home-grown and has a fairly recent historical stem.
39.30 – The philosophies and ideologies of a lot of Americans are also now being thrown into disrepute.
43.24 – Find out more information about the most recent film at www.AmericaTheMovie.com and about the upcoming film at www.UnfairMovie.com
Mentioned in this episode
America: Imagine The World Without Her – a documentary produced by John Sullivan
2016: Obama’s America – a documentary produced by John Sullivan
Unfair: Exposing the IRS – a documentary produced by John Sullivan
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed – a documentary produced by John Sullivan
Three Felonies a Day by Harvey Silverglate
The People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
Tweetables
The IRS is over-stepping its boundaries and everybody in this country should be scared by that.
Disorganization is a weed; it will grow and continue to grow until it’s cut down.
America is under attack, but it’s being attacked from within. This can be corrected.
Transcript
Introduction:
This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company. For more information and links to all our great podcasts, visit www.HartmanMedia.com
Welcome to Creating Wealth with Jason Hartman. During this program, Jason is going to tell you some really exciting things that you probably haven’t thought of before, and a new slant on investing. Fresh new approaches to America’s best investment that will enable you to create more wealth and happiness than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self-made multi-millionaire who not only talks the talk, but walks the walk. He’s been a successful investor for 20 years, and currently owns properties in 11 states and 17 cities. This program will help you follow in Jason’s footsteps on the road to financial freedom. You really can do it, and now, here’s your host, Jason Hartman, with the complete solution for real estate investors.
Jason Hartman:
Welcome to the Creating Wealth Show, this is your host Jason Hartman and this is episode number 444. Thank you so much for joining me for episode 444, and I am again, coming to you from Birmingham, Alabama today. We’re on our Property Tour and I’ve got another volunteer, just like on the last show. This is Scott, who’s going to be talking to us and asking a question about maximizing depreciation before we get to our guest today, which is John Sullivan. John is the producer and director of the documentary and movie, America: Imagine The World Without Her and 2016: Obama’s America and a couple of other documentaries that are pretty famous as well. We’ll get to him in a moment, but Scott, thank you so much for joining me today.
Scott:
It’s my pleasure, it’s good to be here.
Jason:
Great to have you. So where are you from, by the way?
Scott:
I live in Washington DC.
Jason:
Okay, in the belly of the beast, Washington DC.
Scott:
I do. We get all the bad news first!
Jason:
There you go! Good, good. Well, we are standing in a little single-family house here in Birmingham, Alabama. This one’s been rehabbed. One of the things you do when you’re a podcaster is you look for any place with carpeting and soft surfaces because it makes the sound a little better, so we’re in one of the bedrooms of this house, looking out on the front.
Thank you for coming to our Property Tour, by the way. So yesterday we had the Creating Wealth Seminar, and today we’re touring around, looking at properties. What do you think? What are your thoughts so far?
Scott:
Well, it’s my first time in Alabama, I’ve never been here before, but there’s definitely a lot of opportunity here. There are some houses that have been here a long time and look like good, sturdy homes and the rents look pretty good. The purchase prices make sense too, so it looks like a great market.
Jason:
And tell the listeners a little bit about your investing experience. You’ve got some properties in Memphis and Phoenix, etc. and maybe elsewhere? I’m not sure.
Scott:
Yeah, I have a few shopping centers in the Washington DC area and I have a few fourplexes out in Phoenix, Arizona, and last year I picked up a couple of single-family homes in Memphis through Empowered Investor.
Jason:
Okay, great.
Scott:
And now I’m looking to continue to diversify into other markets, so that’s why I’m here.
Jason:
Good. So I didn’t know you had shopping centers, by the way. What kind of shopping centers are those?
Scott:
They’re just your basic strip malls that you would find along a major road.
Jason:
Good stuff. How have they been? Have you had the same tenants or have you had a turn over yet? With retail properties you’ve got billed-out issues and it gets kind of complicated.
Scott:
Yeah, retail is also very local, but the costs are very different, the legal structure is different and the type of tenants you’re dealing with is different because you’re now dealing with business owners instead of individuals.
Jason:
Yeah, it’s a totally different thing. Do you like it or dislike it or are you just kind of neutral?
Scott:
It’s been pretty tough lately, which is why I’m trying to diversify into some residential.
Jason:
Yeah.
Scott:
And the other things is that with my buildings, I have to depreciate them at a time of 39.5 years, not 27.5 years like you can get with residential.
