Speaker 1: Do you want to be an American? It's a Scott's Loan
Speaker 1: show on seven hundred WLW. The biggest problem with the
Speaker 1: Affordable Care at probably's the number of problems, but the
Speaker 1: biggest one is it's subsidized healthcare costs that are unrealistically expensive.
Speaker 2: That's the problem.
Speaker 1: So instead of fixing prices, it gives people money to
Speaker 1: make it less expensive for them personally. But as we know,
Speaker 1: whether it's college or this subsidy just drives the cost
Speaker 1: up even more. And it's an endless cycle. It's in
Speaker 1: an endless loop. But the GOP has recently come on
Speaker 1: with a plan to fix the problem, but does it
Speaker 1: actually fix the problem. Dean Clancy's here is a senior
Speaker 1: health policy fellow at Americans Prosperity.
Speaker 2: Dean, how are you?
Speaker 3: I'm doing great? Thanks?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I look at this. So I gave this
Speaker 1: analogy not long ago. Hear me out. This may take
Speaker 1: just a second, so you know, it's hard to follow
Speaker 1: what's going on here for most folks, myself included. But
Speaker 1: the ACA subsidies are like giving someone a discount coupon
Speaker 1: at a nice restaurant. The proposal Republicans want is like
Speaker 1: the HSA, So that's your health savings account. You get
Speaker 1: the moneyset of insurance companies. You hand them cash, tell
Speaker 1: them to figure out dinner on their own. So the
Speaker 1: coupon guarantees you can eat at the restaurant, which is
Speaker 1: basically like comprehensive insurance. Even if the menu prices keep rising,
Speaker 1: the insurance company in the risk pool keep the restaurant running.
Speaker 1: So the cash gives you freedom to choose. Maybe you
Speaker 1: buy groceries, maybe you cook at home. Maybe you spourge
Speaker 1: on a nice meal, which would be like an elective
Speaker 1: procedure versus routine care. But if you need, i don't know,
Speaker 1: buy an expensive five course meal at Boca because you
Speaker 1: lost a bet on the Bengals or something like that
Speaker 1: and you can't afford it. That'd be cancer treatment or
Speaker 1: major surgery. That cash runs out pretty fast. So neither
Speaker 1: approach really fixes the problem when the restaurant is charging
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars for a hamburger in the first place.
Speaker 2: Am I wrong about that?
Speaker 4: Well, your analogy is excellent, but I would just say
Speaker 4: that the HSA idea and President Trump was brilliant about this.
Speaker 4: He's basically flipped the politics of health reform on its head,
Speaker 4: called the Democrats bluff. What he said was I want
Speaker 4: money to go to your agasay so you can buy
Speaker 4: the healthcare that you want. But he was not suggesting
Speaker 4: that we take away people's health insurance or even that
Speaker 4: we repeal Obamacare. Those would still exist. Obamacare would still
Speaker 4: be very generous in terms of the subsidy, although as
Speaker 4: you point out, it's very expensive as well. But now
Speaker 4: people would have more resources that they could use for
Speaker 4: the doctors and health care they want without having an
Speaker 4: insurance company middleman. Obamacare gives lots of money directly from
Speaker 4: the US Treasury to health insurance companies, often for people
Speaker 4: who never visit the doctor, they never get a prescription filled.
Speaker 4: The money just goes straight to the bottom line of
Speaker 4: the health insurance companies. And Trump is saying, the Democrats,
Speaker 4: why would we keep doing that when we could give
Speaker 4: people that same money and it would lead to lower
Speaker 4: prices because people would shop for value.
Speaker 2: They would, but I don't know how much you drop prices.
Speaker 1: And the fact that you know, again most people, as
Speaker 1: you know, you look at consumer confidence, consumer pricing nexs,
Speaker 1: things like that while the economy on paper is doing well,
Speaker 1: you see a lot of people getting squeezed, especially gen zers,
Speaker 1: younger people in the workforce, seniors and the like. In
Speaker 1: the end result is you save a little bit of
Speaker 1: money and you know, you get government money and you
Speaker 1: put your own money into the HSA, but it's still
Speaker 1: not going to be enough to care to cover stuff
Speaker 1: in most cases. That's really the problem is that healthcare
Speaker 1: costs is expensive because there's no incentive for them to
Speaker 1: get the cost down.
