Speaker 1: Don't want to be.
Speaker 2: It's got a flown show back on seven hundred deuli
Speaker 2: all that are A lot's going on. Got some council
Speaker 2: stuff to cover lighter stuff as well after a few
Speaker 2: days off here. So the death toll from the protests
Speaker 2: in Iran above twenty five hundred right now. I saw
Speaker 2: an estimate from another so I said close to five
Speaker 2: thousand more, believe it or not. Two thousand people dead,
Speaker 2: hundreds of thousands arrested after protests in that country. Aranians
Speaker 2: started making phone calls abroad yesterday for the first time
Speaker 2: in days because they cut all communications off during a crackdown.
Speaker 2: And so that's where things stand right now. In this figure,
Speaker 2: dwarfs any protest I think we've seen, probably since nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy nine. If you're around back then, Laura Kartch is here.
Speaker 2: She's a senior contributor to Young Voices. I'm sure Laura
Speaker 2: wasn't around. I was a small child then, so I
Speaker 2: kind of remember, but sort of. Laura, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: How are you?
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having me Scott.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's begin with this. I know that the
Speaker 2: White House met behind closed door secretly, well not secret
Speaker 2: anymore with the exiled former Kron Prince Donald President Trump
Speaker 2: was kind of cold on him at first, and now
Speaker 2: it looks like that name is being thrown a lot
Speaker 2: by the people on the ground that people actually doing
Speaker 2: the protesting. As far as their next leader goes, what's
Speaker 2: going on with Komani and how likely is that's going
Speaker 2: to happen.
Speaker 4: So the rumor is that Trump right now is weighing
Speaker 4: all his military options. He's been very SoCal about that,
Speaker 4: and as of ten am yesterday he announced that he's
Speaker 4: canceled all the diplomatic meetings that were set with Iranian officials,
Speaker 4: so things are getting really serious. Iran has since replied
Speaker 4: that it's ready for war and has continued its killing.
Speaker 4: So in my opinion, I think maybe strikes are imminent.
Speaker 4: And in regards to the chance for Paul Lobby, which
Speaker 4: was the elite Shaw the Sun Stay, Yeah, who was
Speaker 4: in power before seventy nine takeover, there's huge rumors that
Speaker 4: he may be coming back as well, and he has
Speaker 4: been vocal about coming back since last summer after Operation
Speaker 4: Midnight Sledgehammer. So there's a lot of talks on that,
Speaker 4: and mainly I think if Hamami's gone and he comes in.
Speaker 5: So we're going to.
Speaker 4: See a very different Iran emerge. It's just a question
Speaker 4: of you know, whether or not the US is going
Speaker 4: to intervene, and if it does, you know, there's so
Speaker 4: many different scenarios that can come out of that.
Speaker 2: You know, we've seen this before, and I vaguely remember
Speaker 2: seventy nine, but as a student of history now that
Speaker 2: I'm older, now, I'm very clear on what happened then, because,
Speaker 2: as I mentioned, you had the Shaw in power back
Speaker 2: by the United States. He exiled in the United States,
Speaker 2: died of cancer, and we had this totalitarian regime come
Speaker 2: in in seventy nine after the hostage crisis where Americans
Speaker 2: were held hostage. Reagan came into office and they ended
Speaker 2: that and so i'll started this kind of Cold war
Speaker 2: with Iran and the Iran we see now as a
Speaker 2: product of that. Prior to that, it was a very
Speaker 2: democratic state, like you know, women were it was very
Speaker 2: progressive as a matter of fact, you know, women and
Speaker 2: have to wear his job, and you know there's mingling,
Speaker 2: commingling and the sexes and the like. But we've seen
Speaker 2: these uprisings in the past. You know, the Arab spring
Speaker 2: to twenty nine, twenty nineteen, twenty twenty two. Why is
Speaker 2: this one different or isn't it?
Speaker 4: Well, what's really interesting is that it began in Tehran's
Speaker 4: growing Bi Star area, which was typically loyal to the
Speaker 4: Eye Pola, So that in and of itself is the signal.
Speaker 4: And you know, going back to your point about prior
Speaker 4: to seventy nine takeover, the Palavii dynasty was actually very
Speaker 4: pro West. So if we do see this sun coming in,
Speaker 4: we would have potential normalization with Gulf countries, Israel and
Speaker 4: less proxy conflicts in places like Lebanon, Gaza and Syria.
Speaker 4: Right now, you know, a huge realignment with pragmatic relations
Speaker 4: with these states and the West.
Speaker 6: So the key would really be a.
Speaker 4: Shifting middle dynamic from the confrontation that we've seen for
Speaker 4: over so many decades to one of economic and security cooperations.
Speaker 3: With the West and the ransfer of Pallavi.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's I don't know if it's an overwhelming
Speaker 2: concessant the consensus, and it's hard to tell, but that
Speaker 2: kind of came as a surprise.
Speaker 4: Why right, So it's not exactly overwhelming, it's just that
Speaker 4: there's been many video surfacing on you know, places like
Speaker 4: x and others of people chanting Pahlabi's name in the streets.
Speaker 4: And I think it has something to do with what
Speaker 4: we mentioned. Prior to seventy nine, Yarn was a free,
Speaker 4: secular society, and it's very obvious that the population would
Speaker 4: like a return to that. And you know, if Paul
Speaker 4: Labby is the way to do that right now, then
Speaker 4: I think everyone you know would be open to it.
Speaker 2: Aren't There thousands of soldiers and people who report to
Speaker 2: the total of tearan regime now comeni that would resist
Speaker 2: that because it's such a big base right now. If
Speaker 2: paulab came in, that would essentially take away their authority
Speaker 2: and maybe paychecks right exactly.
Speaker 4: And that's where the complication comes in because we've seen
Speaker 4: even soldiers out of uniform shooting at protesters. So the
Speaker 4: entire thing is very complicated, and I think that's partly
Speaker 4: why Trump is taking so long to respond a little bit,
Speaker 4: because you know, if you take out the main leader,
Speaker 4: you still have an enormous security group that is still
Speaker 4: loyal to the IATOLA. So I think day by day
Speaker 4: and uh, it's really going to be interesting to see
Speaker 4: how Trump can influence the situation.
Speaker 2: We're talking about taking over Greenland, presumably by force. We've
Speaker 2: seen what's happening in Venezuela. When now Iran, how do
Speaker 2: you foresay that kind of regime change there without boots
Speaker 2: on the ground, which of course would break his campaign
Speaker 2: promise about no more foreign wars.
Speaker 3: It sounds like foreign wars to me.
Speaker 4: Right, exactly, the no new wars infamous campaign. You know
Speaker 4: it from what we've seen in Venezuela, the US military
Speaker 4: has proved its capable of, you know, making such a
Speaker 4: giant change without as much collateral damage. You know, I
Speaker 4: personally think that there would be way too much collateral
Speaker 4: damage if we go in respond. But you know, with
Speaker 4: a place like ran Uron, it doesn't have the same
Speaker 4: dynamics as been as well I did. But you know,
Speaker 4: it comes down to the ideology as well that they've
Speaker 4: had since seventy nine under the Eyetola. You know, are
Speaker 4: there enough people that can carry on the movement and
Speaker 4: kind of clean out the ideology that the security forces
Speaker 4: would have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think what you're up against here, I
Speaker 2: mean I mentioned the current assessment. I think it might
Speaker 2: be from the UN. I'm not quite sure they said
Speaker 2: about twenty five hundred at this point. Some others are
Speaker 2: suggesting five thousand protesters that killed, one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: thousand plus jailed at this point. That is an incredible
Speaker 2: number to show you.
Speaker 4: I it brought against right definitely, to be honest, I'm
Speaker 4: also seeing report twelve thousand and more suspected. So it's
Speaker 4: going to be interesting over the next couple of days
Speaker 4: to see what the real number is because that can
Speaker 4: either refuel the movement or stop it completely.
Speaker 2: Well, now you're the levels of genocide that changes things entirely.
Speaker 2: So I mentioned the UN earlier. Where are they on
Speaker 2: all this?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 6: You and in my.
Speaker 4: Opinion, it's been a lot of crickets I haven't heard.
Speaker 7: I've noticed that.
Speaker 2: With the UN, lauras if the United States, if we
Speaker 2: do something like I don't execute a mass murder, they're
Speaker 2: all up in our grill, but they're kind of quiet
Speaker 2: when it's twelve thousand people exactly exactly.
Speaker 4: That seems to be the pattern these days or this
Speaker 4: last year, quite frankly, So it is going to be
Speaker 4: very interesting to see if they do come back into
Speaker 4: this conversation, if Trump does decide to act, which I
Speaker 4: think might be the case.
Speaker 2: Okay, as far as retaliation goes, I know they're a
Speaker 2: parliament speaker threatened if we do anything militarily that the
Speaker 2: United States and Israel Israeli targets would be legitimate.
Speaker 4: What's the likelies of that happening, right, you know, there's
Speaker 4: only one way to find out, unfortunately, but they have. Yeah,
Speaker 4: the Parliament did come out with the chance of that
Speaker 4: America and the Iranian regime itself did say if you
Speaker 4: bomb us, we will target US spaces in the East.
Speaker 4: So you know, I'm hoping all our troops are safe
Speaker 4: at the moment, and there are some contingency plans in place.
Speaker 2: Plabi Is, by the way, it's Laura Karcht on the show.
Speaker 2: She's with the young voices and following very closely obviously
Speaker 2: what's happening in Iran. Boots on the ground here, and
Speaker 2: polabi Is is kind of positioning himself as this transitional leader.
Speaker 2: But we've seen that before, the old bait and switch. Right,
Speaker 2: what's a realistic scenario look like if this actually happens.
Speaker 4: Realistic scenario? So, I have been following his comment since
Speaker 4: last summer, and I do believe that he wants to
Speaker 4: please you. Know, the West and Israel and the wholf countries,
Speaker 4: and he has come out and said, you know, we
Speaker 4: want pro wess, secular Iran to be back, freedom to
Speaker 4: be restored, you know, things like that. So what I'm
Speaker 4: hoping for is for some de escalation that the at
Speaker 4: least so much deserves. You know, as an Asterian myself,
Speaker 4: I think I'm also ready to see a conflict free
Speaker 4: Middle East. You know, that's obviously not guaranteed, but the
Speaker 4: most we can hope for right now is a realignment
Speaker 4: towards pragmatic relations between the two regions.
Speaker 2: This is all driven by nostalgia. There's enough people around
Speaker 2: who remember what happened pre seventy nine, what life was
Speaker 2: like there. They hear these these nostalgic stories, and now
Speaker 2: they want that themselves. This is kind of like a
Speaker 2: generational dynamic change for the opposition here.
Speaker 4: Exactly, especially because you know, Iran does have a huge
Speaker 4: young population right now that likely, you know, we're either
Speaker 4: very young during the seventy nine tacob or we'ren't eveniforn
Speaker 4: yet and need Personally, what I've been seeing are the
Speaker 4: images from you know, the seventies, and personally in Syria,
Speaker 4: it was the same way. It was very open, very secular,
Speaker 4: and I do hope that Iran gets to return to that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think.
Speaker 2: I think some of the craziest pictures are are the
Speaker 2: ones of you know, young men and women who are
Speaker 2: on university campuses in Tehran and elsewhere, who are studying
Speaker 2: and doing it together, and they're dressed in western It
Speaker 2: looks like a picture of America actually, and that's shocking
Speaker 2: considering where things stand now in the very radical Islamic
Speaker 2: Middle East.
Speaker 4: Exactly. Yes, And unfortunately, for now, the poster that seems
Speaker 4: to be for this movement is the woman. I'm not
Speaker 4: sure if you've seen it, that the woman with holding
Speaker 4: a cigarette burning Humming's photo. So hopefully we get some
Speaker 4: more positive photos after this blows over soon.
Speaker 2: Yeah. How close to the brink is the current regime
Speaker 2: right now? It seems like they're in survival mode.
Speaker 4: Exactly. I do believe they're in survival mode because you know,
Speaker 4: you can only get so much killing and so much
Speaker 4: disorganization with folders in the streets just killing people point blink.
Speaker 4: If the Hummingians didn't feel as if he was cornered,
Speaker 4: I do think he feels cornered. At this point, So
Speaker 4: he is pulling out all of his contingencies and just
Speaker 4: kind of I feel like he's saying, you know, if
Speaker 4: I go down, you're all going down with me.
Speaker 6: Unfortunately.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, to share the desperation here, they
Speaker 2: proposed dealing you know, nuclear deal negotiations. We've heard that
Speaker 2: one a million times before. Well at the same time
Speaker 2: threatening nuclear retaliation. I'm not quite sure how that makes sense.
Speaker 4: Yes, inside the mind of KOMENI.
Speaker 2: To show you the Yeah, how the news is tightening
Speaker 2: around there. It's a really tough needle for Trump and
Speaker 2: this administration to thread the lord because you know, as
Speaker 2: we mentioned, it's a hands off policy.
Speaker 3: We don't want to get involved in foreign wars.
Speaker 2: But is this our best opportunity to establish democracy something
Speaker 2: we could do and we couldn't do in Iraq and Afghanistan,
Speaker 2: to establish democracy organically in Iran right now?
Speaker 4: So I think there is a chance, of course, but
Speaker 4: I think Trump needs to tread a little bit lightly
Speaker 4: with the d word democracy given what we've seen, you know,
Speaker 4: any racketyory and things like that. But I do believe
Speaker 4: that he might be able to make some change on
Speaker 4: you know, his promises to be running people saying keep going,
Speaker 4: take over your institutions, take down the names of the killers.
Speaker 4: You know, he's really trying to refuel the movement, keep
Speaker 4: it going and you know, again looking like stricter imminence
Speaker 4: and hopefully we're not going to see more deaths. But Trump,
Speaker 4: Trump is going to get negative reviews whether or not
Speaker 4: he acts on this, you know, so I think, yeah, well.
Speaker 2: When the when the valve of your currency drops what
Speaker 2: forty percent, that's going to get people's attention.
Speaker 3: And of course, you know, change is imminent at this point.
Speaker 4: Exactly something negative. This is the boiling point and it's
Speaker 4: either going to go really really bad or finally, you know,
Speaker 4: really really good.
Speaker 2: Trump also said he's going to hit any country doing
Speaker 2: business with a round of of twenty five percent tariff
Speaker 2: right now. I thought, it's kind of maxed out the tariffs,
Speaker 2: so can we teariff him anymore?
Speaker 3: At this point?
Speaker 2: I h that's the essential where their economy is in
Speaker 2: the state it is right now because the actions of
Speaker 2: the regime, and this is what is driving people. As
Speaker 2: I said, it's definitely organic. But you know, when you
Speaker 2: get the business commedian, I don't care if it's a Cincinnati, Washington,
Speaker 2: or Tehran. Business committee starts losing money.
Speaker 7: You got problems exactly.
Speaker 4: And some people in the East, we need to remember
Speaker 4: that they don't have a choice on you know, where
Speaker 4: to buy oil. Some people need you run for that.
Speaker 4: Some people need you run for the gases that you know,
Speaker 4: so we he I don't think the tariffs are conducive
Speaker 4: to a diplomatic environment, and I do think Trump needs
Speaker 4: to go back to the class of diplomacy, you know.