Jason:
Right. I’m glad you brought that up, Scott, that’s a super good point. With residential properties, 27.5 years is the depreciation schedule so you really get about 25% faster depreciation, which is great for your taxes, rather than on a commercial property where it’s 39.5 years.
Scott:
It’s also more in line with a 30 year mortgage.
Jason:
Oh, that’s a good point.
Scott:
Yeah, it just works out better. For instance, when you’re trying to sell retain properties, sometimes the depreciation is happening more quickly than your mortgage pay-downs and you might have to pay more from a cost-basis of the property – you have to pay more money in capital gains tax than you would if they were better aligned, like they are in a residential property.
Jason:
Right, right. Good point. By the way, do you want to tell the listeners – you’re here with your wife; what do you guys do for a living?
Scott:
We’ve full-time landlords. That’s all we do – mostly we manage our own portfolio and it keeps us pretty busy, so it’s nice to have investments like this where we can turn it over to a property manager and still get a nice return and not have to resort to investing in the stock market.
Jason:
Right, well I’m glad you said that! Good stuff. Your thinking is very in line with mine. What did you do before you became a full-time landlord?
Scott:
I did marketing analysis for HSBC, which is one of the world’s largest banks, and it was a corporate job. I was trading my time for money and I like this better. I like being able to be my own boss and make a pretty significant income and have no-one telling me what the limits of my income are.
Jason:
Good, that’s good thinking. See, the thing I love about income property is that you can really get some leverage over your time and it lives beyond you and your own efforts. You take a month off, the rent is still due and your tenants still have to pay you next month, right?
Scott:
Yeah, that’s one thing that I talk about with my friends who also own properties. I had a friend who got really ill and was in the hospital for a number of weeks and when he got out, his mailbox was full of rent checks – they still came and he was able to cash them. That keeps going, even when you’re ill.
Jason:
That’s pretty awesome.
Scott:
Yeah, it’s pretty great.
Jason:
Hey, so did you have a question about maximizing your depreciation?
Scott:
Yeah, when I’m looking to expand as I am, in residential and in the properties that you offer, what kind of properties should I look for in order to maximize my depreciations so I can offset some of this income I have?
Jason:
Well, the depreciation schedule, as you well know, on all residential properties is 27.5 years, but what you can do – although it’s not always worth a lot of effort and time on small residential properties – is what’s called cost segregation. You’ve heard of this, because you may well do it on your commercial properties.
Scott:
Yeah, I’ve been offered this on my shopping centers before.
Jason:
Yeah, and mostly there’s not really too many people that go after residential owners because it’s not a big enough pay-off really, but it’s pretty easy to just tell your CPA to take and depreciate the dishwasher and the air conditioning unit and the four-stair heating units based on an accelerated schedule where you can depreciate those a lot faster than the rest of the house. It’s not like that’s a huge windfall, honestly, but it’s going to be some extra depreciation tax benefit for you.
Scott:
Yeah, it sounds like you could get it pretty rapidly.
Jason:
Yeah, I think it’s a 5-year schedule. Maybe it’s 7, but I’m not sure off-hand. It is definitely shorter, and so that’s nice. I think you might even be able to do that with some other components of the house, too. I haven’t personally done it, and I think on my big apartment complex that I have, we are doing that. I’m pretty sure, I’ll have to check with my partner, but that’s one way that you can do it. Did you have another thing in mind?
Scott:
No, I think that answers my question. I have been offered that cost-segregation study on the shopping centers but they kind of said that if your properties aren’t worth about $5 million, it wasn’t worth it. For me, it just didn’t make sense. If I could do it myself on a residential property, then that seems doable.
Jason:
You can because you can just take the appliances and it’s simple to do that. It’s not hard at all. Most people don’t even bother, but you might as well. It’s a few extra bucks, for sure. I just want to ask you before we get to our guest today – how have you liked the event? Yesterday was the Seminar, today we’re touring around on the bus and we’re going to stop for lunch soon. Any thoughts?
Scott:
It’s great. It’s my second tour and I learn new things every time and one of the best things about it is that I get to know some of the attendees. This time I’m meeting a brother of someone I met on the Memphis Property Tour.
Jason:
Right, good.
Scott:
It’s always interesting to hear other people’s stories and what their motivations are for choosing to invest in real estate and to be able to talk about my own experience and get advice. It’s just nice to actually see the people that I’m investing alongside.