Speaker 4: Well, no, yes, and no, because first of all, most
Speaker 4: people don't have more than one thousand dollars of out
Speaker 4: of pocket medical expenses in a given year. Obviously, there
Speaker 4: are people who have very high expenses. That's why they
Speaker 4: have insurance, and they need insurance, and programs like Obamacare
Speaker 4: are there to help make that affordable. But we can
Speaker 4: do it in an efficient way. And of course, any
Speaker 4: money in your ahsay that you don't spend, you get
Speaker 4: to keep and you even get to invest it if
Speaker 4: you want, so you can grow it into a NESTA,
Speaker 4: you can earn interest on it like a bank account,
Speaker 4: or you could put it into you know, mutual funds
Speaker 4: or whatever, just like a retirement savings account, and you
Speaker 4: can build it up and if if all goes well,
Speaker 4: by the time you're further along in life, you're going
Speaker 4: to have a real cushion there for any major shock.
Speaker 4: And of course, an important thing about HSA is they
Speaker 4: let you buy doctors, access, and healthcare that your insurance
Speaker 4: company doesn't cover. One of the problems with Obamacare is
Speaker 4: that it has shrunk access to the best doctors and hospitals,
Speaker 4: and it has also increased tenfold the number of times
Speaker 4: that an insurance company will simply deny the claim say
Speaker 4: we're not going to pay for that care. It's now
Speaker 4: twenty percent of the time the insurer refuses to pay
Speaker 4: for your health care. Under Obamacare, the HSA gives people
Speaker 4: an escape route so they can actually get access.
Speaker 1: Part of the problem is, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: big problems of many with ACAS the fact that it
Speaker 1: counted on young people to put money into the healthcare
Speaker 1: system and not use it. Much like the Social Security
Speaker 1: or subsidy model in that regard to entitlements and the like,
Speaker 1: is that well, we're hoping you don't use it, and
Speaker 1: it's there for the people who do need it. Young
Speaker 1: people are looking at this going well, healthcare costs keep rising.
Speaker 1: I mean, employer sponsored insurance presums went up, I think
Speaker 1: the highest level in fifteen years this year. Medicaid Part
Speaker 1: B jumped almost ten percent this year. And these aren't
Speaker 1: ACA enrollees. We need people to put money into the
Speaker 1: system to keep it afloat. That's not happening under ACA.
Speaker 1: How does that address this?
Speaker 4: Well, what the ACA Obamacare did was it basically drove
Speaker 4: up the cost of health insurance for young people. It
Speaker 4: did that by imposing a kind of price control on
Speaker 4: the insurance, so you can't charge the oldest person in
Speaker 4: the covered group more than three times what you charge
Speaker 4: the youngest person. So that's a gift to older folks
Speaker 4: who have higher health expenses, but it's a cost to
Speaker 4: younger people and that has made them say, you know what,
Speaker 4: this isn't worth the money. I mean, these Obamacare plans
Speaker 4: are very expensive. If you don't get a subsidy, and
Speaker 4: they have a deductible that's the part you have to
Speaker 4: pay out a pocket before the insurance even kicks in.
Speaker 4: It can be five ten thousand dollars a year. At
Speaker 4: that point you begin to ask yourself is this really
Speaker 4: even insurance? And that's why young people are staying away,
Speaker 4: and that's why the Bombacare program is in what the
Speaker 4: insurance folks call a death spiral. It's basically slowly winding down.
Speaker 4: The only thing that's covered that up is these massive
Speaker 4: extra subsidies that the government has been putting in since
Speaker 4: the pandemic.
Speaker 1: Well, that's the thing is, aren't we just swapping one
Speaker 1: subsidy for another rather controlling provider pricing and drug costs,
Speaker 1: administrative waste. We're still not addressing that issue. That's the core.
Speaker 1: That's back to that one hundred dollars hamburger analogy.
Speaker 4: Right, Why does the hamburger cost one hundred dollars, Well,
Speaker 4: we've got a a set of government mandates and rules
Speaker 4: that have distorted the whole system and most importantly, separated
Speaker 4: people from the price. Nobody asked the price of healthcare
Speaker 4: because they're not the ones paying for it. Some third
Speaker 4: party like an insurance company or their employer is paying
Speaker 4: for it. And so as a result, they tend to
Speaker 4: know that one hundred dollars hamburger It doesn't matter because
Speaker 4: they're not paying one hundred dollars and that needs to change.