Speaker 6: Go make the deals.
Speaker 4: Bomb people a little bit less, because I think in
Speaker 4: the long run America will pay the price for that.
Speaker 4: And I just really hope that the global order doesn't retaliate.
Speaker 2: Against well, yeah, I just let let this thing happen
Speaker 2: organically and support them kind of backdoor like we used
Speaker 2: to a CIA and everything else. And I don't know
Speaker 2: if we'll have another hostage crisis because there aren't many
Speaker 2: Americans left in there. But we'll see how this shakes
Speaker 2: out over what period of time?
Speaker 1: Though?
Speaker 3: How long is it saying? How much longer can they.
Speaker 1: Do this on it?
Speaker 4: Personally, I would give it another week maximum, because there
Speaker 4: have been embassy documents leaks of Trump sending the letter
Speaker 4: saying hey, you all need to get out, but just
Speaker 4: know that it's at your own risk and you can't
Speaker 4: do it with us help.
Speaker 6: So the situation is.
Speaker 4: More grave than he's letting on. But hopefully he has
Speaker 4: a backup plan. And I think we're all just waiting
Speaker 4: to see what happens.
Speaker 6: Honestly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean if we if we announced her, I
Speaker 2: know we haven't having a strike for example, as we've
Speaker 2: seen Trump do this well this past summer in Iraq.
Speaker 2: I wonder what Iran does at that point? Do they blink?
Speaker 4: We will see I I again, I would keep an
Speaker 4: eye on our Middle East faces or American based because
Speaker 4: they are the main targets if that happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder how that that plays Are you just
Speaker 2: let them simply the people support them and let them
Speaker 2: choke out this regime.
Speaker 3: We'll see how it plays out.
Speaker 2: She is Laura carch Young voices Senior can be able
Speaker 2: to following this boots on the ground in Iran.
Speaker 3: Thanks again for the time, appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 3: All right, all the best.
Speaker 2: I got to get a news update in so that's
Speaker 2: kind of good news there, I guess, because you know,
Speaker 2: you remember revolution seventy nine we had Cincinnati has taken
Speaker 2: hostage by the regime. They're the new regime that's been
Speaker 2: in power since then. And now people who have a
Speaker 2: fond recollection, probably from older folks in Iran in their country,
Speaker 2: about the good old days when you did have democracy,
Speaker 2: when it was secular, are tired of the totalitarian regime
Speaker 2: that they have led by radical Islam. And when the
Speaker 2: economy starts collapsing because those sanctions. I mean, it took
Speaker 2: Sin seventy nine to do this, but when you feel
Speaker 2: that squeeze, that gets people's attention and now they're motivated
Speaker 2: for some sort of change here. We'll see what happens.
Speaker 2: Imagine a regime change in Iran. And if we could
Speaker 2: leave our fingerprints off this whole thing too, as much
Speaker 2: that as possible, that'd be great. I just fear, you know,
Speaker 2: getting involved in another foreign war. We're promised no more
Speaker 2: foreign wars, and well it looks like we're ramping that
Speaker 2: up again. News on the way in just minutes and
Speaker 2: when a return on seven hundred wluble to get into
Speaker 2: the happenings inside City Council, when you reach out to
Speaker 2: almost all members council and there's radio silence. It tells
Speaker 2: you something relative to settlements. We have like a eight
Speaker 2: million dollar budget in the law department in the City
Speaker 2: of Cincinnati, and every time there's a big case, it
Speaker 2: seems like they just want to write another check. Well,
Speaker 2: why do you have a law of apartment off all
Speaker 2: you do? Or settle?
Speaker 8: Kay?
Speaker 3: Hell, I could do that. We'll get into that.
Speaker 2: Just to had slooney seven hundred ww hi, Scott's loan
Speaker 2: here on seven hundred w welw oh for a few days.
Speaker 2: My wife having some knee surgery, goes with the age
Speaker 2: and we're all there.
Speaker 3: So everyone's happy. Everyone's happy. I'm not no longer. Well
Speaker 3: I'll be a nurse after twelve today. Let's put it
Speaker 3: that way, all right.
Speaker 2: What do we got going on as we speak? The
Speaker 2: City of Cincinnati is about to meet here have council
Speaker 2: meeting on this Wednesday morning, and the big headline you
Speaker 2: heard Combsy talking about was the denouncement by the Mayor
Speaker 2: and the city Council of the shooting of Renee Good
Speaker 2: in Minneapolis by Ice agents. And a resolution will be
Speaker 2: signed by I believe all members of council that is
Speaker 2: going to denounce the activity. As I just said, I
Speaker 2: think it's interesting because you know, it's a feel good
Speaker 2: piece of legislation, which governments do all the time. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, Ohio's official song is hang On Sloopy, and
Speaker 2: that's not exactly a pressing matter of state. So you know,
Speaker 2: bodies do these things all the time. But yeah, this one,
Speaker 2: to me, it's kind of you know it it's interesting
Speaker 2: because I'm reading through the resolution and it says because
Speaker 2: you're thinking, well, you know, if ice comes here, they're
Speaker 2: going to have to abide by the rules of the city,
Speaker 2: meaning you have to have a body camera, you have
Speaker 2: to identify yourself, you have to do all these things.
Speaker 2: They simply don't have the power to do that. And
Speaker 2: even in this declaration, let me just read a paragraph
Speaker 2: whereas pursued to city policy and operational requirements, so officers
Speaker 2: are prohibited from intentionally disguising or concealing their identities from
Speaker 2: the public by wearing any mask, covering, or disguise while
Speaker 2: performing their official duties. And officers may wear protective equipment
Speaker 2: such as medical mass riode helmets, respirators required for health
Speaker 2: or safety reasons, but how officer officers may not use
Speaker 2: such equipment for the purpose concealing identity. All other law
Speaker 2: enforcement office, including federal agents and member of the military
Speaker 2: operating cincinnat are urged to adhere to these requirements to
Speaker 2: protect public safety.
Speaker 3: Urged.
Speaker 2: This isn't even like a resolution has any teeth. Urge,
Speaker 2: while you're urged to do that, you're urged to abide
Speaker 2: by local law. Well, you may urge them, but they're
Speaker 2: not going down because they're federal authorities. Watching the renee
Speaker 2: Good shootings. We talked about the day after it happened.
Speaker 2: I saw that and went, okay, well, we still have
Speaker 2: a lot of unknown questions and very few answers at
Speaker 2: this point. She was perpendicular to traffic. So was she
Speaker 2: blocking traffic? We still don't know she was technically. I
Speaker 2: guess the way she was parked, and you know, why,
Speaker 2: why are you putting yourself in that situation? I guess
Speaker 2: would be the way I look at And then you know,
Speaker 2: the wheels were pointed away from the officer and it
Speaker 2: was point two nine seconds before the officer's shot. Again,
Speaker 2: you know, if you guys telling you get out of
Speaker 2: the vehicle, get out of the damn vehicle. I get
Speaker 2: that you're protesting, and we as Americans have every right
Speaker 2: to do that. But if you are impeding traffic and
Speaker 2: preventing I guess these agents from doing what they're doing.
Speaker 2: You know, it's really no different. I made it parallel
Speaker 2: between this and what happened on January sixth when a
Speaker 2: Air Force I guess a retired air she's still in
Speaker 2: the Air Force or not she was, you know, she
Speaker 2: was shot by breaking through the door to the chamber
Speaker 2: and everyone's held her up with some sort of hero
Speaker 2: It's the same thing. You know, if someone is pointing
Speaker 2: a gun at you, someone of the gun is coming
Speaker 2: towards you saying stop what you're doing, Stop what you're doing.
Speaker 2: Whether it's that, whether it's this, whether it's Ryan Hinton,
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter. You know, you could be one hundred
Speaker 2: percent right, but they have the authority in the weapon,
Speaker 2: fight them in court.
Speaker 3: Protest absolutely. I'm all for a peaceful protests. I will say.
Speaker 3: The one thing I do agree.
Speaker 2: With with this kind of silly resolution is when these
Speaker 2: guys are wearing masks and I know what the you know,
Speaker 2: my friends in lawenforce, well, you know, we got to
Speaker 2: conceal our identity because we may get docs we make.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that kind of goes with the job. No one
Speaker 3: wants to see.
Speaker 2: I certainly want to see law enforcement people threatening their
Speaker 2: home and have their families targeted and everything else. And
Speaker 2: you know, but is that any different for judges or
Speaker 2: prosecutors or police officers.
Speaker 3: Or anyone for that matter.
Speaker 2: The thing that makes us different than other countries the
Speaker 2: fact we don't have a secret police state. And you
Speaker 2: can talk a while, it's different. They're federal agents. If
Speaker 2: you're operating I guess in a foreign country. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: think of like soldiers in Iraq in Afghanistan. That might
Speaker 2: be a little bit different. Under Cover officers. You know,
Speaker 2: everyone's got a camera right now if you're wearing a uniform,
Speaker 2: though you're not under cover at that point. That's the
Speaker 2: part of the constitution. That's part of the thing that
Speaker 2: about most about all this stuff is the fact that
Speaker 2: the mask wearing continues to go on. And you could say, well,
Speaker 2: you know, it's cold out, it's different.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: That's America's always and we just we don't have secret police.
Speaker 2: And that looks like secret police to me, whereas other
Speaker 2: officers and the course of their job aren't aren't wearing masks.
Speaker 2: But again, you're passing a resolution where officers federations are
Speaker 2: urged to do something that really doesn't mean a lot.
Speaker 2: Doesn't mean a lot. Meanwhile, something you do something about.
Speaker 2: I looked this up this morning. Relative and this is
Speaker 2: relative to the settlements here that we keep pending money
Speaker 2: out hand over fist. The city Law department has like
Speaker 2: an eight points almost a nine million dollar budget as
Speaker 2: of last year. I'm sure the number's gone off this year,
Speaker 2: and that was a million more than plann from last year,
Speaker 2: by the way, And yet with every big case it
Speaker 2: seems like they settle and the idea is, well, it
Speaker 2: costs more to litigate, and this saved taxpayers money, so
Speaker 2: we just settle. Okay, but this could be true too.
Speaker 2: Then the more you settle, doesn't that just encourage anyone
Speaker 2: with beef, no matter how wrong their actions are, to
Speaker 2: go after the city and be persistent about it and
Speaker 2: eventually get paid. Because that's just people just come out
Speaker 2: of the woodwork for this. Not saying that someone would
Speaker 2: get in an altercation with police in order to get
Speaker 2: a payout ten years later, I'm not saying that, but
Speaker 2: you look at it and go, wow, everyone else is
Speaker 2: doing it, I might as well fight this as well.
Speaker 2: Mika Owens, by the way, calling for a full accounting
Speaker 2: of the five plus million dollar budgeted for cameras, and
Speaker 2: I think it fits together is like where's the money going?
Speaker 3: What do you guys?
Speaker 2: Are you guys responsible stewards of taxpayer money? I think
Speaker 2: it's a fair question. Relative to settling everything. We just
Speaker 2: did this in December with the George Floyd protests arrest
Speaker 2: or nearly five hundred people arrested in the twenty twenty protest.
Speaker 2: We settled for over eight point one million dollars and
Speaker 2: that is not even including the three hundred sixteen thousand
Speaker 2: plus for a handful I think about eight cases involving
Speaker 2: police payots as well for the entire year of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five. That's just the eight point one million that
Speaker 2: we paid the protesters. And you know, if you're out
Speaker 2: there and you're being held in the sally Port and
Speaker 2: it's hot outside, or you didn't have access to your medication,
Speaker 2: and that's why you're suing the city because you forgot
Speaker 2: to bring your meds with you and you don't have
Speaker 2: access to them. These are some half assed protests. I
Speaker 2: gotta be honest with you.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean Martin Luther King back in his day stood
Speaker 2: for something and acted and suffered, and that's why he
Speaker 2: is the icon, and that's why he's still celebrated today
Speaker 2: for the purpose that.
Speaker 9: We did it.
Speaker 2: I don't recall your stories about him then suing the
Speaker 2: police department because he wasn't afforded as medication. They just like,
Speaker 2: it's hot outside and I didn't have a water bottle
Speaker 2: with me. Well, again, you got to plan better for
Speaker 2: these things. You got to plan better. I fully support
Speaker 2: your right to protest, but turned around and suing because
Speaker 2: it's hot outside. You're the one who decided to protest
Speaker 2: or in this case, not get out of your car
Speaker 2: when you're told I just speed up. This is, you know,
Speaker 2: play stupid game wins superprizes. The other thing, too, is
Speaker 2: the Condavier Hicks case. This just happened this week. As
Speaker 2: a matter of fact, almost a million and a half
Speaker 2: dollars as a settlement there. Hicks was shot by CPD
Speaker 2: officers in the North Side apartment back in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: And so here's what happened.
Speaker 2: They got a police got a nine one call about
Speaker 2: someone possibly with a weapon, menacing some neighbors. The nine
Speaker 2: to one one caller said that mister Hicks threatened to
Speaker 2: kill neighbors, a couple who accused him of stealing, and
Speaker 2: so when you get a nine one one call, officers
Speaker 2: have a duty to respond. They also had something called
Speaker 2: probable cause knowing Hicks on his apartment and didn't want
Speaker 2: to open there and investigate, and so they entered his apartment,
Speaker 2: which is the crux of his Fourth Amendment argument that well, okay,
Speaker 2: hold on just a second here, I didn't let you come. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but you you have a complaint from two individuals who
Speaker 2: said you were threatened, possibly with a weapon, and you've
Speaker 2: got to investigate that. Can you imagine that, Well, he
Speaker 2: was not letting them say okay, and then he goes
Speaker 2: and shoots people for calling that one one. I mean,
Speaker 2: they'd be hell to pay for the police department because
Speaker 2: they didn't stop this madman from going on on a
Speaker 2: shooting rampage.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 3: You could totally see this happening.
Speaker 2: And so they entered the apartment and when they opened
Speaker 2: the door, barrel of a rifle came out. That's not
Speaker 2: disputed again, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. So they
Speaker 2: shoot him fatally in the chest and the end result
Speaker 2: is ten years later, we've got to pay the estate
Speaker 2: a million and a half dollars. What the hell is
Speaker 2: wrong with this picture? So we had the Floyd protests,
Speaker 2: we had Coin Davier Hicks, and now of course we
Speaker 2: have what's going to happen with Ryan Hitten. Now, according
Speaker 2: to our buddy Ken Cober, the FOP, this story broke
Speaker 2: late last week about him. They're negotiating as settlement and
Speaker 2: some stread backroom deal with city manager Shirrel Long. Now
Speaker 2: when you talk to from Long to the family attorney
Speaker 2: Phenon Rucker front of the show, Fanon Rucker had conversations
Speaker 2: with the city and no massive settlement was And now
Speaker 2: I think he said, that's news to me. Doesn't mean
Speaker 2: because in an attorney and it's the city, it doesn't
Speaker 2: mean it's not going on. It just means they're denying it.