Jason:
Yeah. Good, well thank you so much, Scott, for joining us on the intro portion here, and let’s get to our guest, John Sullivan, the producer and director of America: Imagine The World Without Her, which is, by the way, a really great documentary you might want to check out. Be sure to get your tickets for our upcoming Meet the Masters event in early January, and you can do that at www.JasonHartman.com. Here’s our guest.
It’s my pleasure to welcome John Sullivan to the show. He is the Hollywood producer and director of the hit film, America: Imagine The World Without Her and 2016: Obama’s America, and the upcoming film, Unfair: Exposing the IRS. John, welcome, how are you?
John Sullivan:
I’m doing well, thank you for having me on.
Jason:
Good, good. It’s a pleasure. You’re coming to us from LA today, my hometown. First of all, let’s talk about the past two films and then we’ll talk about your new one. Or, I don’t know, do you want to talk about the new one first?
John:
Any order you want.
Jason:
No, maybe the new one first. You know what, forget what I just said. Let’s talk about the new one first because so many people are so outraged at Lois Lerner and the IRS scandal and so forth. What part of the IRS’s misdeeds are you exposing in the new film?
John:
Well, people have heard about Lois Lerner and this kind of broad area from the surface up and what we really did was take it deeper by looking at whether this is a habitual thing with her; has she done this before? We look at what are the people being targeted and whether groups are being targeted. In Unfair what we really do is we do expose the IRS, we expose Lois Lerner from her days at the SEC in targeting certain groups there. She brings this behavior with her; this isn’t something new for her. Also, we look at groups like Veterans’ groups that are being targeted but that people haven’t heard about, groups like parents of adopted foreign-born children that are targeted. This is a much broader and deeper thing. It isn’t about just being lax in their taxes, this is showing how the IRS is being politicized to silence certain groups and to go after groups of people. I just think that’s fundamentally un-American and we wanted to expose that.
Jason:
Well that’s a good thing. What else don’t we know? We’ve heard about the Lois Lerner scandal, we’ve heard about the IRS targeting by not approving, or maybe auditing, Conservative groups, Tea Party groups etc, but what don’t we know? Have you come up with any new scandals and new information? I don’t know, maybe that’s a spoiler question.
John:
No, no. One of the things we’re seeing constantly is that the IRS is being used to go after certain people. I can tell you about the people from my own influence in peer groups – there’s a filmmaker who made a film on ObamaCare that was recently put through an IRS audit. Gerald Molen, who was our producer on both 2016 and America, certainly had an IRS problem after 2016. The guys who work on our social media suddenly had IRS problems too. Now, I haven’t had anything for me, but we’ve seen what’s happened with the next:decision in the SEC so we see these various government units being used to go after people. I think the silent debate discussion, again, I think that is fundamentally un-American. I think our most fundamental rights come from the First Amendment, and that is something all of us should protect. When we see this politicization of the IRS happening, it’s completely wrong.
The other thing to me that was surprising was the Veterans’ groups. These are veterans of foreign war, and we highlight this in the movie, of that group are being targeted because they were providing services for people, like a meal for a dollar donation for hot dogs or sodas or beer. This group was targeted, and various VFWs across the country were targeted. I think this is where the IRS is over-stepping its boundaries and I think if you combine that with what’s going on with the NSA with all of our medical records now coming online, they can basically dig through your life at the minutia level of detail with all of these things coming together. I think that is part of what people don’t see coming, but it should be scaring everybody in this country.
Jason:
Well, you know what’s interesting about that, John, is I had a guest on my show where we talked about the NSA and whether or not the data that they’re gathering is being used against citizens to solve crimes that are non-terrorism related. Say, for example, someone’s a drug dealer or a bankrobber, or maybe they’re not – maybe they’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, right?
What if we’re on the phone together and we joke about robbing a bank. Does that then trigger some key word to the NSA and is the NSA now following me around? It’s scary. So far, I think there has been one fairly major case where there is a strong suspicion that the government is actually now using the NSA data beyond the scope of what they say it’s for, beyond the ‘Oh, we’ve got to stop this probably fake terrorism threat.’ Thoughts on that?
John:
I do think this is happening, and we know for sure that what’s happening is they’re taking this data, they’re cashing data on everybody, no matter what is going on in your life. They’re taking that data and they sit it on a shelf for about 18 months. That sits there and if something triggers that, they then have all your data – all of your texts and emails – and they can go back through and sift through it. People have to think about big data in a different way. It is basically this big kind of catch-all. You’re then put into a little binder, if you will, on a shelf of all this stuff. Then, if they think you’re doing something wrong, they’ll go through that.