Speaker 4: And if we put people in charge of the dollars,
Speaker 4: as with a tax free health savings account. Now they're
Speaker 4: going to start shopping for value because they know they
Speaker 4: get to keep what they don't spend. They're going to
Speaker 4: ask the question how much will this cost. That will
Speaker 4: make prices transparent, just like at the grocery store or
Speaker 4: the gas station, and that will force competition and that
Speaker 4: will bring down prices. And then your health insurance, assuming
Speaker 4: you deregulate the insurance, get rid of the worst mandates,
Speaker 4: the price of insurance will come down, more young people
Speaker 4: will buy in, and the risk pool will become healthy. Again,
Speaker 4: that's the way insurance is supposed to work.
Speaker 1: It is in theory. But again you're still talking about subsidy.
Speaker 1: And I guess maybe a parallel here Dean Clancy with
Speaker 1: Americans for Prosperity is that President Trump issued an executive
Speaker 1: order on price transparency that was like what six years
Speaker 1: ago on his first term. Hospitals, Yeah, they're posting prices now,
Speaker 1: but we haven't seen meaningful cost reduction. So the idea
Speaker 1: there was, hey, we're going to have chrice price transparency
Speaker 1: and help people. It's going to help lower cost and
Speaker 1: it really hasn't. And well if I look at that
Speaker 1: and go, well, that's an indicator the system is too
Speaker 1: big to shrink.
Speaker 2: Is this really going to move the needle that much?
Speaker 4: Well, I think I want to challenge that just a
Speaker 4: little bit. He did mandate that hospitals have to publish
Speaker 4: their prices. Eighty five percent of hospitals are not complying.
Speaker 3: They're hiding the prices.
Speaker 4: They make it difficult for you to find them, difficult
Speaker 4: for you to compare across competing hospitals. And so as
Speaker 4: a result, we really don't yet have that mandated price transparency.
Speaker 4: But you know what, Americans for prosperity, we don't believe
Speaker 4: in government mandates do this. We think you get price
Speaker 4: transparency when you change who controls the dollars.
Speaker 3: When the patient controls the.
Speaker 4: Dollars, prices become transparent.
Speaker 3: Naturally.
Speaker 4: That's what's missing, and that's what Donald Trump I think
Speaker 4: has brilliantly put his finger on when he says, let's
Speaker 4: fund patients instead of insurance companies.
Speaker 1: I think that helps. I mean, I don't think that's
Speaker 1: necessarily a bad thing. I just wonder if we're just
Speaker 1: not trading one subsidy for another. And time will tell
Speaker 1: if we can actually do this. You know, I always
Speaker 1: pushed back it seems to you know, being a libertarian plan,
Speaker 1: which I love, is to simply go listen, if you're
Speaker 1: an employer, you're out of healthcare business. That's going to
Speaker 1: save a ton of money. In the other area. When
Speaker 1: it comes to waste, fraud, and abuse, and no, typically
Speaker 1: when that's thrown about on the campaign trail by Republicans
Speaker 1: and Democrats, but particularly Republicans, it's like, well, somebody scamming
Speaker 1: the system. It's the biggest waste, right. There is an
Speaker 1: administrative complexity that doesn't address this because you know, as
Speaker 1: you said, the ACA is still going to be in effect,
Speaker 1: and now we have the government with HSA accounts. It's
Speaker 1: adding more administrative complexity to this thing. It doesn't that
Speaker 1: doesn't address the issue of the bureaucratic state.
Speaker 4: Well, you're absolutely right that the healthcare system is incredibly bureaucratic.
Speaker 4: You know it because you walk into a doctor's office
Speaker 4: and there's a lot of people behind the desk filing paper,
Speaker 4: and often it is paper they haven't even entered the
Speaker 4: twenty first century.
Speaker 1: I got one doctor, I got one doctor and one
Speaker 1: nurse and five people back there that are handled coding
Speaker 1: and insurance and Medicare.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right.
Speaker 4: And that's the result of the fact that because of
Speaker 4: government policies, everybody relies on insurance, even for the small
Speaker 4: things that are technically not the sort of thing you
Speaker 4: insure for, like a routine doctor's appointment, you know, a
Speaker 4: shoppable or schedulable thing. It's not an emergency. Insurance should
Speaker 4: be for emergencies, big unexpected costs. But because we don't
Speaker 4: do healthcare that way, you're right, it's just bloated with bureaucracy.
