Conversations With the Hoff
Steve Hoffman—lovingly known far and wide (or at least across the Liberty Crack Media breakroom) as “the Hoff”—is our resident radical Conservatarian, a man who can quote the Founding Fathers faster than most people can microwave a burrito. A founding force behind Liberty Crack Media, the Hoff blends constitutional conviction with the charming subtlety of a bald eagle crash-landing through your living-room window to remind you about personal liberty. Whether he’s railing against government overreach, passionately defending your right to smoke a fine cigar, or delivering rants so entertaining they probably need their own FCC classification, Steve Hoffman remains the ideological caffeine jolt that keeps Liberty Crack Media gloriously wide awake.
Conversations With the Hoff
Can Small Businesses Survive in South Carolina?
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Steve's special guest is Brady Bowyer of the South Carolina - American's for Prosperity. They discuss a proposed law H3021 that is currently being stalled in the Senate and dressed down in Sub-Committee with ridiculous carve outs. This is a bill to reduce "red tape" and the size of government in South Carolina. The result would most likely be a boom in economic growth.
Tune In for Microphone Monkeys
It's a beautiful day on the South Strand. Welcome to Conversations with the Hoff. I'm Steve Hoffman, your host, and with me in the studio today are Randy Oporowski, the head zoo keeper of Microphone Monkeys, and also Trip Detmering, our glorious leader and executive producer of Liberty Crack Media.
SPEAKER_03You mean it's not Microsoft Monkeys? Not today.
SPEAKER_02Had your nootropics this week. That's right.
SPEAKER_04We also have a special call-in guest today, Brady Bowyer from uh Americans for Prosperity. He currently serves as the director of Grassroots Operations for America for Prosperity, South Carolina, where he leads volunteer engagement, grassroots mobilization, and citizen advocacy efforts across the state. He's a native of Longview, Washington, and has been active in grassroots politics since 2011. He specializes in field operations, including volunteer recruitment, voter outreach, and campaign organization. He previously served in leadership roles in both student activities, the Young Americans for Liberty, and students for Ron Paul, while attending the University of Las Vegas and earned an associate's degree in business from the College of Southern Nevada. Prior to moving to South Carolina, well, since moving to South Carolina, he's been active in local Republican politics, where he served twice as a second vice chairman of the Dorchester County Republican Party. That's quite a resume there, Brady. So tell us a little bit about yourself.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, I I suppose what else would you love to hear?
SPEAKER_04I uh I guess a little bit about how you got involved with um Americans for Prosperity. That would be a good start.
SPEAKER_00Sure.
SPEAKER_01You know, um that was actually Americans for Prosperity. After all these years, it's kind of come full circle for me to be uh back with them. Americans for Prosperity was actually the first organization uh in you know the kind of grassroots political space issue advocacy that I ever actually worked for. Um I was volunteering for a uh back in Nevada, we called it state assembly, because you know they call it state assembly instead of state house in California, and you've got to do everything California does, right?
SPEAKER_07Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um so I was volunteering for a uh state assembly candidate, and you know, he he told me he's just like, you ever heard of that organization, Americans for Prosperity? You they you they've got an office, you know, up off of Charleston Avenue. You should you should go by their office and and you should ask for a job. I bet they'd hire you. You're great. And so I was like, okay, yeah, I'll give it a go. And and so I literally walked in, um, you know, told them that I exactly what I just told you, and they ended up offering me a job, believe it or not. And uh yeah, so I did a short stint with them um back in 2012, uh, which, you know, really, when you think about it, it's kind of the earlier days of Americans for Prosperity. Uh, we've been around, I believe it's 22 years at this point.
SPEAKER_03Wow.
SPEAKER_01And so things were kind of the Wild West back then, um, in a way that they, you know, are things are things are much more organized and streamlined now. It's a very different experience working there than it used to be.
SPEAKER_04You've got uh quite a libertarian background. I mean, young Americans for Liberty, students for Rand Paul, and now you're working for an organization that was founded by the Koch brothers. Uh matter of fact, David Koch ran for the he was the vice presidential nominee for the Libertarian Party back in 1980. Uh, but yet you uh you're you're very active in the Republican Party. I just want to warn you that you're you're surrounded today by by three libertarians, but don't worry, we're uh we're mostly peaceful.
SPEAKER_01Well, Steve, I heard that you actually used to be pretty active in the GOP yourself when I was having cigars with Tripp uh a week ago. You told me you used to uh channel.