We interviewed Harvey Silverglate in America, and he wrote the book Three Felonies a Day and what he puts out there is that most people will commit three felonies a day, whether they know it or not. If they’re sitting there with all this data, whether it be tax records, phone records, other business records, all of these things are going on and they can sift through this data. I think this is creating a very, very big problem and it’s a violation of privacy of rights and I don’t think we signed up for this on the Patriot Act or any of these other things of this nature.
Jason:
Oh, of course we didn’t. It’s absurd. I’ve got to ask you – what are the three felonies a day? That amazes me. Do we really? I know we’re all breaking all kinds of laws that we don’t even know because the old saying of ‘Ignorance of the law is no excuse’ is completely thrown out the window. Everybody’s ignorant of the law now, there are so many laws! John Stossel was on my show and he did a great program on just that subject. We are all ignorant. The Socialist Republic of California, every year comes out with about 700-800 new laws on January 1st.
John:
Correct.
Jason:
How can anybody know 800 laws? And that’s like every year, and that’s just a State law! It’s insane.
John:
[Laughs]. Well no, going back to that with the IRS situation. I’m 6 feet tall and the IRS regulations for the tax code, if you stack them up, it’s almost as tall as I am. There is no way that you could read through that as normal person reading at a normal speed within about a year. This would take you a year to read through this, and that’s just the IRS regulations, let alone the State codes, Federal codes, everything else going on.
In this situation, for me I’m constantly in the financing of movies and things of this nature and there’s a lot of SEC laws that are out there that become opaque and most people are unaware of them. That’s something they can get you on very quickly. Sarbanes-Oxley, you’ve got all kinds of financial regulations and people just don’t know about them. Like you said, new regulations are written all the time.
I can put this into perspective too: I was at dinner with a gentleman who works in the concrete business and he said ‘Let’s just take a look at regulations between the EPA and the FDA. What has more parts per billion of mercury content? Concrete for the same amount, or aspirin?’ It turns out that aspirin has more mercury content in it that concrete does, because who regulates what? Again, we’re seeing how regulation just becomes absurd in that we can have more mercury content in our aspirins than we do in our concrete.
Jason:
Yeah, it’s totally absurd. And of course, the reason is that some lobbyist somewhere lobbied some politician and that’s why that evolved that way.
John:
That’s part of it. I think also, though, the first rule of sociology is that disorganization will grow and continue to grow until it’s cut down; it’s just to protect itself. We’ve got to look at this bureaucracy that’s in Washington and it doesn’t matter if it’s Democrat or Republican. Well, I won’t say that it doesn’t matter, but it’s not dependent on whether it’s Democrat or Republican. Government will always feed itself unless it’s put in constraints. That’s why I think a limited Government operating on the sole basis of what is necessary is needed in today’s society. The Government is just overstepping boundaries constantly and there’s nobody to check it.
Jason:
Absolutely, no question about it. All these organizations want to do is grow and increase their power, they want to increase their budgets and they want to increase their influence. So guess who’s the victim of that? The citizens. They always are.
John:
Exactly.
Jason:
The Government always looks out for itself first. It’s obviously true. Okay, so we talked a little bit about the IRS. I want to talk about the most recent film, America: Imagine The World Without Her, which frankly, got some mixed reviews. Tell us about the film and how you came to make it.
John:
Well, I think the mixed reviews come in this sense – we always get horrible critical reviews but audiences love our movies. We’ve seen this over and over. We get an A+…
Jason:
Woah, you’re dealing with the Hollywood crowd, what do you expect?
John:
Exactly. We have an A+ Cinema Score from Americans, so to put that in context, there’s only 52 movies in history that have had an A+ Cinema Score, which is a cinema ranking. These are movies like Schindler’s List, The Godfather; they’re top quality, Academy Award-winning movies, so we know that the audience loves the movie. The critics, I think, go out of their way to come after the movie because they don’t like the fact that we’re calling people out and there’s an agenda behind their own Hollywood ways.
Jason:
The critics are usually on the Left, so..
John:
Well with the movie, what we really tried to get at was what’s been the role and influence of America since the founding of it. We’ve got kind of a narrative going on right now, especially in our College campuses that shows America as the bad guy. This just came out and I believe that Harvard University had a survey about ‘Who’s the problem in the world: America or ISIS?’ and most of the students said America was the problem, not ISIS.
Jason:
Unbelievable. At Harvard? That’s amazing.
