SUMMARY:
In the second half of a home-and-home podcast swap, Scott hosts Travis Gearhart — Libertarian candidate for Indiana House District 4 in Porter County and co-host of the Disenfranchised podcast — for a genuinely good-faith left-libertarian conversation. The two find real overlap on utility monopolies, corporate subsidies, military spending, and structural reform (an Article V convention, changing the makeup of Congress), while sharply disagreeing on the proper size and role of government itself. Gearhart traces his own political path from young elected Republican to disillusioned libertarian, makes the case for auditing NiSource and ending Indiana’s data center subsidy regime, and pushes back hard on the idea that Indiana Republicans are actually governing like libertarians. The conversation closes with Gearhart’s pitch for splitting your ticket in his three-way state house race.
Progressive Indiana Network: https://progressiveindiana.net
HoosLeft: https://hoosleft.us
Travis Gearhart: https://www.travisgearhart.com/
WHAT’S INSIDE:
00:00:21 Introduction: Common Ground and Real Disagreement With Libertarians
- Scott frames tonight’s guest through his own frustration with libertarians: real agreement on individual freedom, bodily autonomy, church-state separation, skepticism of the carceral state, and non-interventionist foreign policy — sharp disagreement on the role of government, taxes, and business regulation. Both, he notes, are the black sheep of their respective party coalitions.
- Tonight’s guest: Travis Gearhart, Libertarian candidate for Indiana House District 4 (southern Porter County), host of the Disenfranchised podcast, and Scott’s recent podcast-swap counterpart.
00:03:00 Welcome: Travis Gearhart and the Disenfranchised Podcast
- Travis recounts a rough weekend of parade appearances and campaign tabling that delayed editing his own episode with Scott and left him with a touch of sun poisoning.
- The Disenfranchised podcast: available everywhere, with disenfranchisedpodcast.com as the central link hub, also connected to his campaign site travisgearhart.com.
00:04:57 From Young Republican to Libertarian: Travis’s Political Journey
- Travis got politically engaged around the Obama-McCain election, initially leaning conservative and pro-death-penalty. He became the youngest elected official (age 25) and first Republican in 15-20 years on the Hebron Town Council, later serving as South County Republican chair and District 1 Young Republican vice chair.
- A divorce coinciding with a county council run, a contentious job loss tied to Republican Party connections, and a self-described “don’t tread on me” small-L libertarian streak (despite an admitted neocon phase) pushed him out of politics for 7-8 years. He returned after State Rep. Ed Soliday’s infamous leaked text message to the Portage mayor, Austin Bonta, initially considering an independent run before formally joining the Libertarian Party.
00:08:15 If You’re Skeptical of Government, Why Run for Office?
- Scott presses the apparent contradiction: if libertarians believe government is the problem, why seek office within it? Travis calls it a last-ditch effort to steer a system he sees heading toward historically typical imperial decline (citing the roughly 250-year lifespan of empires), while acknowledging even close friends who see voting as pointless. His answer: someone has to try, and the same logic explains why he respects progressives pushing an uphill fight within a Democratic Party he’s skeptical of too.
00:11:36 The Two-Party Cartel and Why Dissenting Voices Get Punished
- Both agree the two parties function like a cartel that agrees on nothing except the illegitimacy of any third option. Travis extends this to internal dissent — pointing to how the GOP treated Ron Paul and Thomas Massie, and how Democrats treated Bernie Sanders and the 2024 Biden-to-Harris switch without a primary vote. Scott plugs his June interview with Metin Pekin, author of Breaking Democracy’s Chains, on multi-party alternatives.
00:13:24 Crony Capitalism, Data Center Subsidies, and the Israel Investment Deal
- Scott asks Travis to evaluate Indiana’s 20-year Republican supermajority in libertarian terms. Travis firmly rejects the idea that current Republican governance is libertarian — calling it crony capitalism instead, citing a recent Donald Rainwater post about the incoherence of praising free markets while showering data centers with subsidies. He specifically flags Indiana’s investment deal with Israel as an example of the state financially entangling itself in a controversial foreign relationship for no clear libertarian reason, and argues real free-market capitalism requires allowing winners and losers to actually fail.
00:17:46 Where Should the Tax Burden Actually Fall?
- Scott connects this to Republican State Rep. J.D. Prescott’s proposal to eliminate property tax entirely in favor of expanded sales taxes on services (oil changes, haircuts) — a shift that pushes the burden onto working people. Scott’s position: if taxes must exist, they should fall on those most able to pay.
00:19:30 Income Tax vs. Property Tax: Travis’s Case for Starting There
- Travis, while personally in the “taxation is theory theft” camp, argues that if you’re going to tax at all, income tax should be tackled before property tax, since wage earners can’t move their money around the way wealthy people with liquid assets can to dodge taxation. He’s open to a state sales tax replacing income tax specifically, contingent on the numbers actually working out, and stresses incremental, well-funded reform over sweeping bills that get watered down to nothing by the time they pass.