Speaker 4: The number of administrative personnel and healthcare has exploded over
Speaker 4: the last few decades, and we can change that by
Speaker 4: getting market forces back into it. That's really the only
Speaker 4: way forward. The Democrats alternative is more government. Let's put
Speaker 4: the government in more subsish, more subsidy, more control, more mandates,
Speaker 4: more price controls. To my mind, that's like putting the
Speaker 4: Department of Motor Vehicles in charge of my health.
Speaker 3: Here, I think, I know what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: Well, we saw what subsidy did to the college market, correct,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's the same thing. More SUBJCT drives cost
Speaker 1: up is all it does. And Dean Clancy, you know,
Speaker 1: I look at this and go Okay, well, we walk
Speaker 1: into a doctor's office, routine visit and pay all this money.
Speaker 1: I look at this, it's like several hundred dollars if
Speaker 1: you look at the areas, and this further underscores my
Speaker 1: id my idea, but the idea of getting everyone, get
Speaker 1: your employer and government out of healthcare and put it
Speaker 1: on the market like you buy your auto insurance, and
Speaker 1: then you'd have plenty of money left over to take
Speaker 1: care of the indigen and the people falling between the cracks,
Speaker 1: and have money left over actually to maybe take a
Speaker 1: bite out of the deficit. But I'm way ahead of
Speaker 1: my skis on this one. I look at it and go,
Speaker 1: you know, for example, I bring my dog into a veterinari. Well,
Speaker 1: and now we've got, of course healthcare plans for pets
Speaker 1: because they're going to make money off of this. But
Speaker 1: I bory buy dog in for treatment. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: fifty to sixty bucks whatever, no problem, getting the same
Speaker 1: X rays. I do it.
Speaker 2: It's thousands of dollars.
Speaker 1: LASiS with the diade surgery years ago was pretty expensive
Speaker 1: and the cost is down to like ninety nine bucks
Speaker 1: right now because guess what, most healthcare insurance policies aren't
Speaker 1: covering that. You've got to pay out a pocket for
Speaker 1: those elective procedures. I look at that and go, well,
Speaker 1: if we did that with our healthcare overall, we'd be
Speaker 1: in great shape.
Speaker 4: Absolutely No, you are absolutely right. That is the way forward,
Speaker 4: and healthcare would be much less expensive, and you'd have
Speaker 4: lots more choice and the quality would be better all
Speaker 4: because markets work in healthcare when we let them.
Speaker 3: The Affordable Care.
Speaker 4: Act that the Democrats pushed through in twenty ten has
Speaker 4: not made healthcare affordable. It's basically been a big failure.
Speaker 4: And the Democrats have basically said the twenty twenty sixth election,
Speaker 4: we're going to fight it on this issue of more
Speaker 4: government subsidies for health insurance and the money goes straight
Speaker 4: to insures. And Donald Trump and a lot of the
Speaker 4: Republicans and we at AFP all agree that that's not.
Speaker 3: The right way forward.
Speaker 4: Let's start with shifting where money.
Speaker 3: From the government is going. Let's give it to patience.
Speaker 4: Let's also let everybody have a.
Speaker 3: Health savings account.
Speaker 4: We've been talking about HSA's, but the fact is eighty
Speaker 4: percent of Americans don't have access to an HSA because
Speaker 4: of excessive federal restrictions on who can have one.
Speaker 3: Let's lift those.
Speaker 4: Let's let everybody have an HSA if they want one.
Speaker 4: That gives you a tax break on every medical purchase,
Speaker 4: and it puts you in charge and gives you more options.
Speaker 4: And yes, let's move towards a system where we're not
Speaker 4: relying on third parties like employers. You know, employers are
Speaker 4: wonderful and the employer based healthcare system is very popular,
Speaker 4: but we could actually do better. It should be more
Speaker 4: like auto insurance or home owners insurance. You know, you
Speaker 4: just buy it and like the commercial says, buy only
Speaker 4: what you need.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right now, that's not allowed.
Speaker 1: As it should be. I mean, HSA works fine for
Speaker 1: doctor visits, routine visit, sure, but catastrophic illness is something different.
Speaker 1: Someone develops cancer and you're looking at two three hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars bill. HSA doesn't really solve that problem. People
Speaker 1: don't have that kind of money, and so we should
Speaker 1: What we should focus on, though, is catastrophic here. And
Speaker 1: then you know, for routine office visits, you go and
Speaker 1: you pay for your annual wellness exam, whatever that cost is.
Speaker 1: That's going to take a lot of the red tape
Speaker 1: au bureaucracy out the more you pay out of pocket.