John:
How far have we moved on this? I went to College in the 90s and we had people like Howard Zinn who wrote The People’s History of the United States, and he basically draws a direct line from Columbus landing on the shores down in the Caribbean all the way through to modern present day, and America’s been the bad guy every step and turn around the way. We wanted to take that head on and show that yes, America’s made mistakes, but at the same time, America has always striven to correct those mistakes as fast as it can. Also, it kind of came with a whole different sensibility to do that – there’s a determination to right itself; for free markets, not coercion; personal liberty; the rule of the law; democracy. All of these things kind of come together for the first time in this place called America and it’s about how it happened and how it’s grown from there.
That was our real goal with the movie – it’s just to raise the question of what’s been the role of America, what’s been the place of America in the world and to let audiences kind of infer from that what they will. As a filmmaker, I always want to ask questions. I don’t necessarily want to provide answers, but I do want to appeal back and have people question what they’ve been told, what they’ve been taught and maybe even indoctrinated with.
Jason:
Yeah, good point, okay, so what would the world be like without America?
John:
Well, I think you have to look at it from a couple of different historic perspectives. 1. The British Colonies would have probably expanded and kept going for quite a while, so you would have still had a monarchy ruling most of the world for quite some time. I don’t think you would have had the free market explosion that you did have because America really fueled that happening when it did. I also think you wouldn’t have democracy around the world as you have it now. Places all around the world that didn’t have it even 50 years ago, or 30 years ago, with America coming along, it had that and enjoyed that. America’s been a tremendously positive influence on the world and again, it’s not to excuse some of the mistakes it’s made – some of them have been very grave right from our founding, but I think we’ve worked to correct them as fast as we could.
Jason:
So I think one of the reasons that America’s really getting so criticized, and lately especially, is because of its money printing. America’s in such an enviable position, if you think about it. The fact that we have the Reserve currency and the largest military and probably to keep it that way, if we ever needed to. I think that’s got to be one of the things, besides of course, the blow-back that Ron Paul has talked about extensively in being engaged in all these foreign entanglements, as Washington warned us not to. He said famously as he was leaving – I believe it was Washington – “Avoid foreign entanglements” and that was what, 220 years ago or something! Maybe that’s a lesson we should consider. Of course, it’s a different world nowadays, no question. But those are some of the reasons, I think, that you have this anti-America sentiment. If we were just kind of minding our own business and getting fabulously rich over here, of course people would be jealous but it’s just not the way the world works anymore, is it?
John:
Well, no, but I think with that anti-America movement, it’s actually home-grown. When we really see what happened and how it happened so quickly, it was really born out of the Vietnam War in that sense. We can look at the Vietnam War and we can argue various points of it. We weren’t really there for the traditional Colonial sense of it of going over there and going in for resources. There weren’t really sources to be had. I do think that we were kind of there to try to stem the spread of Communism. That might have been a misguided policy, but I believe that’s why we were there. Then you have home-grown with people like Bill Ayers, Ward Churchill, these types of guys. They then become the University professors. They’re no less radical than they were before, but they just come in and start indoctrinating students, saying that America’s the bad guy, that America’s the one that’s been going to all these wars and doing these things.
I’m in kind of an unpopular position among a lot of Right-Center people, in that I was not in favor of the war in Iraq or us going back in for those things. I understood the reasons why we were going back in but I didn’t agree with them then and I don’t agree with them now. I do think that foreign policy is something that we have to establish and that at certain times we do have to go into places and establish a rule of law. I think we’ve got to go in for the right reasons and I think we have to understand why we’re going there and the duration that we’re going to go for. I do agree with you to some point that a lot of these wars we go around in are unnecessary and it caused this kind of sentiment of anti-Americanism. However, sometimes I don’t believe it’s so warranted, like with the Bill Ayers-type, and these guys who are now professors. People forget that – these guys are now tenured professors at North Western and the University of Chicago and the University of Colorado. These are the people that are teaching your kids and for them, America is the bad guy. That was something that we wanted to express in the film.
Jason:
Well, what’s interesting about that … believe it or not, I actually had Bill Ayers on the show. He described himself – I asked him if he was a Communist – and I’ve got to compliment the man, he was a great interview, as much as I have many disagreements with Bill Ayers and concerns about him. He said ‘Jason, I’m a Communist with a small ‘c”, so whatever that means exactly! It’s interesting. I mean, the amount of influence these professors have, who almost all lean to the Left. To say that a University is some bastion of thoughtful, philosophical debate where educated people and cooler heads prevail – of course you do! Try and have dissent at a University and you’ll be ostracized. It’s just ridiculous.