00:22:51 Taxing Unrealized Gains and Where Progressives and Libertarians Split
- Scott argues wealth tied up in stocks and bonds is undertaxed and defends taxing unrealized gains. Travis concedes “we’re already taxing unrealized gains” in some forms, but pivots to a broader philosophical point: government and education aren’t businesses and shouldn’t be operated like one — they should be run as services, though he believes many of those services can be delivered better in a private environment. He acknowledges the two of them won’t agree on the underlying purpose of government or taxation, since that’s the actual dividing line between a libertarian and a progressive.
00:24:46 NiSource, IURC, and Ed Soliday: The Case for a Full Utility Audit
- Despite that fundamental disagreement, Travis says there’s still real overlap worth working on — citing sunlight and disclosure laws as one example — before pivoting to his central ask: a full audit of NiSource (NIPSCO’s parent company). He argues utilities behave as legal monopolies that face none of the market discipline true private businesses face — you can’t simply switch providers the way you might choose a different retailer. He connects this to Rep. Ed Soliday’s financial ties to NiSource and influence over the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC), which Travis argues shouldn’t exist in its current form, and contrasts his own consistent position with the Democratic opponent in his race, whom he considers a nice guy but more conservative than Travis on this issue specifically.
00:27:30 Natural Monopolies and Why the Free Market Can’t Fix Utilities
- Scott agrees utilities are natural monopolies — competing power grids make no practical sense — and argues they shouldn’t exist as private profit centers at all, since the absence of real competition means no market discipline can ever actually apply.
00:28:25 Is the Trump Administration Secretly Socialist? Privatization in Name Only
- Travis argues the Trump administration’s equity stakes in various companies make it, by definition, one of the more “socialistic” administrations in memory — while Republicans still claim the free-market mantle. His diagnosis: what passes for privatization in practice is privatization in name only, with NIPSCO and NiSource raising rates repeatedly (including three requested increases during and after last year’s widely criticized storm response) while executive pay roughly doubled or tripled, none of which resembles genuine market accountability.
00:31:59 The Solar Net Metering Trap: Why ‘Off Grid’ Isn’t Really Allowed
- Travis relays a friend’s experience: NIPSCO doesn’t allow full off-grid solar setups, requiring a mandatory energy buyback arrangement that, once installation costs are factored in, left his friend with no actual savings — undercutting the premise that residential solar offers real independence from the utility. Scott adds that utilities typically buy back excess power at a discounted rate and resell it at full price, reinforcing the monopoly dynamic.
00:33:33 Vegetation Maintenance, Flooding, and Where Your Freedom Ends
- Scott raises NIPSCO’s underinvestment in vegetation maintenance (unprofitable) and central Indiana flooding tied to overdeveloped wetlands as examples of unregulated property rights harming neighbors and people downstream — invoking “your freedom ends where my nose begins” as the philosophical crux libertarians and progressives frame differently.
00:34:53 The Hobart Data Center and Government Rules That Get Bought Around
- Travis cites a proposed Hobart data center sited dangerously close to wetlands as a case where zoning rules exist but get circumvented once enough money and lobbying enter the picture — a dynamic he says isn’t uniquely Republican, Democratic, or even democratic, but common to essentially all governments once exceptions and variances start accumulating.
00:37:03 Buying Special Dispensation and the Libertarian Infighting Problem
- Scott summarizes: you can’t buy your way out of the rules in a genuinely functional system. Travis agrees this dynamic gets falsely branded as libertarian by conservatives, while noting Libertarian Party conventions have every bit as much internal factional fighting as the major parties — just without the polish to keep it off-camera.
00:38:31 Regulations Aren’t the Problem, Buying Exceptions to Them Is
- Scott reframes the disagreement: the regulations themselves aren’t the core issue — the ability to purchase exceptions to them is. He revisits a point from his appearance on Travis’s show: the right hates government because it’s corrupt and inefficient, the left hates corporations for the same reasons — and the corporations that own the government are the common enemy both sides are actually angry at, whether they realize it or not.
00:40:36 Is Money-as-Speech a Libertarian Idea? Limiting the Power of the Presidency
- Scott presses Travis on whether “money is speech” campaign finance doctrine originated from libertarian economic thought (citing James McGill Buchanan and Milton Friedman), and whether that doctrine effectively lets wealthy interests buy influence over any rights libertarians claim to defend. Travis agrees government shouldn’t hold enough concentrated power to be worth buying in the first place — the presidency specifically shouldn’t be powerful enough to matter which party holds it.