Speaker 1: But everyone, of course wants insurance because hey, look I
Speaker 1: got this at times where I get a prescription and
Speaker 1: it's cheaper for me to pay out a pocket that
Speaker 1: is for the insurance company.
Speaker 2: Doesn't make any damn sense.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, yeah, No, we still need insurance for sure, and
Speaker 4: we still need government safety nets to help those who
Speaker 4: cannot afford the insurance. And if everybody had an HSA,
Speaker 4: we would still need the government to put some money
Speaker 4: into the hsas of people who are indigent, very unfortunate,
Speaker 4: can't afford it. And by the way, right now you
Speaker 4: cannot use your HSA to buy insurance. If we change
Speaker 4: that and we have these safety nets, then I think
Speaker 4: you'd see a lot of people going and buying that
Speaker 4: basic catastrophic style health insurance, just you know, buying only
Speaker 4: what they need enough to protect them against the cancer
Speaker 4: or getting hit by a bus, and then that have
Speaker 4: the rest left over for the routine doctor's appointments and
Speaker 4: so on. It would be a much better and more
Speaker 4: efficient system.
Speaker 3: And I think the.
Speaker 4: Debate in Washington is moving towards that people are waking
Speaker 4: up to the fact that a government run top down
Speaker 4: healthcare system has only made things worse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think if the government steps out and becomes
Speaker 1: actually what they should be in the referee, and of
Speaker 1: course that then takes politicians out, they lose their clout,
Speaker 1: they lose their power, they lose their obviously you donation
Speaker 1: focuses and all that stuff. That's a problem because you know,
Speaker 1: if you don't need politicians, why we electing these guys
Speaker 1: in the first place. It can't even bounds a budget
Speaker 1: for crying out lot alone to manage healthcare. But nonetheless,
Speaker 1: you get them out of this line of work and
Speaker 1: lead people to buy their own stuff on the market.
Speaker 1: I think you'd have more than I'm sure somebody studied
Speaker 1: this to find out how much money you'd save in
Speaker 1: just administrative complexity and pricing failures and schemes, and the
Speaker 1: care cost of delivery of health care and over treatment
Speaker 1: and low value care. All that goes away largely because
Speaker 1: you're shopping on the free market for your healthcare like
Speaker 1: you do with other forms of insurance. And that would
Speaker 1: leave litterlely billions, if not trillions of dollars left over
Speaker 1: to really take care of the people who fall through
Speaker 1: the cracks and then they get good healthare everybody wins
Speaker 1: this and the biggest winner your employers where they don't
Speaker 1: have to offer you healthcare anymore. They're out of that
Speaker 1: line of work.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, that's it. You've put your.
Speaker 4: Finger on it. It's a pleasure talking with you because
Speaker 4: you get it. Not everybody does, but we're trying to
Speaker 4: spread the word. At AFP, we call what you're describing
Speaker 4: a personal option approach to health perform reliable, hassle free
Speaker 4: health care you can afford. And how do you get there?
Speaker 4: Let markets work. Markets will work in health care if
Speaker 4: we let them.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Of course it's all tied to elections re elections and
Speaker 1: the GOP and the Democrats, and that is really the
Speaker 1: prop Politics again are the problem, and sadly people are
Speaker 1: reason will have a bit more young people want the
Speaker 1: government to solve the problems they created in the first place.
Speaker 1: Dean Clancy, senior health policy fellow at Americans for Prosperity,
Speaker 1: Thanks for the time. I appreciate great conversation.
Speaker 3: Oh my pleasure.
Speaker 1: Take care news update on the way in just minutes
Speaker 1: on seven hundred w W Oh we can bitch and moan.
Speaker 1: Is anything going to change. No, because of our model. No,
Speaker 1: it is a good no, not at all. Quick time out,
Speaker 1: all right, Trump firing off on Somemalians. This time it
Speaker 1: was Haitians on the campaign trail. Now it's to Mullions.
Speaker 1: We'll get to that just ahead, right after news on
Speaker 1: seven hundred w W scots Landsha are in the crazy
Speaker 1: X portion of the Trump administration. Are in this first year.
Speaker 1: Every day something new, for sure. So after holding all
Speaker 1: the asylumn decisions, found the shooting the two National guardsmen
Speaker 1: in DC. Trump said this yesterday regarding Somali immigrants in
Speaker 1: the United States, go We're going.