SPEAKER_04I have uh a lot of experience trying to reform the um Republican Party. I'm the co-founder of the South Carolina Republican Liberty Caucus, along with uh Scott Pearson, who's moved to Florida. But yeah, I I tried for 10 years to reform the Republican Party, and my forehead was getting so bruised that I had to finally switch over to uh the Libertarian Party.
SPEAKER_01I get you. It's some sometimes it can feel in in many ways like uh like an uphill battle. Um yeah, I would say ultimately, you know, I I grew up in a I guess you would say Republican household. My dad was pretty apolitical, uh, but my mom um, you know, was a staunch, active Republican. Um and it was interesting. She was always very fiscally conservative. Like she, you know, she was talking when I was like a a kid, you know, back in the you know, late 90s, early 2000s about like social security is going bankrupt before anybody else really was, except for like the the radical libertarian types. And um, but you know, of course, early 2000s, you get kind of caught up in the the the rah-rah of the moment, you know, the Iraq war and all that, you know, she had a WO4 um bumper sticker on her car and and all that. But as I got a little bit older, um, you know, got uh you know to be voting age myself, um I came of age, you know, my first election was 2010. So I was coming of age, you know, right smack dab between the two Ron Paul presidential campaigns. Oh, yeah. And so that had a really big effect on me. Um, you know, especially the latter one where I could actually vote and everything. And, you know, I was a little bit more open to the to the the message that time, you know. Uh 2008, you know, I I kind of, you know, I I was thinking a bit to myself, you know, I was like with Rudy Giuliani thinking like this guy, you know, he's about blaming America first, you know, why is he even up there on the stage with these Republicans? You know, he's not a Republican. Well, you know, and I guess in ideology he really wasn't, especially what it meant to be a Republican at the time, which was uh an opinion, you know, dominated by neoconservatism. Um but yeah, so that's kind of where my ideology came from. I realized that when it came to most of the issues aside from foreign policy, Ron Paul was actually the only one talking about um you know the issues with our monetary policy.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh actually, you know, it addressing the ills that the Federal Reserve system and fiat money cause our society. And so I eventually just kind of you know looked more into it and I was like, this guy's saying the right thing on everything else. Maybe I should hear him out on foreign policy too. And so thus the transformation was complete.
SPEAKER_04So get get back to the mainstream politics today. I understand that your uh one of your projects is uh helping to promote a current piece of South Carolina legislation that will help small business owners in our state. Can you talk a little bit about that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um, yeah, so the the bill number uh for the the piece of legislation you're referring to is H 3021. Uh it's called the Small Business Regulatory Freedom Act. Uh what it is, is it's just a big package of several different reforms. Um the bill aims to reduce regulations uh by at least 25% over the next, I can't remember the target, I believe was five or ten years. But honestly, I think that it'll do more than that when you really look into the mechanisms that it has. There's really four of them. Um there's a, you know, kind of like a Trump-style two for one, um, where every new uh piece of uh every new regulation that a agency proposes, they're also supposed to put forward two um to go up for potentially being repealed. So there's that. There's seven-year sunsets, which I think is one of the most, probably the most effective um of all of the four real provisions of this bill.
SPEAKER_04So the two for one regulation rule would prevent regulatory growth regulatory growth in the future. Is that their objective?
SPEAKER_01The way that I kind of look at it is is of these, there's two provisions that are meant to uh help keep us from having too much new growth in regulations, and there's two that are kind of meant to claw back a little bit of what's already been implemented. That two for one is really gonna help claw back a lot of what's been sitting on the books, just you know, rotting since the 50s, stuff that's not relevant anymore. Um, stuff that should have come up for review a long time ago, frankly.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_04What do they call that? Sunset provisions or something like that? It has to be reapproved after a certain amount of time.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I think you said seven years on that.
SPEAKER_04Seven years, okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and the sunsets being the other one that helps us, you know, kind of claw back a little bit of what we've had the what what's currently on the books.
SPEAKER_04I read also that they want to have a um 25% reduction in overall regulatory requirements for small business. How's that gonna work?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I um through these provisions, really, through the uh the two for one, through the sunsets, uh, and then there's two other provisions um that are a little bit wonkier than these two very simple ones. There's a uh legislative review that certain regulations, uh if they're particularly costly to small business owners, would have to undergo. And then there's also um, if any of your listeners are familiar with the Loper Bright case that overturned the doctrine of chevron deference uh in in the judiciary federally, I guess that was a couple years ago now. This bill would also do something uh much the same here at the state level.