Speaker 2: And there's a difference between it not happening and people
Speaker 2: denying it. And this is the most backwards thing you've
Speaker 2: ever seen. But okay, if you look at what happened
Speaker 2: just now with Kwandaverhicks, you look at what happened with
Speaker 2: the eight point one plus million dollars with the protesters
Speaker 2: from twenty twenty. If you're this family, how could you
Speaker 2: not look at it going we hang around long enough,
Speaker 2: we're gonna get paid.
Speaker 3: And this wasn't even really long enough. They're just paying
Speaker 3: it to go.
Speaker 1: Wait.
Speaker 2: If indeed this is the case, a family doesn't believe
Speaker 2: the shooting was justified, I don't understand what's wrong with
Speaker 2: this picture. If you have an individual who's eighteen, who's
Speaker 2: under disability, not allowed to have a firearm, he's in
Speaker 2: a stolen vehicle and gets out out of the car
Speaker 2: after being stopped in clearly the jig is up at
Speaker 2: this point. You know you're busted by police officers, and
Speaker 2: it's shot by uniform police officers.
Speaker 3: For that matter, you know these are the police.
Speaker 2: It's not another gang, it's police, it's law enforcement. We
Speaker 2: caught you in a stolen car. You decide to take
Speaker 2: the handgun with you, not to leave it like the
Speaker 2: other guy did. The guy who ran away didn't get shot,
Speaker 2: had a gun, and he thought, I probably shouldn't grab
Speaker 2: that gun and run with it. I might get shot
Speaker 2: to death. Criminals aternally stupid. He was a smurder version
Speaker 2: of stupid if you will, dah, I'm like, I'm done,
Speaker 2: but I'm not taking a gun with me. That's not
Speaker 2: gonna They left that gun in the car. In this case,
Speaker 2: hen decides I'm gonna take the gun with me, falls down,
Speaker 2: gun slides out of his hands, picks the gun back up,
Speaker 2: and runs and as an officer was behind the dumpster,
Speaker 2: turns towards and looks at the officer. I don't know
Speaker 2: if he's pointing it, brandishing it kind of look but
Speaker 2: split us and see you got a guy with a
Speaker 2: gun who's running and running in your proximity towards you,
Speaker 2: and look you that's a justified shooting. In what world
Speaker 2: does someone like that deserve money? No world? Maybe I
Speaker 2: don't know, the second ring of Jupiter. Possibly, I'm not
Speaker 2: quite sure, but definitely not there. Definitely not in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Speaker 2: But yeah, we're gonna save some money and just settle
Speaker 2: with the family and pay them off.
Speaker 3: Because if that's the case, then could you make a.
Speaker 2: Case this hinting and saying, look at looking at what
Speaker 2: just happened with Condavior Hicks and what happened with the
Speaker 2: George Floyd puts it is like you're damn straight, we're
Speaker 2: going to pursue a lawsuit. We're definitely gonna come over
Speaker 2: with a civil lawsuit and try to get some money
Speaker 2: out of the city. And we know we'll probably lose,
Speaker 2: but we think the city's going to settle with us.
Speaker 2: I mean, at what point, and I get settling some
Speaker 2: of these cases, but what point do people just stand up?
Speaker 2: I mean, we're paying lawyers, the law department. The budget
Speaker 2: is almost nine million dollars and now it's costing us
Speaker 2: millions and millions more, hell more than the annual budget
Speaker 2: to the city to settle these cases. At what point
Speaker 2: do you just simply go, we've got to make we
Speaker 2: got it. We get here's a hell We're gonna die
Speaker 2: on no pun intended. We're going to stand up for
Speaker 2: what's right it and maybe let we'll dissuade future criminals
Speaker 2: and their families, the surviving family members, from trying to
Speaker 2: folice the city out of more money. Look at look
Speaker 2: at the hintons. I mean not certainly not the first time.
Speaker 2: Is you know the dad who's in jail right now
Speaker 2: for shooting Deputy Layer Henderson in prison? How much money
Speaker 2: is not going to cost us? How much money has
Speaker 2: the street crime just by the hitting family cost us
Speaker 2: and investigations and police overtime and just maybe maybe turn
Speaker 2: around and trying to get some of that money. Here's
Speaker 2: your money, but we're going to sue you to try
Speaker 2: and get the money back that we just gave you.
Speaker 2: It costs us in addition to the settlement and paying
Speaker 2: these attorneys that just want to settle from the city.
Speaker 2: On top of that, all of the man hours and
Speaker 2: everything that goes into investigating these crimes committed by a
Speaker 2: small percentage of people in Cincinnati makes a rest of
Speaker 2: life's hell.
Speaker 3: What is the added call?
Speaker 2: I'd love to see one of those studies that they do,
Speaker 2: you know, like the impact that the brin Spence Bridge has,
Speaker 2: for example, on commerce. Te can calculate how much that
Speaker 2: costs us, between the settlements and the payouts and the
Speaker 2: police work and all the crime and all all that together,
Speaker 2: it's got to be in the tens of millions of dollars.
Speaker 2: I would think it's unfortunate. But okay, so we're going
Speaker 2: to vote today on this resolution that doesn't have any teeth.
Speaker 3: Gotcha?
Speaker 2: I got you coming up at ten o six on
Speaker 2: the show on seven hundred WW a little more pocketbook
Speaker 2: issue for you getting to pay more for utilities and
Speaker 2: why we'll all keeping more coal plants online? Why we
Speaker 2: keeping more call because we have we are addicted to
Speaker 2: the fossil fields. No, dummy, it's because of well, our
Speaker 2: demand is consumers, is business people. But also now you
Speaker 2: you add in all these AI farms that are going
Speaker 2: up all over the place, which we need, which because
Speaker 2: we demanded they got to meet the expectations of the consumer,
Speaker 2: and AI is where it's at.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 2: They use a lot of water, these a hell of
Speaker 2: a lot of electricity, and so the crunches to getting
Speaker 2: in worse and as a result of this, we're gonna
Speaker 2: pay more. I think it's telling that Duke Energy sent
Speaker 2: letters out to individuals. You know how we don't understand
Speaker 2: stuff explaining why energy bill, the energy bill you got
Speaker 2: claw was a lot more. What's happening, Well, energy costs more,
Speaker 2: but we're using a lot more. But when we had
Speaker 2: that cold snap on unseasonably cold weather we had just
Speaker 2: a few weeks ago in which we're about to have
Speaker 2: coming up starting tomorrow. Uh, it's gonna cost you more
Speaker 2: to heat and in the in the summer when it's
Speaker 2: extremely hot, and we have a long stretch.
Speaker 3: It's gonna cost you more. But now we have us letters.
Speaker 3: I'm explaining why claw, here's the cost is because you're
Speaker 3: using more of it. That's exactly why it is. That's
Speaker 3: exactly why it is.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, so we got we got that coming up at five, one, three, seven,
Speaker 2: four nine the Big One talk Back iHeartRadio app Rob.
Speaker 3: Linniman is on the show, and Rob, you're an attorney.
Speaker 10: I'm an attorney. I'm the attorney for the family of
Speaker 10: kwandavi X.
Speaker 3: All Right, thanks for leting.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you calling in this morning, So give me
Speaker 2: your I have a problem with this simply because of
Speaker 2: the police and the narrative that as I understand it
Speaker 2: from ten years ago that this individual, the police officer
Speaker 2: in this case, were acting on a nine to one
Speaker 2: one call. They have a duty to act if you
Speaker 2: point a gun on officers, regardless of the situation, if
Speaker 2: it's in your house or not, and you get shot.
Speaker 2: Courts have often stood with in this case the law
Speaker 2: enforcement officers. Why is this different in this case?
Speaker 5: Sure?
Speaker 10: Well, let's I want to start with a couple of
Speaker 10: things you said earlier, just to correct the record, Yeah please,
Speaker 10: you said, well, first you said once, if a police
Speaker 10: officer has probable cause, then they can enter your home.
Speaker 10: And you said if somebody doesn't doesn't answer the door,
Speaker 10: then the police just entered the home as long as
Speaker 10: they're probable cause. That's incorrect. As a matter of law,
Speaker 10: what a police officer needs to enter your home is
Speaker 10: a warrant. A warrant is time by a judge. So
Speaker 10: they didn't get that in this case. And Scott I
Speaker 10: would have assumed that this this is a pretty common
Speaker 10: principle of law.
Speaker 2: So well, well that's all the manage fact though. But
Speaker 2: we've seen plenty of police videos before in the past
Speaker 2: and where there's a there's a suspect inside and police
Speaker 2: can enter without a search warrant and have entered because
Speaker 2: they're they're in the process of stopping a felony.
Speaker 10: If if you were in the process of stopping a felony,
Speaker 10: if there were eggage and circumstances, that would be an
Speaker 10: exception to the warrant requirement. There is no such circumstance here.
Speaker 10: A police officer can't just I mean understand the position
Speaker 10: you're taking's got and I understand normally I understand your
Speaker 10: station to support the right to the Second Amendment rights
Speaker 10: of Americans. But you seem to be taking the position
Speaker 10: that if a police officer has some suspicion that there's
Speaker 10: a criminal in the house, they can walk in the house,
Speaker 10: and then if you are, if you are armed, they
Speaker 10: can shoot you. Is that your position really.
Speaker 2: The if they're brandishing a weapon at police officers and
Speaker 2: you identify yourself as a police officer, if it were
Speaker 2: an individual you mentioned second Amendment, I mean it applies,
Speaker 2: but does because these are uniformed officers who identified Did
Speaker 2: they identify themselves?
Speaker 10: That's a disputed issue. The officer who could who That's
Speaker 10: the point of the she she never reported that that
Speaker 10: they identified themselves. They were they were knocking at an
Speaker 10: interior door inside inside the home. The bedroom in this case,
Speaker 10: mister Hicks's bedroom was on the third floor. The bathroom
Speaker 10: in the kitchen are on the second floor. They're on
Speaker 10: the they're on the second floor inside his apartment. And
Speaker 10: again and again they answered without a warrant, and they
Speaker 10: the so and it's and by the way, it was eleven.
Speaker 10: It's eleven thirty at night, dark out, and and they
Speaker 10: have not are according to the police. According to the
Speaker 10: statement provided by the police officer, she never she never
Speaker 10: announced that they were police officers.
Speaker 3: Okay, and that's and that's what and that's what.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's that's.
Speaker 3: What's in contention is whether or not they idd themselves.
Speaker 3: And that is a point.
Speaker 2: It's a the officers of they did the in this
Speaker 2: case of the other individual.
Speaker 10: Was this not No, it's not incontention. She didn't say
Speaker 10: they did. She said it's her policy not to identify
Speaker 10: herself unless some one asks. So this is not in contention, gotcha.
Speaker 10: It is what it is that she she never claimed
Speaker 10: that they identified.
Speaker 3: Was it a female officers?
Speaker 5: Ever say yes.
Speaker 3: Okay, gotcha?
Speaker 2: Because this story is right, I apologize because the story
Speaker 2: is reft their old and trying to find the details
Speaker 2: of a ten year old story is rather difficult. So
Speaker 2: if they didn't then said hey I didn't I d myself. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a different matter entirely. But if someone is if
Speaker 2: someone is subject to a threat with a weapon, though,
Speaker 2: doesn't that escalate the response of the police officers, Because
Speaker 2: as I said, if they if they simply walked away
Speaker 2: and said, well, we can't get in, this person goes
Speaker 2: on a shooting spree, we'd probably be having a different conversation.
Speaker 10: Well so, and that's the that's the precise issue of
Speaker 10: this right. So when a police officer, I think the
Speaker 10: law is clear that a police officer has the right
Speaker 10: to use deadly force if there if they reasonably feel
Speaker 10: that their life is in danger or the life of
Speaker 10: others is in danger. But in this case, you put
Speaker 10: yourself in the position where so police officers inside the
Speaker 10: house has not identified themselves as a police officer. They're
Speaker 10: knocking at the door. A homeowner, a citizen in their home,
Speaker 10: comes to the door, not knowing who they're going to
Speaker 10: find in their house at eleven thirty at night in
Speaker 10: the dark, pounding on the door, and reasonably arms themselves.
Speaker 10: Right right, you got a gun in the house, you
Speaker 10: come out, there's an intruder in your house. You're carrying
Speaker 10: a gun. The gun was unloaded, by the way the
Speaker 10: gun Kwandavir Hicks could not have shot those police officers
Speaker 10: if it had been his intention. The gun was not loaded.
Speaker 2: Well, but again, we've had justified shootings where someone has
Speaker 2: pointed a screwdriver an officer and the officers shot them,
Speaker 2: and it's been justified because it was same with BB guns.
Speaker 2: I mean, using your logic here, someone pointed a BB
Speaker 2: gun at a police officer and it turned out later
Speaker 2: you realized there was a pellet gun or a airsoft
Speaker 2: gun and shot them.
Speaker 3: Anyway, their officer'd be in the right, wouldn't they.
Speaker 10: Well, the question is was the officers I was speaking
Speaker 10: to a different aspect there.
Speaker 2: But hey, Rob, hold on a second, and I hate
Speaker 2: to do this because I'm up against news.
Speaker 3: Here can I have?
Speaker 2: I'd love to continue the conversation though, because I want to,
Speaker 2: you know, certainly get the facts that I love to.
Speaker 2: Let me put you on hold and we'll get your number,
Speaker 2: maybe reschedule for another time. Rob Lenniman is the attorney
Speaker 2: for the Hicks family in this particular case. But we'll
Speaker 2: pick it back up again. I'm a little bit late
Speaker 2: for news. I got to switch it up anyway. I
Speaker 2: got a guest standing by at ten oh six on
Speaker 2: your wallet, the Citizens Utility Board of Ohio, the president,
Speaker 2: that's Tom Bullocks, and utility prices going up and a
Speaker 2: lot of this is driven of course by AI farms
Speaker 2: as opposed to and I wonder why we're keeping coal
Speaker 2: plants on anyway, I get to that right after news up.
Speaker 2: They hear up against it on seven hundred w W Cincinnati.
Speaker 2: More bad news for your pocketbook here, if you're in Ohio,
Speaker 2: you and your family could be paying more for electricity.
Speaker 2: Why well, the federal government is trying to extend the
Speaker 2: life of aging coal plants that were once slated for
Speaker 2: coal closure. And those things are notoriously expensive to keep going.
Speaker 2: And we're seeing this trend across the country as well.
Speaker 2: And those expenses too would then be passed on consumer,
Speaker 2: So says the Citizen's Utility Board of Ohio. Tom Bullock
Speaker 2: is here is our executive director, Tom.
Speaker 3: Welcome, How are you good morning? I'm good, good good.
Speaker 2: Why would keeping a coal plant open cost us more money?
Speaker 2: Does it cost more money to open new plants?
Speaker 1: Most of these plants in question are very old, seventy
Speaker 1: years old, sixty years old. They were designed for a
Speaker 1: different era. The parts don't exist, the facilities aren't designed
Speaker 1: to power up or power down swiftly or respond to
Speaker 1: economic conditions. So it's a little bit like if your
Speaker 1: uncle gave you a nineteen seventy two Chevy and it
Speaker 1: still runs and leted gasoline and you're supposed to drive
Speaker 1: that around. Yeah, in theory it's cheaper, but really to
Speaker 1: operate it, how do you get the parts to repair
Speaker 1: it when nobody makes them. It's difficult.