Speaker 5: To go the wrong way if we keep taking in
Speaker 5: garbage into our country.
Speaker 2: These are people that work.
Speaker 5: These are people that say, let's go, come on, let's
Speaker 5: make this place great.
Speaker 2: These are people that do nothing but complain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm trying to figure that out, like everyone else,
Speaker 1: scratching their head, going, well, I mean, you know, you
Speaker 1: have people coming here in the nineties. And of course
Speaker 1: this is addressed towards our representative, Illien Olmar part of
Speaker 1: the squad. Of course, not a fan at all of
Speaker 1: her politics, obviously, but you know she left them all
Speaker 1: as a child refugee in ninety five, dually elected representing
Speaker 1: her community. Whether you agree or disagree with her representation
Speaker 1: of said community, a parent or constituents don't mind her,
Speaker 1: So there you go. But by and large, you know,
Speaker 1: the ideas of contributing nothing. You look at the fact
Speaker 1: pattern and it doesn't stand the test, simply because now
Speaker 1: number one being we our nation of immigrants and we're
Speaker 1: you know, you can make a case for those who
Speaker 1: come here illegally and our aliens and what they bring,
Speaker 1: and I can make a case for you know, why
Speaker 1: we need immigrant labor here, albeit we need it more legally.
Speaker 1: We needed an easier path to get here into this country.
Speaker 1: Better screening, use technology, AI, all that stuff to faster
Speaker 1: track people because there's too much incentive. When it takes
Speaker 1: anywhere between you know, ten and twenty years for someone
Speaker 1: to legally gain entrance to the United States, there's more
Speaker 1: incentive for them to skirt the system and get here illegally.
Speaker 1: And that is a big part of the problem, the
Speaker 1: court system and everything else. In the case of Somalis,
Speaker 1: though and largely most Somalis anyway, it's a different path.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not like they're sneaking across the southern
Speaker 1: border here. And so the end result is, you know,
Speaker 1: have this policy of halting temporary protected status only like
Speaker 1: I think seven hundred of them nationwide that fall in
Speaker 1: that category. So you know, you way over estimate the
Speaker 1: impact that this policy's going to have in the first place.
Speaker 1: And like we saw with the Haitians in Springboro during
Speaker 1: the election, and sometimes you got to write that off
Speaker 1: as just you know, a lot of bluster on the
Speaker 1: campaign trail because nothing ever came of that, and rightly
Speaker 1: so too, But you know, you conflate unrelated incidents here.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really matter where he was from. It's what
Speaker 1: he did. And he was a United State, a US
Speaker 1: soldier who was radicalized here at home. It's not necessarily
Speaker 1: from abroad, but from at home. And I think what if,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're really going to look at the issues,
Speaker 1: is to find out how these people are getting radicalized.
Speaker 1: And we know it's a lot of disaffected young men
Speaker 1: that tend to get swept up in this, whether it's
Speaker 1: that or any other radical group on the left or
Speaker 1: the right for that matter. So why do young men
Speaker 1: feel that they this is the only path for them?
Speaker 1: It's because they've been marginalized in this country. And then
Speaker 1: you know there's a lot Trump is he, quite honestly,
Speaker 1: first president in a long time, if ever, to address that,
Speaker 1: and rightly so is we have all or nothing mentality
Speaker 1: in this country that somehow, because women have been pushed
Speaker 1: down for so long, or any minority group, for that
Speaker 1: man to push down, that their success has to come
Speaker 1: at the expense of someone else, that lifting them up
Speaker 1: means tearing someone else down. And we know that's not
Speaker 1: the case and it shouldn't be that way, but it is,
Speaker 1: and that tearing them down has become at the expense
Speaker 1: of young men who have been left behind for tied
Speaker 1: too long in this cut. So we solve the problem
Speaker 1: of women and rising women lifting women up, but we've
Speaker 1: done that at the expense of men. And you know,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, it's about what you
Speaker 1: can produce, and you know, largely to me, ninety percent
Speaker 1: of it is just showing up, willing, having the right attitude,
Speaker 1: and willing to work hard. Are there going to be
Speaker 1: setbacks and problems, Absolutely, there's no question about.
Speaker 2: Everyone has that.
Speaker 1: And just because you have a setback as a woman
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that there's a glass ceiling, and that everyone's
Speaker 1: all manner out to get you. And I think that's
Speaker 1: often conflated too. Also adds to part of the problem.