SPEAKER_04Okay, so as a libertarian, one of our concerns is we want to limit the size and scope of government. So this piece of legislation, is it gonna create another bureaucracy to monitor uh the reduction in regulations?
SPEAKER_01No, it is not. Actually, this uh small business uh regulatory review committee, I believe it's called. Um, I may have got the name slightly wrong on that, but that's what it's for. Uh, it is supposed to uh review regulations for the benefit of uh small business owners to give them some advocates. This committee actually already exists. Um this bill doesn't really do anything new from that standpoint. Um it's a committee that already exists. And uh I would say though that our legislature has been maybe not the best about uh making sure that they're in a timely manner filling vacancies on this committee or being actually on the Senate side. Yeah, the the committees, yeah. If you if you go to their website and you know look up you know meeting minutes and stuff, they they they don't meet regularly. Um and so perhaps we're going to have to um do a better job of making sure that this committee stays uh full, um you know, the vacancies are are filled in a timely manner and uh filled with folks who have actually have the ability to uh meet with relative frequency and do their job. But I think the great thing about this bill is these provisions work whether that committee meets or not.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And so whether that committee's meeting or not, the laws are in place that will help to start uh calling back some of these regulations.
SPEAKER_03Now, if you can, Brady, and you and I have discussed this in private, but tell us what the current stumbling blocks and stumbling blockers are uh to this bill. Why is it being uh kind of closeted, put it in put aside, delayed, et cetera?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so uh for anybody who doesn't know, we currently this this bill actually passed the House as it was originally written unanimously.
SPEAKER_03Clean. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, every Republican, every Democrat, they all voted for it. So you would think that you know something that passed the the state house unanimously would have a pretty good shot of you know being non-controversial and going forward in a similar manner in the Senate, right? Well, not so much.
SPEAKER_04It was actually introduced in the 2025 session uh back uh even January, February time frame of last year.
SPEAKER_01Yes, that's true, Steve. Uh and and unfortunately for the uh remainder of the 2025 legislative session, it sat on uh Senator Rankin up there in in your area in the the Myrtle Beach Conway area. Um it sat on his desk for the rest of that session. Uh we tried to get him to move it, and every time that you know we spoke to him, um he just said it's not a priority. Didn't even really say he was opposed to it, just said it's not a priority.
SPEAKER_04Yes, we know Senator Rankin. He actually represents us in Ory County.
SPEAKER_03He doesn't represent us, but he's up there. Yeah, he's up there.
SPEAKER_04Don't know who he represents, but it's not not me, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_01So this year he finally did assign it to a uh to a subcommittee, and that subcommittee has now met three times, and actually yesterday was their third meeting, and they unfortunately started carving up the bill, um, creating the I don't know if uh Trick, if you followed what happened yesterday, but yeah, we yeah, so there were two carve outs for two different agencies. There was um, you know, the the harbor pilots, which uh for those maybe if you have any listeners further inland who don't know much about that, uh this is the agency that you know helps uh you know commercial ships navigate our rivers you know here in the here in the low country. Um and then uh aviation was the the other the um the agency that oversees aviation. And then there's even more the two uh Democrats who were present yesterday on the committee, um Ed Sutton, also from Charleston, uh, and then uh Jeffrey Graham, whose district covers like a some rural like Lee County, Sumter County goes almost to Columbia. They both said at the tail end of the meeting, after uh voting, both them and uh Chip Campson, uh who is the chair of the committee, a Republican uh from the Charleston area, both of all of them voting in favor of these carve outs for these industries. The two Democrats expressed that when they meet the next time, they've got other agencies that they want to come back with carve outs for. And so very, very disheartening. Yes. Um, we appreciated what uh Senator Brian Adams of Berkeley County said uh when when asked by Senator Sutton about why he didn't support these carve outs, he said, Well, it's a slippery slope. You know, you start putting in carve outs for a couple agencies, and next thing you know, everybody else is gonna be lined up saying, Where's mine? and then it defeats the whole purpose of the bill, right?