Speaker 3: Okay, So the question be why why are we forcing
Speaker 3: to keep these plants open?
Speaker 1: Then, well, you'd have to ask the White House. The
Speaker 1: White House believes that it wants to support one fuel source. Now,
Speaker 1: power is generated by a mix of sources. Coal, nuclear,
Speaker 1: natural gas is a big, big player, and increasingly wind
Speaker 1: and solar. Those are low costs, and then battery storage
Speaker 1: plays a role as well. Those are essentially large versions
Speaker 1: of the lithium ion batteries you carry around in your
Speaker 1: smartphone in your pocket all day long. Those play a
Speaker 1: role because it evens out the grid and you can
Speaker 1: use cheap solar or wind when there's extra power and
Speaker 1: you don't need it, stor it in the battery, and
Speaker 1: then release it when you do need it.
Speaker 3: Gotcha.
Speaker 2: But what's driving this though, is demand. Right as I
Speaker 2: understand it, we're putting all these AI facilities online. Ohio,
Speaker 2: for example, Columbus Butler County is getting like a million
Speaker 2: square foot facility as well, and so they're extending the
Speaker 2: life of coal plants because we need to meet demand.
Speaker 2: The problem is the forecast, and I'm sure you know
Speaker 2: by what twenty thirty nine is allegedly going to go
Speaker 2: up some forty percent. That's just demand that we don't
Speaker 2: have the infrastructure and the transmission to be able to
Speaker 2: get that power to households and businesses and residents. Obviously,
Speaker 2: in addition to all of the technology's going online. So
Speaker 2: it feels to me like an all hands on deck approach.
Speaker 3: Is that wrong?
Speaker 6: Half right, half wrong?
Speaker 1: There for sure is data centers that are driving low growth.
Speaker 1: Part of that is artificial intelligence, part of it's not.
Speaker 1: There's also new factories coming to Ohio, like we hope
Speaker 1: the Intel plants. As people also electrify their homes with
Speaker 1: electric cars or switch their furthest to a heat pump,
Speaker 1: there's going to be more growth overall. But we do
Speaker 1: have power today. What's causing the price bike is the speculation,
Speaker 1: as you said, about the X five years or so
Speaker 1: for data center growth, and there's a bit of an
Speaker 1: arms race by those companies to build out. And if
Speaker 1: you don't have power, a data center is a warehouse
Speaker 1: full of expensive junk. So it's a real issue. But
Speaker 1: it's not coal that is needed, it's power that the
Speaker 1: market decides is the best choice. And that gets to
Speaker 1: the heart of it. Government isn't supposed to be picking
Speaker 1: winners and losers. And if the White House picks losing
Speaker 1: facilities that are closed because they're the most expensive and
Speaker 1: forces people to use those market losers to drive power,
Speaker 1: it's going to make losers out of all how consumers,
Speaker 1: because what you're doing is you're spiking the market. The
Speaker 1: market is designed to have an auction and the lowest
Speaker 1: cost supplier wins. But if somebody comes in and says, hey, market,
Speaker 1: I'm going to force you to not just take expensive power,
Speaker 1: but the most expensive power from the oldest and lease
Speaker 1: nimble and least adaptive facilities, it's keews everything. So the
Speaker 1: issue isn't the fuel source. The issue is let the
Speaker 1: market function like it's supposed to without tampering.
Speaker 3: What does the market want.
Speaker 1: When the market wants more power and affordable power, which
Speaker 1: is going to be a little bit of an up
Speaker 1: and down as you bring new resources on. But if
Speaker 1: you let the market function, a temporary high price in
Speaker 1: the short term will level out and decrease over time.
Speaker 1: The challenge, though, is that our regional grid it's called PJM.
Speaker 1: Ohio was part of thirteen states in a grid that
Speaker 1: includes the mid Atlantic Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, et cetera. It's
Speaker 1: not easy to get new power added to the grid,
Speaker 1: and that is worsening prices in the term. So PJM,
Speaker 1: not the federal government, also has work to do to
Speaker 1: make the hot prices, which are setting the signal to suppliers. Hey,
Speaker 1: power producers, come online, we need you. The market is
Speaker 1: setting that signal. But the problem is PGM has restrictions
Speaker 1: about adding power and interconnecting with the grid that are
Speaker 1: too slow and difficult. So the prices are going to
Speaker 1: be high for a while with no market solutions. So
Speaker 1: PGM has work to do to lower our prices.
Speaker 3: Is this just a case of bureaucracy and this is
Speaker 3: what is It's a choke point in that we have
Speaker 3: an increasing demand for power, and so you address that
Speaker 3: by keeping the old technology online, when of course keeping
Speaker 3: old stuff going, as you pointed out, as always more
Speaker 3: expensive the future.
Speaker 2: To me, you should be everything should be on the table.
Speaker 2: We if wind or solar, whatever works, hydrogen, nuclear, whatever
Speaker 2: it is, whatever we can get to market more quickly.
Speaker 2: That's what we should be the favoring at this point.
Speaker 2: Why isn't that happening, especially for the An administration. It
Speaker 2: seems so friendly about getting rid of all the gridlock
Speaker 2: and bureaucracy and doze and all that stuff that fits
Speaker 2: right in.
Speaker 3: Why isn't that happening?
Speaker 1: Well, because I think what's happening is a lobbyist and
Speaker 1: the political favors are getting involved instead of instead of
Speaker 1: letting the market. So capitalism as a creative destructive cycle.
Speaker 1: What happens is the least expensive old technology goes away
Speaker 1: and is replaced by a new, better mouse trapper, in
Speaker 1: this case, a new, cheaper generation facility. But if the
Speaker 1: people who are friends with the old facilities say, hey,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, we don't like the market. If you
Speaker 1: do me a political favor, well, then it makes everything
Speaker 1: more expensive for everybody else. There are more than one
Speaker 1: thousand power production generation facilities in our regional thirteen state grid.
Speaker 1: If you say the top fifty or one hundred most
Speaker 1: expensive power plants are forced to be kept open and
Speaker 1: sold even when the companies that own them want to
Speaker 1: close them, you're going to skew that market. So there's
Speaker 1: enough out Pardon me, there's enough out there that we
Speaker 1: don't need to tamper with if we need to do
Speaker 1: what the State of Ohio did earlier this year. Sit
Speaker 1: of Ohio deserves some credit. Is leaned into market competition,
Speaker 1: technology neutral. It doesn't try to pick winners and losers
Speaker 1: about which fuel source. It says, we're not going to
Speaker 1: have regulated generation. We do want to expand power production
Speaker 1: so that we have affordable The keyword is affordable energy
Speaker 1: to power our economy. And we're going to let the
Speaker 1: investors in the free market competition do its job, which
Speaker 1: means when an investor.
Speaker 11: Takes a risk on a plant, if they if they
Speaker 11: messed up, the losses on them, the loss doesn't get
Speaker 11: forced to be paid for by consumers, which is what
Speaker 11: regulated monopolies do.
Speaker 1: So basically, the federal GOVERMN is trying to turn back
Speaker 1: the clock to a regulated monopoly style of power supply
Speaker 1: decision making. We don't need that today. We've got all
Speaker 1: kinds of technology that can be a better solution. I
Speaker 1: like to say engineers are smart. People are smart if
Speaker 1: you can just get the legal and the financial out
Speaker 1: of the way of the inventors and the engineers. We
Speaker 1: could do all kinds of cool new solutions, but it's
Speaker 1: hard to get past legal.
Speaker 3: And there's a match of factors.
Speaker 2: It's Tom Bullock, Executive Director of Citizens Utility Board of Ohio.
Speaker 2: Because of the high demand that we're facing when it
Speaker 2: comes to our electrical grid and power and the choke point,
Speaker 2: which of course is demand and we don't have transmission
Speaker 2: and supply.
Speaker 3: That's going to drive closs up.
Speaker 2: And we're adding more and more infrastructure in the forums
Speaker 2: while you know people buying electric cars plugging this in.
Speaker 2: But the big one is data centers in AI and
Speaker 2: we're putting plants all over, including Butler County, that just
Speaker 2: need a tremendous amount of energy and resources for that.
Speaker 2: Water is another great example of that thing too, and
Speaker 2: now maybe not in our scope here, but some data
Speaker 2: centers consume up to five million gallons of water a day.
Speaker 2: That's about enough for a town of about fifty thousand people,
Speaker 2: which is an incredible amount of resources dedicated to keeping
Speaker 2: power that little thing in our hands. Right with AI
Speaker 2: and infrastrate and information the data center right, a tremendous
Speaker 2: amount of power is also.
Speaker 1: Be We should also be careful some of This is
Speaker 1: data center speculation. It's a bubble that converse. And some
Speaker 1: of these data center companies are planning to build one
Speaker 1: or two data centers, but they're filing redundant applications in
Speaker 1: the Great Plain States, in our region, in the Northeast,
Speaker 1: in the Southeast, and they're racing to figure out who
Speaker 1: gets gives them their permit first. So they're not building ten,
Speaker 1: they're only building two. And all of us are scrambling
Speaker 1: and saying, oh my gosh, we have to add all
Speaker 1: this power. So there's an important double checking process that
Speaker 1: we need to do to make sure we're not overbuilding.
Speaker 1: But one consumer who is in Ohio talk to the
Speaker 1: Cleveland plant dealers. Let me get this straight. Data centers
Speaker 1: are increasing my bill today and I didn't do anything
Speaker 1: to invite them here, and yet their costs are already
Speaker 1: affecting me. This is one more example of where business
Speaker 1: costs get dumped onto Bob and Betty Buckeye and they
Speaker 1: privatize the games.
Speaker 2: Well, real quick, Tom, what's happening with for example, you
Speaker 2: mentioned you know they're getting pulling permits and getting ready
Speaker 2: to bid. What's going on the Columbus Intel plant, Because
Speaker 2: that's still not where they promised to be. This part
Speaker 2: we're pushing operations back another five or six years, are I.
Speaker 1: I think that's right. I know that the governor and
Speaker 1: even the White House has been working to continue getting
Speaker 1: INTEL to move forward on the project. There's such enormous
Speaker 1: amounts of money involved that you're going to have to
Speaker 1: have some federal supports for what called the Chips Act.
Speaker 1: But that was a change between the previous administration the
Speaker 1: current one. So I tend to think that it's important
Speaker 1: for Ohio to pursue and implement these kinds of facilities.
Speaker 1: But you also for you know, we speak for small
Speaker 1: residential consumers. So the points you've been making in this
Speaker 1: conversational longer than good ones, which is, as you build
Speaker 1: these very large factories for very large ener consumers, kind
Speaker 1: of make sure the way that the grid infrastructure is
Speaker 1: paid for doesn't get dumped onto the neighbors. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, dump your leaves over your back fence into
Speaker 1: your neighbor's yard. But that financially happens all the time
Speaker 1: in the world of utilities, and it shouldn't happen. So
Speaker 1: that's why groups like ours try to speak up for
Speaker 1: the little little guy.
Speaker 2: How hard is it too, Tom? Because it's always there
Speaker 2: is the effort to get cleaner power, and we need
Speaker 2: more and more of it. Is it odds with infrastructure
Speaker 2: holding infrastructure because there's right of ways? I mean, look
Speaker 2: what happened with the Keystone XL pipeline getting shut down.
Speaker 2: It's a lot more efficient, easier and safer than taking
Speaker 2: all of that fuel that we need and putting out
Speaker 2: on railcars or they can. You know, look what happened
Speaker 2: in Ohio, not just a few handful of years ago,
Speaker 2: and that's transporting stuff over rail, which is a lot
Speaker 2: more dangerous and efficient in the system. What about the
Speaker 2: environmental pushback from all this? Is that slowing things up
Speaker 2: at that that's costs money?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think there are land used
Speaker 1: questions anytime you do power infrastructure, and that's also true
Speaker 1: if you build a subdivision or a shopping wall. Government
Speaker 1: has to be thoughtful about how it balances those competing
Speaker 1: interest between the new development and the neighbors. Clean energy
Speaker 1: like wind and solar is increasingly the cheapest on the market.
Speaker 1: If you marry it up with battery storage, then it
Speaker 1: can provide you more of around the clock twenty four
Speaker 1: cent solution, especially if you think of it not at
Speaker 1: one store or one house, but on an average across
Speaker 1: a statewide region. So if you think of Ohio, Illinois,
Speaker 1: Indiana together, the wind is always blowing somewhere and the
Speaker 1: sun is always shining somewhere. So at the aggregate, you
Speaker 1: could add a lot of inexpensive power to add to
Speaker 1: the mix of more expensive power sources than are traditional
Speaker 1: baseload like nuclear or natural gas. But what you have
Speaker 1: to do is let one hundred companies or a thousand
Speaker 1: companies make their everyday economic decisions and investment decisions, and
Speaker 1: collectively that market will be more intelligent and less expensive
Speaker 1: than a governor or a president try to put his
Speaker 1: or her thumb on the scale, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's amazing to me that we have to even explain
Speaker 1: this in a country that's supposed to be a free
Speaker 1: market capitalist, but.
Speaker 2: Depend complain about socialism practice socialism themselves. The people who
Speaker 2: like socialism want more socialism.
Speaker 1: Well, there's some truth to what you just said, and
Speaker 1: there's a hypocrisy in all directions. And all of us
Speaker 1: live in glass houses, so I should be careful about
Speaker 1: the stones I throw but I guess because the prices
Speaker 1: are going up. There's a survey that said so from
Speaker 1: last week national survey, thirty four percent of Americans take
Speaker 1: electricity prices are a major concern. That's high. Think it's
Speaker 1: a minor concern. This is on our radar and it's
Speaker 1: not going to go away. And yes, data centers are
Speaker 1: kind of the first stage of forcing prices up, but
Speaker 1: there's all these other pressures. For the next twenty years,
Speaker 1: I think it's going to be increasingly concerned, So we're
Speaker 1: going to be spending more time thinking about it. You
Speaker 1: do have solutions on your end. You can insulate your
Speaker 1: home air seal with a cacking gun. That's nineteen forties.
Speaker 1: Technology that's not new, are expensive. You just got to
Speaker 1: do it. But none of us do that perfectly, but
Speaker 1: we can help results. And then new technology is not
Speaker 1: everything has to be a giant megaplant. You could do
Speaker 1: something on your home or business. There's medium tier facilities
Speaker 1: we're working on. So let's say it's on twenty acres
Speaker 1: forty acres or an industrial roof. You could put solar,
Speaker 1: or you could do part solar, part battery, part natural gas,
Speaker 1: like a microgrid hybrid system. And then it can be
Speaker 1: back up emergency power for a facility or a factory
Speaker 1: that has to run it all.
Speaker 2: But Tom a little bit about that business. That's an
Speaker 2: expensive outlay, and sometimes you know, you get an agreement
Speaker 2: where they put it on quote unquote for free. But
Speaker 2: the big on that what you're paying an interest base
Speaker 2: of the payback is pretty extreme. That might be good
Speaker 2: if you have that upfront cash or the math works
Speaker 2: for you, but right now, for most people that doesn't.