John:
It is, it’s of funny. This came out, supposedly, of the free speech movement, but it’s anything but the free speech movement.
Jason:
It’s the complete opposite. That’s like saying that Wall Street is about capitalism. Wall Street is about crony capitalism. Free speech on University campuses – there’s no such thing.
John:
No, and this actually goes back to my first film called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
Jason:
I saw that.
John:
And that’s where we went in there and looked at teachers that were being penalized because they dissented. It wasn’t because you could have a rational debate – like you said ‘cooler heads prevail’ – this was all about protecting an agenda and an ideology versus having open discussion and free debate. There’s no look at what the facts are that are coming out. I think that’s all people ultimately really want, to be honest. I think we’ve learned how to not disagree well with each other or have these public forms of debates because I think people realize if they give an inch, man, they can win this thing and my whole world view crumbles. What’s funny in a way, is I see a lot of people attack fundamentalist Christians, and I don’t know that there are as many fundamental Christians in the world as they’re describing, giving kind of a characterization. I do know a lot of fundamentalist Leftiest that understand that if their world views are attacked, one iota crumbles so quickly.
It even goes back to Ayers’ condition – he says he is ‘small c Communist’, but that means he is just an idealized Communist. It doesn’t work though. He wants to escape Communism’s history and reputation and what it’s done, but the ultimate fact is that it’s a failed ideology. No matter how many times it’s been implemented over and over, and it’s been the most tyrannical system ever implemented, so they run away from the history. That’s what I would say to the ‘small c Communists’ because they can’t own what Communism has done to the world.
Jason:
Yeah, that’s a great point. Communism has a terrible, disgusting record that is probably responsible for the deaths of well over a hundred million people, so there’s Communism for you. It’s a very interesting point that you make. Is America under attack? What do you think about that? I don’t necessarily just mean the threat of terrorism which is, in my opinion, debatable. What are your thoughts on that question?
John:
We kind of open the movie with this very big question of ‘What if America didn’t exist?’ and this is through the revolutionary war with George Washington taking down a situation where Washington, on September 11th, 1777 was actually in the sights of a British sniper who did not take the shot and take Washington out. We quickly coined this new speech that Abraham Lincoln gave where he talks about how America’s downfall would not come from abroad, but would actually come from within. Again, I think this anti-Americanism, this attack, is actually comes from within and that it’s strongest at our College universities.
I talk with people around the country and people ask me ‘How do our College kids not appreciate America?’. The point is they’re being taught not to appreciate America and that America is the bad guy, no matter what the question is in that situation. I think that yes, it is under attack, but I think that it is something that can be corrected. I think that it doesn’t deal with our history honestly when we do that. Again, we’ve had some great things that America’s contributed to the world overall, and particularly the idea that we have the right to self-determination, rule of law, democracy – these types of things, and at the same time, we have had mistakes in our past. We need to correct those as soon as we can, address them and move on so that we can have more of the rule of law, self-determination and these sorts of things. This is where I think people like Bill Ayers, Ward Churchill and Michael Eric Dyson – the people we interview within the movie – kind of have this attack on America. They are this mouthpiece within the American education.
Jason:
Yup, they sure do. That’s a very interesting point. John, give out your website and tell people where they can find out more about your upcoming film and your other work.
John:
The recent movie, America, you can find us at www.AmericaTheMovie.com and for Unfair, you can find us a www.UnfairMovie.com. On any of the projects there, you can see that and you can connect with Dinesh D’Souza, since he’s involved in both 2016 and America so find him at www.DineshDSouza.com
Jason:
Fantastic. And by the way, I didn’t know that you were behind Expelled, which I saw years ago, and that was a fantastic film, so I really appreciate you doing that. How many films have you done?
John:
I’ve done 4 right now, Expelled, 2016, America and then I was just the Executive Producer on Unfair.
Jason:
Fantastic, well John Sullivan, thank you for joining us and keep up the good work.
John:
Thank you very much.
Outro A:
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Outro B:
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Outro A:
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Outro B:
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Outro A:
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Outro B:
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Outro A:
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Outro B:
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Outro A:
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Outro B:
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Outro A:
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Outro B:
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Outro A:
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Outro:
This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company, all rights reserved. For distribution or publication rights and media interviews, please visit www.hartmanmedia.com or email [email protected]. Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own and the host is acting on behalf of Empowered Investor Network Inc. exclusively.