SPEAKER_03You know, it's a game they play. I wonder if we if we countered with a sliver out where, yeah, we'll give you a carve out on this, but now for every uh two bills you have, you have to just at least uh take take one out. Or, you know, one one regular or two regulations you have, you have to reduce it by by by two, say a one for one instead of a two for one. And um, you know, that should be a little bit better, but it would also keep them from growing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I know that uh some of our folks have you know had conversations with uh folks from the agencies that are looking for carve-outs and you know some of their uh lobbyists.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um but I but sadly it seems like with the makeup of this uh Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, we really don't need to come to much of any kind of compromise because between the uh the three Democrats and the committee chair, it seems like they'll just get whatever they uh they really want anyway. If they want a full carve out, they'll get a full carve out.
SPEAKER_03Is there anything that we can do as uh as citizens to address this committee, like contact them, send them, you know, letters or anything like that?
SPEAKER_01Yes, actually. So if you uh go to our website, which you can find if you just search for Americans for Prosperity, South Carolina, plug it into Google, um it'll be the first thing that pops up. We have a contact us form on our website. And if you would like to uh submit written testimony, if you would like to submit um and a uh a video testimony, actually it has to be live. You can call in, you can't submit video testimony like pre-recorded. Uh or even if you'd just like to come to the Capitol with us, and you don't even have to testify if you come to the Capitol with us, you know, just a room full of folks in, you know, that dark green AFP shirt. It sends a message to the folks up there uh on the committee and lets them know that we're we're watching, we're paying attention. Uh so yeah, go ahead and reach out through that contact us form. I personally will reach out to you if uh you put in there that you're there after listening to conversations with the Hoff. And I will put you in touch with uh your local person, which if it's uh if your audience is mostly local, Steve, that'll be um Allie Day, uh there in the Myrtle Beach area. She's our grassroots engagement area. Yeah, she's great, and she'll show you exactly how uh to get involved with our efforts.
SPEAKER_04Let me tell a little story here that might help you. Um at the last State Libertarian Convention, we had a talk from Spike Cohen, a very active libertarian.
SPEAKER_01And he stressed for your convention.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. He stressed personal how do how does legislation affect people at a personal level? And to to show that this really helps, there was a legislation before the leg the state uh in Columbia that that would have banned all of the hamp derivatives. And it was gonna it was really speeding through the process until a state senator got up and told his personal story of how hamp derivatives had saved one of his relatives' lives. And all of a sudden, guess what? They uh that particular piece of legislation stopped. It didn't go anywhere. So, as far as the Small Business Regulatory Act, I think we really need small businesses, small business owners. In front of that committee telling how overregulation, overreach by the state government, has ruined their lives. Personal stories on how the people who run small businesses today are adversely affected by government overreach.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Brady already uh address to Steve how you've already uh done uh taken steps in that direction.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so well first I want to just take off my AFP hat for a moment and put on my Dorchester County Republican Party hat. I know exactly who you're referring to, uh Steve. That's uh newly elected Representative Greg Ford, um, who we are incredibly proud of here in Dorchester County. Uh we won that special election by only 21 votes, and we're incredibly proud to see the work that Greg is already doing up at the State House. So, all right, DCRP hat off, AFP hat back on. Um wanted to, yeah, uh trip uh one of the things that we've done is we have actually created some uh little business cards, uh little business card-sized cards, little QR code that small business owners can keep, you know, at their uh front desk for folks to be able to send a message to Senator Rankin. Um just you know, scan that QR code and um you know it'll take you to our online petition. We also have window clings with the same messaging and same QR code on them. And uh business owners also, if anybody would like to record a video um trip, I I believe you know graciously would on our behalf be willing to uh you know sit down with you to uh make a short video of you just asking your uh whether you're senator or Senator Lincoln or not, um, but asking the Senate to get this bill moving, to not carve it up anymore, and to get it moving uh so that we can get relief for small business owners like yourself. So uh and you'll see that probably within a week or two on AFP's social media channels if you're willing to record such a video.
SPEAKER_03And I want to take some time to thank uh Graham Dickinson of Dickinson Imaging and um uh uh Nick uh uh Balamani over at Brothers Grill for uh actually contributing a couple videos here recently uh on on and it they're gonna have them up, I'm sure, shortly, uh up on the the area. And also want to take this time to say if people uh are uh trying to do and or need to get some of those clings or cards, uh feel free to get a hold of Americans for Prosperity, or you can get a hold of us uh partnering with Americans for Prosperity here at Liberty Crack Media.
SPEAKER_04Uh I can guarantee you that the Hoff will not be on those videos. I have a face for audio.
SPEAKER_03Well, that's the pro the problem is all the women that would keep flooding the uh the stuff trying to get your number and everything else. And yeah. Such a distraction.