Speaker 1: Well, if you're talking about a business, it's probably easier
Speaker 1: to get there, true, and it depends if your business
Speaker 1: is energy intents of like many family owned businesses in
Speaker 1: Ohio or manufacturing businesses where energy is their second most
Speaker 1: expensive category after labor, so they pay very careful attention
Speaker 1: already to that. So you're right, some businesses it'll be
Speaker 1: easier to get there than others. Hospitals are a good use.
Speaker 1: Even school systems that have let's say five elementary schools,
Speaker 1: two middle schools in a high school, you can aggregate
Speaker 1: all that power draw and then feed it with a
Speaker 1: virtual net metering system that might be in the next
Speaker 1: county over. So I think what you'll find is even
Speaker 1: if you don't power all of the needs. You could
Speaker 1: do a portion of it, and then that gives you
Speaker 1: a long term, low price, stable contract, and so your
Speaker 1: financial people can say, we're in a better position to
Speaker 1: have control over our bills and our risk and we
Speaker 1: can plan for the future better. Some of the power
Speaker 1: will buy from the traditional grid, but some will get
Speaker 1: from these other systems, so you have options and nobody
Speaker 1: should be forced to do this. But I kind of
Speaker 1: do think we're going to enter a new era where
Speaker 1: we're thinking more about electricity that we try.
Speaker 2: My fear is tom My favor I amount of time.
Speaker 2: But my fear is there's going to be, like anything
Speaker 2: we don't do anything.
Speaker 3: Proactive, we do it reactively.
Speaker 2: There's going to be some sort of energy nine to
Speaker 2: eleven where our grid shutdown, will be in a crisis
Speaker 2: before anyone goes man, we got to do something about this.
Speaker 2: That's just what we do in America.
Speaker 3: I think we bridge until Yeah, exactly, we.
Speaker 2: Need a light at this intersection because some kids are
Speaker 2: going to get hit on their bike. Don't worry about
Speaker 2: a kid gets on the bike. Politicians out there, why
Speaker 2: don't we have a stoplight? I think I'm a big
Speaker 2: proponent and fascinated by many nuclear reactors, small nuclear reactors
Speaker 2: to power those AI facilities just have it on board.
Speaker 2: And the problem, of course, I think House Bill six
Speaker 2: and the first energy scandal ruined nuclear in the state
Speaker 2: of Ohio.
Speaker 1: I would I would say there's still possibilities there. It's
Speaker 1: very expensive, but there could be some business use cases
Speaker 1: for it, including the data centers. Yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 1: always like, well, twenty years in the future it'll be
Speaker 1: it'll be ready. Maybe it's ten years in the future,
Speaker 1: we'll see, I mean, all options on the table. But
Speaker 1: some of these data centers may indeed be a good
Speaker 1: category for using that. I'm hearing three Mile Island in
Speaker 1: New York is going to be reopened by the end
Speaker 1: of the data center something like that. So so some
Speaker 1: of those super intensive, high price, and they've got to
Speaker 1: have the power and they can't risk their grid cutting
Speaker 1: out of them, they may do things like that.
Speaker 7: That's fascinating.
Speaker 2: I mean to send it in that direction that you
Speaker 2: could have a reactor the size of I don't know,
Speaker 2: a filing cabinet or a toaster, and that would power
Speaker 2: a subdivision or a fact or something along those lines,
Speaker 2: and that's essentially send it back into the company that
Speaker 2: makes and get a new one, kind of like a
Speaker 2: battery pack. But Tom Bullock exactly Director of Citizens, You
Speaker 2: Telly Bordabill have the and keep the coal plants open
Speaker 2: because of the demand, and we don't have altered solutions. We
Speaker 2: got to wait for the sky to fall before we
Speaker 2: do anything. I think that is the too long. Didn't
Speaker 2: read versions of this conversation, but I appreciate your time
Speaker 2: again this morning.
Speaker 3: Time. Thanks again.
Speaker 1: Let's talk some more. Thank you.
Speaker 2: As we speak, we've got another cold snap about to begin,
Speaker 2: which means even more energy costs for me and you.
Speaker 3: Scott's Loan Show seven hundred WLW.
Speaker 12: Helping you navigate the rocky path the fulfilling employment.
Speaker 7: Here's our career, Julie Bouki.
Speaker 2: Girl is here from god knows where she scented her
Speaker 2: cheeks today, but she's somewhere fun, that's for sure. Our
Speaker 2: career Shirpa who works hard and plays hard Julie Bouki
Speaker 2: on the show. Welcome Jules, how are you?
Speaker 6: Good morning?
Speaker 3: Great, good morning. It's that kind of reluctantly. We've talked about.
Speaker 2: This in the past. We'll start with something local here.
Speaker 2: We've talked about this in the past, and when an
Speaker 2: employer tells you we're family, we're but we're family, you
Speaker 2: should probably well, I don't know, run, but go No,
Speaker 2: this is business. I already have a family.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I go to bring this up because that was brought
Speaker 2: up in this case recently settled for over one and
Speaker 2: a half million dollars for some seven hundred plus employees
Speaker 2: in Jeff Ruby Culinary Entertainment class action suit. And that's
Speaker 2: not uncommon in the cutthroat world of food and beverage.
Speaker 3: Let's just say what it is.
Speaker 2: It's a whole different that's a whole different job model
Speaker 2: there than what we usually talk about. But the impetus
Speaker 2: for the class action suit for some seven hundred employees
Speaker 2: was that they weren't paid tips they earned one owed
Speaker 2: as much as nineteen thousand dollars. In addition to that,
Speaker 2: by paying out some of the tips to back house
Speaker 2: employees who aren't eligible, they also were claimed they were
Speaker 2: they failed to pay the minimum wage for time spent
Speaker 2: doing prep work meaning before you open your role in
Speaker 2: silverware and napkins, you know, clean and boosts, slight and bread,
Speaker 2: getting ready for service and they claimed they were paid
Speaker 2: the rate of a tipped employee, when in fact it
Speaker 2: should have been out and they wound up settling for
Speaker 2: over a million and a half dollars. It's in the
Speaker 2: foot and beverage is kind of an outlier basically because
Speaker 2: it is a tipped environment. It seems like things that
Speaker 2: happen in food and restaurant legally or otherwise. It's just
Speaker 2: different than the rest of the working world.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it is because and we can argue all day
Speaker 6: about whether tippings should be a thing or not, or
Speaker 6: whether emplawyers should pay more. But the fact of the
Speaker 6: matter is when you've got a restaurant that you've got
Speaker 6: people in the back, maybe and there is a way
Speaker 6: to split tips with people in the back, but there
Speaker 6: have to be certain standards met before that goes into action. Right,
Speaker 6: And so this loss said, just like you said, you
Speaker 6: were splitting her tips illegally with the people in the
Speaker 6: back in the back, and then you also were not
Speaker 6: paying us what we should have been paid more like,
Speaker 6: in other words, we're rolling napkins for two dollars now
Speaker 6: or whatever. And it's yes, I mean, it is certainly
Speaker 6: the administration in the back room, the operations of a restaurant.
Speaker 6: It is probably just so difficult to keep up with
Speaker 6: in terms of making sure you're doing everything right because
Speaker 6: the law has changed constantly. People are coming and go on.
Speaker 6: They might be coming in an hour early. How do
Speaker 6: we pay them for that? But this lawsuit shows that
Speaker 6: you have to stay on top of the stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and granted, let me interject to granted, I think it.
Speaker 2: You know, this isn't the you know, the Chinese buffet.
Speaker 2: You're not working line somewhere and you know, okay, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to get you know, you're getting pretty good
Speaker 2: tips at Ruby's, and so you're making extremely good money
Speaker 2: for server. That said, there's the law and that's what
Speaker 2: you're talking about.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, and so I think in these cases, in
Speaker 6: these types of industries, you have to have a special
Speaker 6: diligence and really really pay attention in the first time
Speaker 6: somebody complains and says, well, wait a minute, you had
Speaker 6: me come in three hours early to do this, and
Speaker 6: you paid me a tipped person's hourly wage, which might
Speaker 6: be just a few bucks. We need to correct that
Speaker 6: the minute somebody brings that to you. As an owner
Speaker 6: or a leader of an organization, you absolutely have to
Speaker 6: get someone involved and look into it. Are they correct,
Speaker 6: and if they are, you have to correct that. It's
Speaker 6: just I don't care if you feel like your people
Speaker 6: make enough in tips that they shouldn't complain about this,
Speaker 6: or you feel like we're a family, or we give
Speaker 6: you extra food to take home, or so you shouldn't
Speaker 6: complain about this entirely separate issue. You're mixing apples and
Speaker 6: oranges here. And if you've got somebody who feels like
Speaker 6: and it looks like it was found that this person
Speaker 6: missed out on up to nineteen thousand dollars in tips,
Speaker 6: that's significance. That's you can't We talk about engaged workers,
Speaker 6: how they will often go above and beyond help out
Speaker 6: when they really don't have to, and that's all well
Speaker 6: and good, but it goes to a point. And if
Speaker 6: it's to the point that people are coming in and
Speaker 6: they're doing work for you and they are not getting
Speaker 6: paid what they should be getting paid, pulling out the
Speaker 6: well we're family and blah blah blah. One hundred and
Speaker 6: twenty seven people jumped on this class act and lawsuits
Speaker 6: and you you know, and so you know a lot
Speaker 6: when there's smoke there's some sort of fire and yes, ever,
Speaker 6: you know, I'm sure you could dig into every business
Speaker 6: in town and you buy something to be addressed. But
Speaker 6: the trick is, as a leader, when someone brings it
Speaker 6: up the first time, do get in there, figure it
Speaker 6: out and fix it, and don't let it get to
Speaker 6: the point where you've got one hundred and twenty five
Speaker 6: people saying yeah, me too, right, and it's yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Ruby's is making headlines for this, But again it's
Speaker 2: it's I don't know, common, but it feels like it's
Speaker 2: kind of common in food and the food and beverages.
Speaker 2: I heard some from servers that there's another place, not Rubies, somewhere,
Speaker 2: but they were like, and you're always trying to find
Speaker 2: ways to try and put more money to the bottom
Speaker 2: line because the margins are so ridiculously thin. And food
Speaker 2: and beverage that they were taking. I think like if
Speaker 2: someone paid with a credit card, they would adoc the
Speaker 2: server like two percent because that was their share of
Speaker 2: you know, the credit card payment for the credit card.
Speaker 2: Compani's got to take credit card com and the house
Speaker 2: would for the meal would take there. But you know,
Speaker 2: it's it just goes to show you just how narrow
Speaker 2: and thin the margins are in the restaurant industry, and
Speaker 2: they're always looking for a way to put a little
Speaker 2: bit more towards the bottom line.
Speaker 3: So not surprising.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there'll be other stories in the future, maybe
Speaker 2: not necessarily with Jeff Ruby, but other you know, other
Speaker 2: purveyors that they try to do that well hopefully.
Speaker 6: And when a lawsuit like this comes out and they
Speaker 6: have to put a million and a half dollars into
Speaker 6: a fund to pay it back, told me they didn't
Speaker 6: take care of it along the way when it first
Speaker 6: came up. They didn't look into it, they didn't shut
Speaker 6: it down, they didn't they didn't provide proof that they
Speaker 6: were paying people the right way. And so you just
Speaker 6: look at this and say, well, maybe this will be
Speaker 6: a wake up call to other restaurants to say, we
Speaker 6: need to make sure we've got you know, we've got
Speaker 6: our house in order when it comes to how we'll
Speaker 6: pull our people.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, but that is the that's the nature.
Speaker 2: I mean how they just closed Lempika and that seven
Speaker 2: threet location because of well crime and other things that
Speaker 2: were happening downtown. So you know, they definitely feeling the
Speaker 2: squeez at Rubies for sure, But again if you're in
Speaker 2: that that line of work ever and so looking for
Speaker 2: an angle for sure. So it's a lot different than
Speaker 2: what'll we usually talk about on that Julie Bouki survey
Speaker 2: came out said most employees said that they planned to
Speaker 2: stay at their jobs in twenty twenty six because of
Speaker 2: the job climb and economic climate. But you also have
Speaker 2: burnout and layoffs and workers are concerned. And almost six
Speaker 2: out of ten said their salaries are not keeping up
Speaker 2: with inflation. And that feels about right, But yet people
Speaker 2: are not wanting to leave. Doesn't that give employees significant
Speaker 2: advantage to beat the hell out of you?
Speaker 6: Well, it kind of does, you know, I'm looking at
Speaker 6: what are employers predicting that the average salary increase in
Speaker 6: twenty twenty six will be. It's not nothing, and it's
Speaker 6: not significantly lower than other years. It's about three two
Speaker 6: three zero point two to three and a half percent.
Speaker 6: People look at that and say, yeah, but that doesn't
Speaker 6: help me keep up with rising prices and all the
Speaker 6: other things that I'm pressured with. And if on top
Speaker 6: of that, promotion is being held off, if you are
Speaker 6: being given more responsible ability Let's say that you are
Speaker 6: doing one job, they lay off several people, and you
Speaker 6: end up with your job doubling, with your job responsibilities
Speaker 6: doubling or increasing by a third, and you're getting a
Speaker 6: three percent increase. What that does is it not only
Speaker 6: has that financial pressure on you, but it's the mental
Speaker 6: pressure as well. We weren't meant to do the jobs
Speaker 6: of multiple people for long periods of time, but when
Speaker 6: there's when there is an economy like we're in right now,
Speaker 6: employers will use that as a reason say, well, we
Speaker 6: can't really afford to hire anyone now we laid off
Speaker 6: half the department. So you guys, wow, aren't you glad
Speaker 6: you have a job? You need to be grateful and
Speaker 6: step up and pick up the slack. And we get
Speaker 6: so like, okay, okay, yeah, I'll do that because we're
Speaker 6: so afraid of losing our job that we will do
Speaker 6: anything or ask to do just to not be unemployed.
Speaker 6: And that does not come without costs.
Speaker 1: I promise you.
Speaker 6: You're not getting the best out of your people if
Speaker 6: you're putting them in a situation where they can't win,
Speaker 6: where they can't get all their work done, whether the
Speaker 6: constantly under pressure where they're burnt out where they're calling
Speaker 6: in sick, where they you know, you're not getting the best,
Speaker 6: and so I think sometimes we are, you know, dollars
Speaker 6: chasing pennies when it comes to how we look at
Speaker 6: our people. And then of course everyone always loves it
Speaker 6: when it comes out as the CEO got some big bonus,
Speaker 6: which you know, yeah.
Speaker 2: Right, well, I mean that's again nature of the business, right,
Speaker 2: But yeah, we want to hold on our jobs because
Speaker 2: they're worried about this economy right now, and I wonder
Speaker 2: how employeers get to squeeze you even more. And then,
Speaker 2: of course, you know, when we had that brief period,
Speaker 2: it doesn't seem like that long ago Julie with COVID
Speaker 2: and everything, where employees had the upper hand. Business off
Speaker 2: were screaming about, well, that's not fair. It's cyclical.
Speaker 3: It's what it is.
Speaker 2: How are people not showing up to job interviews and
Speaker 2: they're not showing up for work on their first day
Speaker 2: because they got a better offer?