Speaker 1: But relative to the situation here with some minds, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, you're an American soldier, you're served in this
Speaker 1: country in the armed services, and then you're radicalized at home.
Speaker 1: That much we know so far about why he did
Speaker 1: what he did. It really doesn't have anything to do
Speaker 1: where you come from. You know, we know that people
Speaker 1: commit crimes all the time, whether they're black, white, immigrant
Speaker 1: or natural born citizens of the United States. Crime certainly does
Speaker 1: not know no border. Let's put it that way, whether
Speaker 1: it's socioeconomic or where you immigrated from, or if you
Speaker 1: live in this country a long time and have the
Speaker 1: biggest crime we have, the biggest problem we have in Cincinnati,
Speaker 1: or what has nothing to do with refugees. It has
Speaker 1: every to do with people who are predatory criminals. So
Speaker 1: address that issue. There's just no connection between the incident
Speaker 1: and Somali immigrants. And you know, we've got in a
Speaker 1: crazy ex spouse mode here at this point going on.
Speaker 1: We're just going to they contribute nothing to society, not
Speaker 1: really helpful.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm sure that appeals to a certain sector
Speaker 1: of MAGA voters, but you know, by and large, it's
Speaker 1: steady died of this stuff. It's exhausting, is what it is.
Speaker 1: We have so many I'll point this out. I just
Speaker 1: had a conversation with Dean Clancy from Americans for Prosperity.
Speaker 1: You know, the healthcare is shoot in America. What happened
Speaker 1: in DC with the shooting is it's a crime. It's tragic,
Speaker 1: and certainly, you know, we shouldn't downplay that. But to
Speaker 1: somehow think that this is a bigger problem because it's
Speaker 1: Samali refugees, is like the Haitians or any other immigrant
Speaker 1: group for that problem, or making the problem out to
Speaker 1: be much bigger than it really is in that regard,
Speaker 1: and who to blame? Who's the blame for it? You know,
Speaker 1: sweeping all some allies togethers not part of the problem.
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't. I think most people, like you
Speaker 1: can't say everybody, but certainly als everyone is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not really it, man, And then we waste a
Speaker 1: lot of energy and time talking about things like that
Speaker 1: and distracts. It's because there are real problems out there.
Speaker 1: We're not addressing the budget deficit. We're not addressing healthcare.
Speaker 1: I mentioned. I just had Dean Clancy on from AFP saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Republican solution to this, the plan finally after fifteen years,
Speaker 1: by the way, better in some ways. Yeah, because it's
Speaker 1: going to give you money to pay your health care.
Speaker 1: But the problem is, and again just like what Trump's
Speaker 1: doing with the Somali issue is it's like it's not
Speaker 1: really addressing the core issue here.
Speaker 2: You know, why is healthcare so damn expensive?
Speaker 1: You can, okay, you can give money to insurance companies
Speaker 1: which are just going to incentivize them to charge you
Speaker 1: even more, like we did with college and everything else
Speaker 1: we subsidize. But in this case, you're gonna give me
Speaker 1: the money to buy my health care, and the free
Speaker 1: market great. But if I have to have a procedure
Speaker 1: done that costs thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: more than it should have or more than should cost,
Speaker 1: I don't have enough money in that kind of cover it.
Speaker 1: So again it's you're shifting the money back, and I
Speaker 1: appreciate you giving it to me as opposed to someone else.
Speaker 1: I just don't see how that is going to help
Speaker 1: people who and certainly it's not everyone, but a lot
Speaker 1: of people who come up with some sort of debilitating illness, accident,
Speaker 1: whatever it might be, and that they just don't make
Speaker 1: enough money, enough money in that account to cover the
Speaker 1: medical expense. How do we get that cost down? I
Speaker 1: think addressing the issue of subsidy is the way to
Speaker 1: go about that. But this is just part and parcel.
Speaker 1: It's you know, we want quick changes overnight, and we
Speaker 1: want to assess quick blame on something as to you know,
Speaker 1: why healthcare is expensive. It's a fall of democrats wise.
Speaker 1: You know, how did two soldiers get shot in DC?
Speaker 1: Well we had so we got to get rid of
Speaker 1: some molly's. I mean, it just it doesn't. It doesn't.
Speaker 1: It's like hair on fire policy. And this is just
Speaker 1: the first year. It's going to get a lot more exhausting.
Speaker 2: Coming up.