00:42:15 The DSA Platform: Eliminating the Senate and Expanding Congress
- Scott connects this to recent DSA platform criticism he’s faced for proposing to curtail presidential power and reform or eliminate the Senate’s anti-democratic features (or admit more states to rebalance it). He also advocates expanding the size of Congress so individual representatives serve fewer constituents, and floats Metin Pekin’s proposal of Congress nominating executive candidates for a final public vote.
00:44:22 An Article V Convention: Common Ground on Structural Reform
- Scott raises his skepticism of the specific motives behind some right-libertarian support for an Article V constitutional convention (often framed around a federal balanced budget amendment), while stating he’d personally support a more inclusive, modern rewrite of the Constitution. Travis agrees a constitutional convention is a good idea and doubts the current system’s long-term survivability, though he’s pessimistic about it happening given how much power is concentrated in big money, big tech, and the military.
00:45:25 The Military Budget, Munitions Shortages, and Losing an Argument About Defense
- Travis cites the roughly $1.5 trillion military budget, wondering aloud what it’s actually buying beyond bombing campaigns. Scott picks up the thread and drives the point home: what have we actually gotten for that trillion dollars a year, especially given reports that the U.S. exhausted its munitions stockpiles within six months during recent involvement in Iran, leaving the country under-prepared for a larger potential conflict with a power like China. Travis recounts being told by an acquaintance that Libertarians are “bad on defense,” countering that current defense spending patterns look indefensible regardless.
00:47:36 Eisenhower, the Military-Industrial Complex, and a 91% Top Tax Rate
- Both praise Eisenhower — Travis cites the “military-industrial complex” warning and mentions that he owns a physical program from Ike’s second inauguration; Scott for defeating the Nazis at Normandy, a 91% top marginal tax rate during his presidency, and major infrastructure investment (with a joking aside crowning Eisenhower “team captain of Antifa”).
00:48:29 Massive Infrastructure Investment: Where Travis and Scott Actually Agree
- Scott advocates aggressive infrastructure investment to address climate change impacts, citing the derecho that knocked out power in Gary for weeks, and argues public investment is both the right thing to do and economically stimulative. Travis doesn’t disagree on the need but insists it should happen at the most local level possible, citing a claim (which he flags as approximate) that roughly 60-70% of federal spending gets lost to bureaucratic overhead before reaching its intended purpose.
00:50:31 Localism, Bureaucratic Waste, and Why Money Should Stay Close to Home
- Travis extends his localist argument: accountability and responsiveness improve the closer government sits to the people it serves, and he questions why, for example, taxpayers nationwide should fund flood infrastructure in New Orleans specifically. He acknowledges the tension of seeking government power at all while trying to constrain its use to local levels.
00:52:27 Leslie Knope, Ron Swanson, and the Local Control Hypocrisy Question
- Travis jokes about being compared to Parks and Recreation’s Ron Swanson by a more progressive friend (herself a “Leslie Knope”), framing his run as wanting to shrink government responsibly rather than sabotage it from within. Scott notes the hypocrisy of Indianapolis Republicans preaching local control while overriding local ordinances like Bloomington’s plastic bag ban or various local puppy mill bans.
00:53:48 Medicare’s 2% Overhead and the Sam’s Club Analogy
- Scott cites Medicare’s roughly 2% administrative overhead versus 10-15% for private insurance as evidence government can operate more efficiently than the private sector in specific cases.
00:54:28 Loopholes, More Government Creating More Government, and the Case for Anarchism
- Travis takes Scott’s Sam’s Club analogy and complicates it: private inefficiency still preserves a choice to shop elsewhere, while government inefficiency doesn’t — you’re stuck with Sam’s Club whether you like it or not. He argues loopholes exist because government created them in the first place, questioning at what point expanding government stops looking like good government, and admits sympathy (depending on the day) with harder-line anarchist positions within libertarianism — concluding that any government, however necessary, tends toward abuse of power given 250 years of precedent across virtually all political systems.
00:57:30 It’s All About Who You Put There: Closing Arguments
- Scott suggests the real variable is who holds power rather than the size of government itself; Travis pivots this directly into his own campaign pitch.
00:58:31 Where to Find Travis Gearhart and His Case for Splitting Your Ticket
- Campaign hub: travisgearhart.com, with active TikTok (@the.real.travis.g) and Facebook presence. Travis urges District 4 voters not to vote a straight ticket, and specifically to compare his platform (seven or eight concrete points, including cannabis legalization) against Republican incumbent Ed Soliday and Democratic challenger Ryan Kominakis — positioning himself as more conservative than Soliday and more progressive than Kominakis, and encouraging voters to make their own comparison rather than deciding based solely on this conversation.
01:00:12 Closing and Sign-Off
- Scott thanks Travis for a good-faith conversation and previews a scheduling change: no HoosLeft This Week this coming Sunday due to a planned vacation; next Tuesday’s broadcast will be a pre-recorded interview featuring State Comptroller candidate Jessica Bailey.