Speaker 3: How dare they do that? And now they're going to
Speaker 3: be punitive.
Speaker 6: In this Yeah, you know, the pendulums wings back and forth,
Speaker 6: and anytime it's swinging, there's bad behavior on both sides
Speaker 6: of things. I love this statement I was in this
Speaker 6: article I was reading. It says the workforce has largely
Speaker 6: accepted uncertainty as a constant. And I think that is
Speaker 6: a fair statement, and I think uncertainty is a constant.
Speaker 6: It is never going back to like it was in
Speaker 6: the seventies and eighties. And so what people are doing
Speaker 6: is taking side hubles what else can I do and
Speaker 6: what else can we do as a family to bring
Speaker 6: in more money? And they're again great, but there is
Speaker 6: a cost to that, and part of that cost is
Speaker 6: to mental health, emotional health, but it also comes at
Speaker 6: the cost of maybe less than great performance in their
Speaker 6: primary job. You're not dealing with robots. We're actually dealing
Speaker 6: with human beings who do have a breaking point. And
Speaker 6: your best people, the people who are contributing at the
Speaker 6: highest level, those are the ones that will always have
Speaker 6: the best options. And so you have to be really
Speaker 6: careful if you're swinging that stick too hard, because someone
Speaker 6: else will come in and say, hey, how about we
Speaker 6: bring you over here, we give you a raise, because
Speaker 6: not all employers are suffering, and we you know, we
Speaker 6: only we only have you do one job? How about that? Like, yes, please, yes,
Speaker 6: there can I have another get me out of here?
Speaker 6: And yeah, So we will see some movement. It's just
Speaker 6: going to be more thoughtful movement, and people will because
Speaker 6: there are people are afraid that if I take a job,
Speaker 6: it's going to be last in, first out, you know.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, but if I go over there poll. But
Speaker 6: let's remember it's about value. If you go in and
Speaker 6: you're adding value right away, we are in a value
Speaker 6: based We are moving toward a value based situation. Versus
Speaker 6: I've been here ten years and I'm kind of a
Speaker 6: C player versus I've been here a year and I'm
Speaker 6: an A player. They're going to keep the A player.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and you're also probably paying that person last too,
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 3: Well that's not factors.
Speaker 2: And how much is the new back to office restriction
Speaker 2: be speaking the employer having the advantage. We're all moving
Speaker 2: back to office now because they have the upper hand here,
Speaker 2: so you don't have the lee way of going, well,
Speaker 2: you know, we just want to buy, We want you,
Speaker 2: and if you want to work from home, go ahead.
Speaker 2: Well that's all changing too, and it's largely because of
Speaker 2: what we're talking about here.
Speaker 6: Right, Well, it isn't it isn't. I think it's again,
Speaker 6: it's the pendulum is swinging back the other way. I
Speaker 6: think we are we are, mark my words, we are
Speaker 6: never going back to one hundred percent rto everywhere in
Speaker 6: the office, all the time, everywhere.
Speaker 5: We just aren't.
Speaker 6: And I'll take everybody is Jeff Ruby's for launch if
Speaker 6: we do enough, well tip, We're just not. And so
Speaker 6: in every single environment, even in environments where it says
Speaker 6: we're one hundred percent were turned to the office, No
Speaker 6: they're not, absolutely not. I talk to people all the
Speaker 6: time who work in companies where the leadership has come
Speaker 6: out and said we're rto everybody back, and people like, yeah,
Speaker 6: I'm in two days a week. It's like, you know,
Speaker 6: let's bluster. But there's exceptions being made left and right
Speaker 6: all over the place for top performers, for jobs that
Speaker 6: really truly need zero in our office, in office interaction,
Speaker 6: and for people who say, go ahead, make me come
Speaker 6: back in the office, but know that you know I'm
Speaker 6: going to leave. And if you are a very strong
Speaker 6: performer and hard to replace, you have that hand. You
Speaker 6: have some hand there.
Speaker 2: Julie Balki our career sure on the Scotslan Show. Every
Speaker 2: Wednesday morning talking about jobs and everything related here too,
Speaker 2: in case you're just joining.
Speaker 3: Study came out.
Speaker 2: Most employees said, well, we plan on staying at our
Speaker 2: jobs this year in twenty twenty six, but burnout and
Speaker 2: layoffs are concerned the economy. You know, are layoffs coming,
Speaker 2: and when employees hear that that you're going to stay,
Speaker 2: the chances of you getting a raise or are the
Speaker 2: rays you want anywhere probably pretty slim. I mean the employers,
Speaker 2: they're gonna have to hand out some money. You're gonna
Speaker 2: have to get a raise right in most places.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean there will be some sort of something,
Speaker 6: whether it's just a token three percent. But anytime you
Speaker 6: are giving out increases and you aren't focused on giving
Speaker 6: more to your top employees, your top performers, you're going
Speaker 6: to have some turnover. I think you've got to be
Speaker 6: really careful with that performance, with that salary budget. Make
Speaker 6: sure that you're actually recognizing your top performers. And no,
Speaker 6: maybe you can't give them a huge raise, but maybe
Speaker 6: you move it up to five percent and get less
Speaker 6: to people who aren't quite chinning the bar. It's a
Speaker 6: performance based value. What's your value based culture versus a
Speaker 6: longevity culture and a loyalty culture anymore and that works
Speaker 6: on both sides of the table.
Speaker 2: Yeah, makes sense. Julie Balki, you can get her at
Speaker 2: Thebalkigroup dot com.
Speaker 3: That's b a UK. She got a whole team ready
Speaker 3: to go to work for you as a.
Speaker 2: Career coach consultant and Shirpa Here on the Scott Sloan Show, Joes,
Speaker 2: have a great week, enjoy. We'll chat again next Wednesday.
Speaker 6: Indeed we will.
Speaker 2: All the best, my friend be well, we've got a
Speaker 2: news update happening just seconds away here on the Big One.
Speaker 2: We've got weather moving and that's starting to change. Winners
Speaker 2: coming back with a vengeance starting feels like it is
Speaker 2: right now. As a matter of facts, the tempature con
Speaker 2: user drop. Next days are going to be rough.
Speaker 9: Rough.
Speaker 2: Coming up next on the show, he's Kevin Burton from
Speaker 2: Crosstown consulting on a Northern Kentucky and new studies And
Speaker 2: I'm saying new, but Gallop Do's is every year, They've
Speaker 2: been doing it forever. Where voters stand on well, what
Speaker 2: group they belong to, right in which umbrella they're under, left,
Speaker 2: middle or right. The number of independent voters is now
Speaker 2: at an all time high, and yet if you look
Speaker 2: at politics, it doesn't feel that way.
Speaker 3: Why is it?
Speaker 2: What's this mean for the future for both the Democrats
Speaker 2: and Republicans? Just ahead after news on the Home of
Speaker 2: the Red seven hundred WWT Cincinnati.
Speaker 3: It's only here, this is seven hundred WLW. This is interesting.
Speaker 2: A record high forty five percent of adults in America
Speaker 2: identified as political independence last year, and that number looks
Speaker 2: like it's going to grow this year in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2: But an equal share of adults now consider themselves twenty
Speaker 2: seven percent Democrat, seven percent Republican of forty five percent independent.
Speaker 3: What the hell does that mean? Actually?
Speaker 2: And the independent percentage has increased in the past fifteen years,
Speaker 2: or around forty percent, but we haven't seen this level
Speaker 2: like in a long long time. What's driving this whole thing?
Speaker 2: Joining the show is Polster and political advisor. That'd be
Speaker 2: the legendary Kevin Burton from Crosstown Consulting in Northern Kentucky.
Speaker 5: Ke I doing I'm doing pretty good, Scott, Thank you
Speaker 5: for that introduction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the legendary in your legendary at this point, this
Speaker 2: is I mean, I look at this and go okay,
Speaker 2: forty five percent independent. I consider myself that I tend
Speaker 2: to lean to the right, but at the same time
Speaker 2: I'm more libertarian. I'm kind of an amalgamation of different things.
Speaker 2: But I vote with my conscience, not because i want
Speaker 2: to be part of a movement, and I've yet to
Speaker 2: see a movement that I would be part of, because
Speaker 2: I think there's a certain amount of corruption, and also
Speaker 2: a glasshouse is nature, and also having to go against
Speaker 2: some ideals in order to compromise, and maybe I'm a
Speaker 2: little too stubborn to do that. But it seems like
Speaker 2: I'm in the majority here at this point. And what
Speaker 2: does this mean for the Democrats and Republicans? Of twenty
Speaker 2: seven percent are Democrats twenty seven percent of Republicans. They
Speaker 2: take up all the oxygen in a room.
Speaker 5: Yes, And the reason why independence have grown is because
Speaker 5: of the primary. So in Kentucky you have a close primary,
Speaker 5: so only DS can vote for D's, only rs can
Speaker 5: vote for ours. Eyes can't do anything. In Ohio, you
Speaker 5: can do something. You know, you can do different things.
Speaker 5: If you're an eye. You can vote to the Democratic primary,
Speaker 5: you can vote to the Republican So each state is different.
Speaker 5: But the primaries always result in the most extremes on
Speaker 5: both sides, and that's why it's driven more independent because
Speaker 5: to win a primary, you're usually looking at ten, twelve,
Speaker 5: fifteen percent turnout in off year elections, which frankly, the
Speaker 5: only people who usually vote on those are people who
Speaker 5: are really riled up, So you're going to have the
Speaker 5: extremes on both sides. So it has pushed more people
Speaker 5: to the middle. Now, when you do campaigns, though, there's
Speaker 5: usually about eight to ten that are completely non leaning,
Speaker 5: and those are the core flippers for independence. How you
Speaker 5: win elections.
Speaker 2: Okay, obviously they're important in the election themselves. Some of
Speaker 2: the old adage about you always campaign to the extremes
Speaker 2: and you governed from the middle, Well, that that sentiment's
Speaker 2: been gone for a while now, that's not that hasn't
Speaker 2: been true in a while.
Speaker 5: No, oh not at all.
Speaker 3: I mean, which turns more people in independence.
Speaker 2: But again, if that's the way the system is designed,
Speaker 2: it feels like a fruitless effort.
Speaker 1: Is it.
Speaker 5: Well it is, and this is where it's kind of
Speaker 5: ironic that the only time both Democrats and Republicans work
Speaker 5: together is to squash any third party. Right, right, we
Speaker 5: talk about.
Speaker 2: We talked about redistrict king in Ohio and Democrats all
Speaker 2: worked up. Well, what about states or Democrats? Well that's different.
Speaker 5: Well, and you know for every California, there's an Alabama
Speaker 5: and vice versa. So you know the bulk of people,
Speaker 5: and you know you hear this with in your communities.
Speaker 5: You know you're at a bar, at a church, ninety
Speaker 5: percent of people just common sense things. And that's what
Speaker 5: you're seeing with forty five percent of people identifying as
Speaker 5: independents and the twenty seven percent you know to an
Speaker 5: R or D, you're really seeing just kind of people
Speaker 5: where I think are just tired of just being tired
Speaker 5: of politics.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exhausting.
Speaker 5: Yeah, can we just get back to being like, hey,
Speaker 5: I might not agree with you, but it's okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we want to make make politics boring again.
Speaker 5: That that should be the next slogan for anyone, right,
Speaker 5: makes politics boring?
Speaker 2: Make politics you don't talk about religion and politics, Well
Speaker 2: now we talk about both. And it's exhausting, quite honestly,
Speaker 2: when you start looking at the numbers. Zough inside the
Speaker 2: over forty five almost half the country, for God's sakes,
Speaker 2: call themselves independents and let look where we are when
Speaker 2: it comes to the poop slinging on both sides. Gen
Speaker 2: z ors, though, in particular, declare their independency much higher
Speaker 2: rate fifty six percent than millennials did when they were
Speaker 2: that age of forty seven percent. What does that mean
Speaker 2: in the long term?
Speaker 5: Well, okay, so millennials to gen z You also got
Speaker 5: to remember for millennials, for most of them, they were
Speaker 5: in college or high school when Obama came in. So
Speaker 5: like I would take that with a little grain of salt.
Speaker 5: A lot of gen Zers, you know, they so lean
Speaker 5: or considered themselves a Democrat when push comes the shelf.
Speaker 5: So out of the poll they did forty eight percent
Speaker 5: of them considered themselves a Democrat, considered them Republicans. And
Speaker 5: I say, it's just simply like you see the Bernie Sanders,
Speaker 5: the AOC, the Mindanni wing where frankly they didn't get
Speaker 5: a fair share from the Democratic Party. And I think
Speaker 5: that's why more and more people are just saying, you
Speaker 5: know what, I'm just going to be an independent. And
Speaker 5: on the Republican side, you know, they're that was Trump.
Speaker 5: I mean, Trump didn't feel like he was getting a
Speaker 5: fair shake. In twenty sixteen, which was a lifetime ago,
Speaker 5: but you know, he was an outsider running and I
Speaker 5: just think people are going.
Speaker 2: Oh, I was gonna say it is, So are Independence
Speaker 2: basically socialists and misplaced populous?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, because like when you're running in
Speaker 5: an election, basically both ours and D's they have these
Speaker 5: softwares and they're billion dollars softwares and they basically put
Speaker 5: algorithms and it's way above my pay grade. But there's
Speaker 5: like one hundred and third thirty sub sections and everything,
Speaker 5: and it'll give you a score. So let's say is
Speaker 5: zero is a conservative, one hundred is a Democrat. So
Speaker 5: it will say if I typed in Scott Sloan, let's
Speaker 5: say your score was twenty seven, that would mean that
Speaker 5: you have a high probability of voting Republican. So when
Speaker 5: you're running these elections, especially with Independence, you look at
Speaker 5: the around ten percent of the independents who really swing
Speaker 5: the elections. Those are the people who you hear, you know,
Speaker 5: they voted Trump, Biden, Trump, Obama, and that's and that's
Speaker 5: where elections are really one. They're one on the margins,
Speaker 5: and that's the margin. The eight to ten percent non
Speaker 5: leaning independence.
Speaker 2: You've got your twenty seven percent of hardcore conservatives twenty
Speaker 2: five percent of twenty seven percent hardcore progressives in order
Speaker 2: to tift is that that split you need to draw
Speaker 2: that ten percent?
Speaker 3: Got it?
Speaker 10: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Because out of out of the other thirty five, basically
Speaker 5: you can split that seventeen percent both ways, and they're
Speaker 5: gonna lean to the last, lean to the right. So
Speaker 5: it's all about about that ten percent number. Who really
Speaker 5: decide federal elections?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I guess that ten percent is on the
Speaker 2: seesaw going Okay, well, who do I who?
Speaker 3: As opposed to who do I really like?
Speaker 10: Who?
Speaker 2: Who do who do I hate? Least it's the way
Speaker 2: we look at that, And I guess that ten percent.
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: Is that why we will not see or do you
Speaker 2: think we'll never see another two term president again?
Speaker 3: For that reason?
Speaker 2: And I guess I mean, I mean, Konseck, you know,
Speaker 2: Trump's second term technically, but you know Biden was in
Speaker 2: the middle of that, So we just swing back and forth.