SPEAKER_04That's the risk of being a public figure.
SPEAKER_03And what a figure he has.
SPEAKER_04Well, Grandy, you're the um legislative affairs committee person for the Libertarian Party in our state. Have have you all done any research on uh H uh 4021, 3021?
SPEAKER_02We haven't seen this one yet, so we track bills, but something you notice when you get involved with legislative affairs is they put thousands and thousands and thousands of bills in. When we had uh Jordan Pace on, he mentioned how the committees block what the Freedom Caucus tries to do and they bottleneck everything and make it difficult or gut it out in the committees. I just saw this one is uh still in the judicial committee. I mean, a lot of the times they just shelve them. Yeah, and it's really difficult to deal with them.
SPEAKER_03Well, it's not a priority, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Luke Rankin and those establishment guys can be really difficult.
SPEAKER_03Well, I was gonna ask you, Randy, don't we have uh kind of a little story that we can talk talk about uh here locally about some regulatory overreach that's really affected an individual uh business owner here in the area?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so we have uh a guy in Surfside who runs or did run Earthy Meds, and Alan Wilson initiated Operation Ganja.
SPEAKER_04Our Las Vorney General.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, because he's running for governor, and uh Ken Scheimer ended up with a SWAT team raid. They took uh hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of his uh manufacturing materials, they confiscated thousands and thousands of pounds of product and arrested him and uh put an ankle bracelet on him where he couldn't leave his house, even to go to the surfside beach city council meetings where they were and I think they even grabbed or restricted his funds too. Yep, froze his bank accounts, he couldn't open new bank accounts. It was it was a total nightmare. But the thing that's nasty about that case is it's not following any part of the law. Yeah, they they were trying to take the farm bill, which we have an equivalent version of, that's verbatim word for word, that uh allows everything he was doing with him to be legal, yeah, and they just reinterpreted it like they did in Conway and locked him up. I mean, yeah.
SPEAKER_03It's uh it's incredible. I mean, he was following the law verbatim, and uh I understand even when they they uh uh confiscated his materials, they left the tracking uh information that that left the lab results that yeah, that shows the custody of of uh the chain of custody for all these things too, and broke it. Yeah. Um so they violated the law going after him. So yeah. Uh Brady, have you ever heard anything that crazy before?
SPEAKER_01I mean, I've I've heard about it, not in in South Carolina. I was I was unaware of that story. Um I hope this uh individual, I don't know if he's tried reaching out to any um organizations like uh Pacific Legal Foundation or any of those groups that uh are able to help provide legal aid to folks in this situation.
SPEAKER_04So Brady, I hope your efforts in getting this law passed will stop this form of big government tyranny. Uh and in closing, thanks a lot for being on Conversations with the Hoff. And I hope our listening audience can fully appreciate the works of Americans for Prosperity and their efforts to help small business owners in the state free themselves from their current regulatory nightmare. Small business is a backbone of American society or economy. I mean, that's a driver of the American economy. And yet, big government runs over themselves trying to put them out of business. It makes no sense whatsoever. And remember, it's a libertarian slogan that less government, more freedom. That also translates into less government, more similarity, more money in your pocket. On a future episode of Conversation with the Hoff, we hope to have the libertarian candidate for the U.S. Senate program. That should be next week. And we're also hoping to have uh Jill Quest, uh Jill Swing, sorry, Jill Swing, who's with the South Carolina Compassionate Care Network, who's trying to legalize medical marijuana in South Carolina. So thanks for listening. And now a word from our glorious leader, the executive producer of Liberty Crack Media, Trip Detmering.
SPEAKER_03Thank you. And uh, for our listeners, uh, if you've been listening to us, you know that we have been partnering with Americans for Prosperity. If you sign up for our monthly newsletter, you will qualify for a free, the really kind of cool, um, hand squeezy that looks like a green hand grenade. Or if you prefer, you can get a can koozie that looks like a football. It really does. It's kind of cool. I love those things. And then if you uh really help us out, we also have these dynamic, really beautiful looking rock glasses, because I know my listeners don't drink, but but uh also if you want to get involved, you've got a small business, we can also get you uh in touch with us, we can get the recordings made, we can get those cards out to you, window clings, anything we can do to promote and get the passage of house uh house 3021. Um get that through the uh through the Congress, make that our our law of the land. And Brady, thank you so much, and I hope everybody else has a great week and have more conversations with the Hawkins.
