Episode #2218- Hammer and Nigel Full Show

**Nigel** (0:00)
Hammer and Nigel.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:01)
You believe these characters are weirdos?

**Nigel** (0:05)
Okay, Belgium, fine.
You win this round, all right? You won this round, but let's see how good you are at NASCAR.

**Jason Hammer** (0:15)
That's right.

**Nigel** (0:16)
Bunch of jerks. My name is Nigel, that's Jason Hammer. I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about that brutal USA World Cup soccer loss last night. We'll get to that.
But first, Hammer, I'm speaking to you personally now. I'm looking at you straight in the eyes, and I'm wondering how you feel when I say that you as a Marion County resident, your Marion County City County Council hates you personally.

**Jason Hammer** (0:45)
They do.

**Nigel** (0:46)
They hate your guts. Why am I saying this?

**Jason Hammer** (0:50)
You could have easily made the segue, too, of speaking of brutal ass-kickings, let's talk about the City-County Council meeting last night, because that's what it was to taxpayers and people who want the city of Indianapolis to be safe and to thrive. Look, I criticize India a lot, but I'm here. I live here. I know what this city has been and what it could be.
Like, I think Indianapolis is the best convention city in America. Everything's close. You could walk everywhere, visit Indy and the folks at the Sports Corp. They do amazing work, despite the fact their elected officials are booger eaters. Every one of them, Nigel, are booger eaters. Gross. As we told you yesterday on the show, your very Democrat-heavy City-County Council was going to do three things.
Raise your taxes, reject strengthening the juvenile curfew situation, and ignore the Office of Public Health Incompetence, just continuing to let them do with the money that they want. It's ridiculous. And all three of those things happened last night.

**Nigel** (2:11)
Let's go. They raised your taxes as a Marion County resident.

**Jason Hammer** (2:15)
So this is the wheel tax, as it's called, the vehicle and wheel tax. So basic passenger cars, like you and I have, Nigel, SUVs, motorcycles, light trucks under 1,100 pounds. You're going to see your vehicle tax go from $20 to $100 annually. Now, big semis, commercial trucks, buses, things like that. They go from $40 all the way to $240.
And this is supposed to be money to help the roads.

**Nigel** (2:55)
That's incredible.

**Jason Hammer** (2:56)
Now, here's the catch, okay? Here's the thing.
This is going to be matched by federal funds going to the state of Indiana. So it's a five year match. So that's why they're doing it. But what they are not telling you is that they didn't put a five year cap on this, kind of like the gas tax. It goes on in perpetuity until they decide not to do it anymore.

**Nigel** (3:23)
Well, what do you know?

**Jason Hammer** (3:25)
So in five years from now, when the match of money stops flowing in, you're still going to get screwed with this.

**Nigel** (3:32)
$20 to $100 annually and there's no cap.

**Jason Hammer** (3:36)
And there were no attempts at cuts. Think about some of the ridiculous crap that the City, County, Council and Indianapolis spends their money on.

**Nigel** (3:45)
This is my next question.

**Jason Hammer** (3:46)
Glow in the dark trails, DEI programs, the thought of cutting something never entered their minds. It was just bada-bing, bada-boom, let's raise taxes. And by the way, sorry, we talked about this yesterday when you were sunning your buns down in Florida.
If you really just try, you can find some of the money, okay? So you can make some of the cuts to the ridiculous stuff. There's over $700 million in Medicare fraud that according to Jacob Stewart of the Indy Star, the state's doing nothing to chase down.
Even if you just caught $100 million of the $700 million, that could help. And also the new speed cameras. There was a story about the millions and millions of dollars that they're bringing in on speeding tickets. Now that goes to the General Fund, but the General Fund could also be used to help infrastructure. So all of these things factored in together. The City County Council and your elected officials want no part, zero, none, nada of making any cuts or finding the money. Their only solution was to screw you.

**Nigel** (4:59)
And we know for sure like the violence interrupters, all the money going to that program, that's working 100 percent, right?

**Jason Hammer** (5:06)
Well, I don't know. I haven't been able to find any violence interrupters to ask them if it's working. I have no idea. I've never seen one of these people walking around.