Speaker 3: Is that why?
Speaker 10: I mean?
Speaker 5: But also I would say both Trump and Biden are
Speaker 5: kind of outliers. I mean, Biden was going to be
Speaker 5: eighty three years old, and Trump's gonna be, you know,
Speaker 5: the same, and it was cod So I would say,
Speaker 5: let's see one more president before we make that claim,
Speaker 5: because both of them are kind of different from the majority.
Speaker 5: But yeah, it's very, very hard. If you look at
Speaker 5: presidential approvals really since the invention of cable news, but
Speaker 5: really social media, it's almost impossible to stay above fifty
Speaker 5: percent approval. So it's gonna make it harder and harder
Speaker 5: to govern, and just harder and harder to block out
Speaker 5: the noise.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, gotcha.
Speaker 2: So Trump's first term, we got the anti Trumpers going, hey,
Speaker 2: we need something, we're tired of this guy.
Speaker 3: We brought Biden in.
Speaker 2: Four years later, we got tired of Biden, we brought
Speaker 2: Trump back, and I'm guessing, you know, with the midterms
Speaker 2: and then three years from now, are we going to
Speaker 2: rebel against the Republicans and vote a Democrat in.
Speaker 5: Well, But that's also the great thing of those country.
Speaker 5: There's checks and balances. Yeah, I mean it is. You know,
Speaker 5: you might not like it, but that's that's how we've
Speaker 5: always been and hopefully that's how we always will be.
Speaker 5: You know, when one tide gets too strong, the people
Speaker 5: speak up right and vice versa. So if you ask
Speaker 5: me today, yes, the midterms would probably look really good
Speaker 5: for the Democrats as of today.
Speaker 3: And then we'll see what happened. I mean, again, this
Speaker 3: has been one year.
Speaker 2: I can't we have three more years, and it just
Speaker 2: seems like it's getting more and more viral, you know,
Speaker 2: in a sense that we're going at each other even harder,
Speaker 2: and every day feels like it's a year. As far
Speaker 2: as news goes, there's definitely been a change the last
Speaker 2: number of years relative to that. And Trump, of course,
Speaker 2: is a whirlwind of activities, always doing something. Certainly every
Speaker 2: day there's something new, for sure, and either you're excited
Speaker 2: by that or turned off by it, but everyone definitely
Speaker 2: has an opinion on it. I look at the general
Speaker 2: racial breakdowns. Gen Zer fifty six percent identifies independence, Millennials
Speaker 2: a majority Gen X my generation forty plus percent identifies independence.
Speaker 2: When you get downe to the Baby Boomers silent generation,
Speaker 2: it's right around thirty three percent. How much does that change?
Speaker 2: It just seems like the older you get, the more
Speaker 2: accepting you become of a party. And maybe you know
Speaker 2: what this whole identity politic thing where people will not
Speaker 2: question the person they voted for even if it's a contradiction,
Speaker 2: they won't point that out. In many ways, that seems
Speaker 2: the case just as the older you get, the more
Speaker 2: sent in the ways you are and you want to
Speaker 2: be part of that community. And does that change with
Speaker 2: future generations where their identity isn't politics.
Speaker 5: Well, but you also got to remember, if you're a
Speaker 5: baby boomer or definitely a silent generation, you really grew
Speaker 5: up in a whole different world. You didn't have twenty
Speaker 5: four to seven news for the longest time, the Internet
Speaker 5: you didn't really have, and definitely non social media. So
Speaker 5: I think, you know, social media in the twenty four
Speaker 5: hour news has just changed everything. It's made politics a constant,
Speaker 5: you know, I think going forward. I mean, so when
Speaker 5: you're running an election, generally speaking, I always tell people
Speaker 5: to kind of block out people sixty and above if
Speaker 5: they're an independent or a Democrat or a Republican, because
Speaker 5: their minds are already made up. If you've voted eight
Speaker 5: straight elections for one party, it's gonna be really really
Speaker 5: hard to try to convince you to switch because you're
Speaker 5: kind of set in your way. Yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: we can't teach an old dog new trick. Sorry, Well people,
Speaker 5: well you look at brand loyalty. I mean, you know
Speaker 5: that that has died. That died some time ago too.
Speaker 2: With younger generations, you know, used to be like, I'm
Speaker 2: a tied man, I'm a Republican man, I'm a you
Speaker 2: know whatever it might be.
Speaker 3: Younger people don't have those.
Speaker 5: Loyalties unless it's say an iPhone. That's about it.
Speaker 3: That's true. That's true.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, and that's more of a cost issue
Speaker 2: than anything, because you know, if you decide I'm going Android,
Speaker 2: your tablet, your laptop, your desktop, your handheld, your mobile,
Speaker 2: all that stuff is now you got to swap it
Speaker 2: all up. He's Kevin Burton Polster of Northern Kentucky here,
Speaker 2: and we're talking about a new study that came out
Speaker 2: from Gallup.
Speaker 3: They do this every year.
Speaker 2: A record high forty five percent of US adults identify
Speaker 2: as political independence. In the past year, twenty seven percent
Speaker 2: each NFL themselves as Democrats or Republicans. And that that
Speaker 2: middle part, that independent part, becomes critical in elections, he said,
Speaker 2: about ten percent ten percent will decide the election either way,
Speaker 2: which is why we go back and forth the days
Speaker 2: of FDR where we have multiple terms. Feel like that is,
Speaker 2: it's definitely in the past unless something else changes too.
Speaker 2: Taking into account America's party identification, as I match out
Speaker 2: the twenty seven percent forty seven percent identified as Democrats
Speaker 2: or said they're a independent, it's forty two percent with
Speaker 2: the Republicans. That's a three years I think that broke
Speaker 2: a three year stretch in which Republicans held an edge
Speaker 2: in party affiliation. Is that something that also changes or
Speaker 2: is the Republican party in decline and once the Democrats
Speaker 2: take power at some point that just swings the other way.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's I mean, the Republicans are in charge now,
Speaker 5: and that's why, you know, I mean, people always it's
Speaker 5: the backup quarterback syndrome. You know, if things aren't going well,
Speaker 5: you're always yearning for the backup quarterback. And then once
Speaker 5: the backup quarterback comes in, you're like, well, there's a
Speaker 5: reason why I didn't want him in the first place. So,
Speaker 5: I mean, that's just a give and take of you know, leading,
Speaker 5: it's so impossible now to actually get above fifty percent
Speaker 5: in party registration or approval. You know, you go back
Speaker 5: to George W. Bush right after nine to eleven, he
Speaker 5: had an eighty seven percent approval rating. That's on I
Speaker 5: can't even press about that now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and that was probably at the time, and
Speaker 2: oh my god, you know, because Lincoln had a probably
Speaker 2: a bad example of Washington, for example, had a ninety
Speaker 2: nine percent. Yeah, and no, that makes sense too, because
Speaker 2: as divided as we are, the conservative ideology advantage is
Speaker 2: shrunk to just say points, that's the smallest ever. And
Speaker 2: again I think that's just indicates what you're talking about here.
Speaker 3: And I don't know.
Speaker 2: If that I think it could be though, that Trump
Speaker 2: is redefining what conservative means. I'm not even sure what
Speaker 2: conservative means anymore.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, you know it doesn't mean the small
Speaker 5: governor no small government, because exactly so. But you know,
Speaker 5: Democrats have really had to come to Jesus meeting kind
Speaker 5: of this last year. You know, it was a really
Speaker 5: bad messaging point for you saying, you know, Trump is
Speaker 5: a threat of democracy when you didn't even have a primary.
Speaker 5: And I think that's the number one reason why Trump won,
Speaker 5: because you took away they're not the number one thing
Speaker 5: to use against him when you didn't allow an open primary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, where does social media go from here? In the
Speaker 2: digital Agency mentioned information fragmentation, declining trust, and institutions like
Speaker 2: journalism that will also fuel the end identification.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean that's the I think irony is that
Speaker 5: as we've gotten more educated, we're actually headed more towards
Speaker 5: like another dark age, you know. I also do think
Speaker 5: there's a little bit of kind of a pushback, especially
Speaker 5: with millennials and gen Z. I don't really see a
Speaker 5: lot of millennials on Facebook anymore, right, I feel like
Speaker 5: that time kind of passed for them, you know, in
Speaker 5: a lot of ways. I wonder in you know, fifteen
Speaker 5: twenty years, when we look at the effects of social media,
Speaker 5: how people looked at the cigarette companies in the nineties
Speaker 5: or the early two thousands, the effects that it's done.
Speaker 2: Right, it's just so the the polars and camps even more,
Speaker 2: you know, it's declining to some degree.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 2: As an aside here, I have a family members they
Speaker 2: moved recently, and one of their neighbors and the first
Speaker 2: question of their mouse was are you Republican? Because everybody
Speaker 2: on the streets Republican. And he used to be like, oh,
Speaker 2: we're Catholic? Are you Catholic? You know, where did you
Speaker 2: go to high school?
Speaker 3: Things?
Speaker 2: Like that, and now it's it's probably been that way
Speaker 2: for a while, but I think that's kind of interesting,
Speaker 2: Like that's that's the whole identity, right, is I'm a
Speaker 2: Republican or I'm I'm a progressive whatever. It might be
Speaker 2: more Republicans than progressives here in Cincinnati, but you get
Speaker 2: the idea.
Speaker 5: Well, and you even see that now people will be like, well,
Speaker 5: I don't want to watch this actor or listen to
Speaker 5: this thing. It's like, as long as they're doing to
Speaker 5: commit a crime, like r Kelly or P Diddy, Like
Speaker 5: I think, I think you're all right. You can disagree
Speaker 5: with him, but if they still make good art, like
Speaker 5: just go with it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well like back when Senator John Kerry right and
Speaker 2: Teresa Hines Kerry and people were boycotting Heinz ketchup on
Speaker 2: my look. Yeah, I don't go to the politics, but
Speaker 2: the only ketchup in the world is Heines ketchup.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, There's a lot I would put up before
Speaker 3: boycott Heinz ketchup.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: He is a Kevin Burton Polster advisor with Crosstown Consultant
Speaker 2: in Northern Kentucky.
Speaker 3: All the best thanks to the Inside appreciate you, thank you.
Speaker 5: Scott.
Speaker 2: Just ahead after a news update, Sarah, Lisa's here from
Speaker 2: the end. It's a snort report. We'll get some sports,
Speaker 2: We'll get some snorts, We'll get some social media. I'd
Speaker 2: imagine some Bengals talk, maybe some Reds talk, some Miami talk.
Speaker 2: Not a lot of uc an ex.
Speaker 3: At this point. Let's just call it what it is.
Speaker 2: Scott's loan show continues on seven hundred W World.
Speaker 9: That's right, what.
Speaker 10: Okay?
Speaker 2: Snort faces here, Sarah les from Sports of all snorts?
Speaker 9: How's your wife be doing? She did good?
Speaker 3: She got a Brandon knee, got another knee?
Speaker 9: Another one?
Speaker 3: Third one?
Speaker 9: Is it really a third?
Speaker 3: Wow?
Speaker 9: Like did the first not take?
Speaker 5: Or?
Speaker 9: What's going on here?
Speaker 3: Sunday?
Speaker 2: I picked to the family because you know, in rural Ohio,
Speaker 2: because they need update on the knee.
Speaker 3: I sent her a picture. I said, hed a, I
Speaker 3: make at a third leg?
Speaker 7: Oh no idea?
Speaker 3: What was going on?
Speaker 9: So I don't know what happened.
Speaker 3: We brought her in and like they put a third
Speaker 3: leg on her.
Speaker 1: Woa.
Speaker 3: The old people, they.
Speaker 9: Fall for the AI stuff all the time.
Speaker 3: Good.
Speaker 8: If I send that to my mom, I know your
Speaker 8: minds mind the other knee back at Christmas, ready to go,
Speaker 8: starting deer off hot with another one.
Speaker 9: I saw the pup was taking care of her. I'm
Speaker 9: at least somebody in that household is doing something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's not happy to sitch because coming into work,
Speaker 2: I got like five twenty five, I got the least
Speaker 2: the collar on him. He was buried under the blankets.
Speaker 2: Refuse to move, like I get my ass up to
Speaker 2: go pee. It's cold and raining outside.
Speaker 8: Yeah, my dog is the same. They make the best nurses, though,
Speaker 8: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Just trying to crawlerneath Michelle to in order to.
Speaker 8: Nothing makes you feel better than the comfort of a dog.
Speaker 8: And knowing that the Miami RedHawks are still undefeated, got
Speaker 8: it done last night.
Speaker 9: One hundred to.
Speaker 8: Sixty one was their final against Central Michigan. That's how
Speaker 8: we are opening up the Snort report today.
Speaker 2: You know, with that transition from knees to I'm surprised
Speaker 2: you may need surgery. I think you pulled something with
Speaker 2: that stretch. Wow, we just turned like that. I did,
Speaker 2: so your give up.
Speaker 8: Yeah, they're about to give out any moment, because this
Speaker 8: is crazy. It really will bring you to your knees.
Speaker 9: Knowing that there are four.
Speaker 8: Teams that remain in college basketball that are undefeated, of
Speaker 8: course Miami being one of them, Arizona, Vanderbilt, and Nebraska.
Speaker 9: Little Miami. They're in Oxford O.
Speaker 3: High Little Miami. That's different.
Speaker 8: But yeah, they had the whole swim team out there
Speaker 8: last night and their speedos showing up.
Speaker 2: I love how you tried Little Miami, little swim team.
Speaker 2: Little And when is the last time And we've been
Speaker 2: doing a snort report for a while. Yeah, the last
Speaker 2: time you led with Miami University Athletics last week.
Speaker 9: So we're two weeks in a row.
Speaker 7: With the leading.
Speaker 3: I'm talking about going back. Let's go back two months.
Speaker 9: Not ever.
Speaker 8: It's usually Reds or Bengals. Reds are Bengals, but now
Speaker 8: it's Miami.
Speaker 2: If the wheel's taking off, Miami, what's next? Oh you,
Speaker 2: what are we going to do?
Speaker 9: You got problems?
Speaker 3: Bowling green? Where are we going? Where are we going? Here?
Speaker 3: Where we go? And what are we doing?
Speaker 9: This is exciting though.
Speaker 8: That's twenty five consecutive home wins for those guys.
Speaker 3: We're such a homer you maybe worse than seg They.
Speaker 9: Are my Alma maters.
Speaker 8: So that's why it means even more to me though,
Speaker 8: this is very exciting, all right, yeah, but I was
Speaker 8: there a very very very long time ago. We had hockey.
Speaker 8: That was always the big thing at Miami. Now basketball
Speaker 8: completely taken over.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, because the hockey team has stuck for a while. So,
Speaker 2: I mean, they have flirts with it, but not nothing.
Speaker 9: Like nothing like what we're seeing right now.
Speaker 11: You know.
Speaker 2: I'm that though too is the fact that Travis Steel
Speaker 2: when are they gonna? When's you seekn announced? He's the
Speaker 2: next head coach?
Speaker 9: Right? It like did we make a mistake with Wes?
Speaker 8: And speaking of you see basketball there back tonight seven
Speaker 8: o'clock tip off against Colorado and what's trending on social
Speaker 8: media this morning paper bags? Will people be wearing those
Speaker 8: two the game tonight? My vote is, please don't do that.
Speaker 8: I know that we hate Wes Miller, A lot of
Speaker 8: people do. Right now, you're mad, but don't do it
Speaker 8: to the player.
Speaker 9: I don't think they deserve that, to look around in
Speaker 9: the stands and see all the fans out there with
Speaker 9: the bags.
Speaker 2: No, okay, hold on, just a second, stop with the sanctimony.
Speaker 3: I mean it though, all right, they're grown as teenagers.
Speaker 9: I get that.
Speaker 2: They're still like, okay, but are you a kid when
Speaker 2: you're getting an ile money?
Speaker 8: You kids are getting an i ole money, right, Yeah, you're.
Speaker 7: Still a kid.
Speaker 3: If you're buying a ticket, you get criticism.
Speaker 2: If you can be celebrating, you can agree to disagree
Speaker 2: on you you can do all that, okay, and be supportive.
Speaker 2: It's like, oh, you guys are doing this is awesome,
Speaker 2: you know, and and be celebrities and on all that
Speaker 2: that goes with it.
Speaker 3: When you suck.
Speaker 8: If that's why you want to spend your time tonight
Speaker 8: at Fifth Third Arena for two hours with a bag
Speaker 8: over your head, than so be it.
Speaker 2: We're really good at recycling because the same bag you
Speaker 2: use for the Bengals, you can, I use you.
Speaker 3: It's great a recycling. Yeah, very good.
Speaker 9: You'll be just fine. What that arena is going to
Speaker 9: look like tonight.
Speaker 13: And they're the players they protesting, you know, I think
Speaker 13: it's more of West Miller.
Speaker 3: Okay, then just say that when he.
Speaker 8: Gets his intro tonight. I don't know what else to
Speaker 8: tell you. Let you bring paper bags in, by the way,
Speaker 8: That's what I'm hearing. How come in the NFL you can?
Speaker 8: But you can now is it a college rule or
Speaker 8: is it a UC rule? I don't know, or is
Speaker 8: it this specific arena rule.
Speaker 3: How are they going to shake you down for a
Speaker 3: paper bag? By the way, they.
Speaker 9: Can't because you could easily put that down your pants.
Speaker 3: You could easily that's a cut you.
Speaker 8: Could easily get report. You could easily get a bag
Speaker 8: into that arena, no problem.
Speaker 3: It's a paper bag you fuld up put in your pocket,
Speaker 3: exact metal. What are they going to do the whole
Speaker 3: section for everybody out?
Speaker 8: I think they're kind of putting that out there as
Speaker 8: a warning, like, we don't want to see this.
Speaker 9: We don't want to look around and see a bunch
Speaker 9: of paper bags.
Speaker 3: What are they What are they going to do?
Speaker 9: Every probably going to kick you out.
Speaker 3: Some surge of the fans have bags on their heads.
Speaker 9: They're either going to give you a warning or kick
Speaker 9: you out.
Speaker 3: I'm guessing, what is this a ran that they're going
Speaker 3: to round you up?
Speaker 9: What do they know? It's Clifton For God's Oh, that
Speaker 9: was a dig. I'm sorry.
Speaker 7: Coming hot damn.
Speaker 8: Speaking of you see the Miami Redhogs throwing some heat
Speaker 8: around on on Twitter yesterday? They said yeah, they said, uh, no,
Speaker 8: paper bags needed over here.
Speaker 9: Just good hoops.
Speaker 8: They are chirpy on social media, so that's been trending
Speaker 8: in it.
Speaker 9: They also tweeted this out.
Speaker 8: They said, if you can show that you're a season
Speaker 8: ticket holder for any other college basketball team in southwest Ohio,
Speaker 8: your ticket to see a game here at Malett is
Speaker 8: only ten bucks.
Speaker 3: Unbelievable there.
Speaker 13: For free lun you tomorrow time. Tom's hanging around for
Speaker 13: the yes, So what are you doing here? Turn out
Speaker 13: of the second mic on there? Paper bag or no
Speaker 13: paper bag?
Speaker 5: That you say?
Speaker 9: I said, I say no paper bag.
Speaker 3: She says it may hurt the players feelings. I say, money,
Speaker 3: you suck. You deserve that.
Speaker 13: Tom.
Speaker 9: What's your take on this?
Speaker 7: Hey, people want to wear that paper bag? Let her rip.
Speaker 12: That's nice exactly. You're buying a ticket and I don't
Speaker 12: think they're unhappy. Do you with the playoffs themselves?
Speaker 9: What the West Miller thing?
Speaker 10: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Yeah, absolutely, yeah, So I think it's more that.
Speaker 12: But I do understand your point about the players could
Speaker 12: take it as as though you're you know, you know,
Speaker 12: ashamed of them. I would like to think that's not
Speaker 12: the case, but I don't know. I'm not bringing the.
Speaker 2: Games, you're playing Division one sports, you should be able
Speaker 2: to tolerate a little hackling.
Speaker 7: Well, I'm with you all the way. You didn't used
Speaker 7: to be that way, but it is now.
Speaker 3: It is now. What the money got involved that goes
Speaker 3: with it exactly what I say?
Speaker 7: That's right?
Speaker 2: All right, there you go, Tom, what's on tomorrow show?
Speaker 2: It's twelve o'clock here? What do you got tomorrow? What
Speaker 2: are you doing for us tomorrow? At Gary Sullivan on?
Speaker 12: And then we have Hey Michelle to tell the things
Speaker 12: going on over the weekend.
Speaker 8: Is buying a faux fur jacket. That girl can talk
Speaker 8: you into doing anything.
Speaker 3: That jacket looked good. I saw that picture.
Speaker 9: Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 12: Yeah, you're gonna wear that to crown the king over
Speaker 12: here coming up and oh.
Speaker 8: God, no, we're taking no.
Speaker 9: I I got to teach Tom about throwing the bread.
Speaker 8: The Closterman rolls at Sloaney's head said that we were
Speaker 8: gonna have a little meeting before this event, so I
Speaker 8: gotta I gotta let him in on the whole bread thing.
Speaker 12: Okay, you know I used to date one of the
Speaker 12: Clostermen girls. Their their family ranch, if you will, they
Speaker 12: have this big horse ranch up in Loveland, yeah, and
Speaker 12: I know if you've ever seen the article Sloaney, you
Speaker 12: get into an elevator shaft build on a former mind shaft,
Speaker 12: drop one hundred feet down on the ground.
Speaker 3: Oh no, you open the door.
Speaker 12: Yes, it was over I think it was four or
Speaker 12: five thousand square feet of the largest artifact of magical
Speaker 12: artifact collection in the world.
Speaker 7: Stage down there.
Speaker 12: All the guys used to come in there and hang
Speaker 12: out with Kenklosterman, God rest his soul. He was a
Speaker 12: great dude. That's wild. Yeah, And Smithsonian Magazine did a
Speaker 12: big peace on it.
Speaker 3: It's pretty cool. Wow.
Speaker 2: So you went down an elevator shaft to see magic, Well,
Speaker 2: they had stage down there everything.
Speaker 3: Yes, so he'd pull out some tricks to there. I mean,
Speaker 3: David Copperfield.
Speaker 7: All these guys would.
Speaker 12: Come in from around the world hang out board up
Speaker 12: in that basing like hang out with She must have
Speaker 12: been smoking hot Tom.
Speaker 3: Because you put the work in.
Speaker 9: I mean that is some serious where you're risking your life.
Speaker 7: I will bid you all adu.
Speaker 3: Yeah, get out of here because time just made time disappear.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's right, or my wife's about to I get home.
Speaker 3: I love it. I love it.
Speaker 9: We do have a couch here at iHeart.
Speaker 2: If you need to say you got the job, you
Speaker 2: don't have to keep kissing butts.
Speaker 3: So we could just go home, would you.
Speaker 9: Like, oh, god, don't know.
Speaker 8: They compare Tom and SEG's okay, do we want to
Speaker 8: go to Bengals or Ruds because we've got different things trending.
Speaker 8: Let's quickly go to Bengals. Zach Taylor is the only
Speaker 8: coach left in the AFC North Tomlin quote unquote stepping down.
Speaker 8: I don't know if he was like threatened, Hey, you
Speaker 8: might want to get out of here.
Speaker 9: But I think he's not going to stick with coaching.
Speaker 9: I think he might go into the broadcast side of things.
Speaker 3: Really, I think so.
Speaker 8: I think that's the rumor on social I wouldn't mind
Speaker 8: Tom winning a booth enter.
Speaker 9: Just like Tom Brady.
Speaker 8: It was a little bit of a rough start, but
Speaker 8: now I really enjoyed.
Speaker 3: Who's going to get forced out?
Speaker 9: That's a great question.
Speaker 8: Is there a spot? Are there more spots for coaching
Speaker 8: or for broadcast?
Speaker 5: Tired?
Speaker 3: It's been tired for a long time. Yeah, Terry Bradshaw,
Speaker 3: you think so?
Speaker 9: I saw what's his face is coming back? He's like eighty.
Speaker 3: Five of course, so who No, he's.
Speaker 8: Done, he's done with college game day ow our guy,
Speaker 8: ol Michael Michaels, Yeah, yah, yeah, yeah, he's back. He's
Speaker 8: all right, he's not going anywhere. I do like, oh
Speaker 8: my god, I respect it. So we're gonna run it
Speaker 8: back with Zach Taylor in the AFC North. Okay, And
Speaker 8: who knows where all the other coaches could go.
Speaker 3: I pointed this out earlier in the show, Sarah.
Speaker 9: Where do you think Tomlin will go?
Speaker 3: I have no idea.
Speaker 9: Maybe the booth a coach, So he's not gonna stick
Speaker 9: with coach.
Speaker 8: I don't think what about guys like Stefanski and John Harbaugh,
Speaker 8: the rest of the guys in the AFC North, they're
Speaker 8: interviewing everywhere. I mean, there's like nine coaches out there
Speaker 8: that would have been interviewing.
Speaker 9: All over the least.
Speaker 13: Zac Tayler safe, right, he is absolutely safe.
Speaker 9: You know, six and eleven, we're like, we're going to
Speaker 9: extend your contract.
Speaker 3: And I was here because I was off. But Duke
Speaker 3: Tobin's UH on Friday, yes.
Speaker 9: Sixty three minutes of not a whole lot.
Speaker 2: The question is how can Duke Tobe and speak uh
Speaker 2: and say everything's fine with the team other do anything?
Speaker 3: Do you know why.
Speaker 2: Season tickets Bengals attendants, by the way, fell by about
Speaker 2: thirteen hundred per game.
Speaker 9: I thought it was the highest attendant in a while.
Speaker 2: Which is the most behind Tennessee. What happened with their coach?
Speaker 9: The Jets?
Speaker 3: What happened there in the Browns?
Speaker 9: What happened the ah gone Gone gone?
Speaker 2: Two percent decline in attendance is not enough for this team.
Speaker 2: And I don't know what the number was.
Speaker 3: It is going to interesting.
Speaker 2: People don't show up the games, I'm saying at all,
Speaker 2: but it is clearly two percent to them is like, eh,
Speaker 2: it's a rounding year. We're not forced to change because
Speaker 2: people keep supporting us.
Speaker 9: We're fine with average.
Speaker 2: It's true of any product in or line care for
Speaker 2: it's football, baseball, I don't care if it's if it's
Speaker 2: you know, whatever it is. Yeah, and so it is,
Speaker 2: keep supporting it. There's no impetus.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 8: He didn't have much to say in those sixty three minutes,
Speaker 8: just kind of became repetitive, and he said he has
Speaker 8: a lot of confidence in the coaching staff, loves Zach
Speaker 8: Taylor's as he respects him as.
Speaker 3: A coach, Tomlin and on Super Bowls.
Speaker 9: Yeah, three years in a row with no playoffs.
Speaker 3: Yep, that's okay. Everything's fine.
Speaker 8: Fine, But turning on social media if you are curious
Speaker 8: about how the Bengals are spending their off season. Joe
Speaker 8: Burrow and a bunch of guys like ORLANDA Brown Junior,
Speaker 8: Jamar Chase. They were all seen in Vegas and then
Speaker 8: Joe Burrow was at the Golden.
Speaker 9: Globes the other night.
Speaker 3: Wonderful.
Speaker 9: They're doing just fine, just like kist Obin and in
Speaker 9: Zach Taylor.
Speaker 3: Everything's fine.
Speaker 8: Shifting gears here seventy one days until opening day, of course,
Speaker 8: against the Red Sox this weekend, though, to get you bye,
Speaker 8: we've got Reds Fest. Reds Fest back at the Convention
Speaker 8: Center yep, Friday from three to ten thirty Saturday eleven
Speaker 8: to six thirty.
Speaker 9: Last week, Ellie Da la Cruz was not confirmed. Now
Speaker 9: he was.
Speaker 3: Careful the show up demands. Yeah, he got it done, though.
Speaker 8: I got it done. You are welcome Cincinnati. So Ellie
Speaker 8: will not be there for how long? I'm not exactly sure.
Speaker 8: I don't know what his appearances look like this weekend,
Speaker 8: but I love it's fast. I love that it's back.
Speaker 8: The Convention Center is all decked out on the outside.
Speaker 8: You've got the brand new Cincinnati signed lit up in
Speaker 8: red and white, and so yeah, it's.
Speaker 9: Gonna be a good time Friday. To kick things off.
Speaker 8: You've got Bronson Arroyo with a live musical performance at
Speaker 8: four thirty at the main Yes, sure, yeah, he's sticking
Speaker 8: around and they're going to do an intro for all
Speaker 8: the players past and present at that main stage at
Speaker 8: five thirty. And one of my favorite events on that
Speaker 8: Friday night, if you're still going to be there, eight
Speaker 8: forty five is the kid's only press conference, so kids
Speaker 8: get to ask the players the questions and it's always
Speaker 8: just a really.
Speaker 3: Cute are you checking out?
Speaker 1: Year?
Speaker 8: No such thing as shrip Poker, but I do want
Speaker 8: to say that the Reds Poker on Saturday is completely
Speaker 8: sold out. Everything with that benefits the Reds community fun.
Speaker 8: So looking forward to being a part of that.
Speaker 2: All right, seg Gapper and Sarah at the final table
Speaker 2: Strip Poker.
Speaker 9: Give me Gapper any day please.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying, I'm just saying, all right.
Speaker 9: So that's what's trying to do sports.
Speaker 2: Sarah leaves, it's a snort report this morning, So again
Speaker 2: we had. The paper bags from the Bengals are now
Speaker 2: being used at UCE in what's seventy one days?
Speaker 3: He'll BB's a Reds Reds answer.
Speaker 9: Please don't bring the bags to g ABP.
Speaker 3: Getting a lot of miles out of the paper bag.
Speaker 9: We really need a bat, though, Incinnati.
Speaker 3: Sports paper bag capital of America.
Speaker 9: Please sign a big bat for the Reds.
Speaker 2: All right, news is on the way next slowly seven
Speaker 2: hundreds since net