Speaker 1: We'll we get time out in and more to follow
Speaker 1: here coming up. At ten oh six on the show,
Speaker 1: Alicia Reese jumps in. She's got lots of say about
Speaker 1: the property tax rebate battle. There's something else going on there,
Speaker 1: and you know you were promised at one point if
Speaker 1: you're around in ninety six. A voter in ninety six,
Speaker 1: you're promised a thirty percent tax rebate from the county
Speaker 1: if you okayed the sales tax to build the stadiums.
Speaker 1: Of course we've only done that a couple to handful
Speaker 1: of times and the last thirty plus years. Uh, this
Speaker 1: time around, you're gonna get a whopping four and a
Speaker 1: half percent. She has issue with that and says the
Speaker 1: money is there, and she'll explain where and how. Coming
Speaker 1: up on the show at ten oh six, after a
Speaker 1: quick time out seven hundred w WELWT, my wife was
Speaker 1: watching the U for some reason. The Sean Combs, the
Speaker 1: Reckoning documentary on Netflix said man, I I had no
Speaker 1: idea how bad he just an awful person. Like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you think you think they're gonna do a documentary to
Speaker 1: make them look good. And there's a no, I'm not
Speaker 1: downplaying what he did because it's horrific, but yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not gonna not gonna make him look good.
Speaker 2: That's for damn sure.
Speaker 1: Scott's show. This is seven hundred WLW. Thanks for checking
Speaker 1: it out on the iHeartRadio app taking this wherever you go,
Speaker 1: and of course the podcast following the show as well.
Speaker 1: You know, you got to give credit where credits due.
Speaker 1: Speaking to someone who was in Price Hill yesterday and
Speaker 1: said for the first time that they can remember in
Speaker 1: probably a decade that the side streets were actually cleared
Speaker 1: in West Price Hill like that hasn't happened. I haven't
Speaker 1: just used to residents. They're just used to snow up
Speaker 1: to your ankles anytime we get four or five inches
Speaker 1: of snow and no one is there to clear it.
Speaker 1: And the streets were actually plowed in West Price Hill.
Speaker 1: Now that we're twenty four hours past Snowmageddon, at least
Speaker 1: the first round of it. Anyway, we spent a little
Speaker 1: more flurries in the forte and certainly we're gonna get
Speaker 1: our share of snow this winter. It's bound to happen.
Speaker 1: But the first test for the new city services seemingly
Speaker 1: went extremely extremely well. That eighty snow trucks snowplows operating
Speaker 1: in twelve hour shifts yesterday morning. Cruz got to residential
Speaker 1: streets at eleven am yesterday and anything left they're going
Speaker 1: to get the shoulders of the roads and the like.
Speaker 1: And they are very proactive in this whole thing. That
Speaker 1: snow Tracker app, the plow tracker app and website rather
Speaker 1: had some server issues because of high demand. So and
Speaker 1: I'm sure if you logged onto that you saw some
Speaker 1: black screens or little data or no data or whatever
Speaker 1: it might be. Any interface is a little clunky, it's
Speaker 1: not the best thing, but it's light years ahead of
Speaker 1: where they were and where we were this time last year.
Speaker 1: So I think it's important. You know, you got to
Speaker 1: give credit where credit is due, and this was an
Speaker 1: unmitigated train wreck last year and years previous for that matter.
Speaker 1: You know, the big question still remains, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people on console will tell you, well, I wasn't
Speaker 1: there when I love when politicians do that. You know,
Speaker 1: I wasn't there when we know, we know you've absolved
Speaker 1: yourself that it's been ignored for twenty years. I mean,
Speaker 1: all the money that was supposed to go to that
Speaker 1: infrat structure went to other things, and that is just
Speaker 1: a it's an incredible waste of money. As much as
Speaker 1: we beat up on aft ed Pure Vault, it was
Speaker 1: solved under his watch. Now one year and one snowstorm
Speaker 1: doesn't make a trend, for sure, I get that, but
Speaker 1: it seems like we've learned for those lessons and moved
Speaker 1: past that. And it's typical with government is that once
Speaker 1: they feel they've solved a problem, what happens is they
Speaker 1: ignore the mechanism that got them to the point of success.
Speaker 1: They go, well, why do It's just like the policing
Speaker 1: problem in Cincinnati again, right, we had what happened in
Speaker 1: two thousand and one with the Timothy Thomas shooting and
Speaker 1: the riots and the unrest, and we had the collaborative agreement.
Speaker 1: We did all that stuff and spent millions and millions
Speaker 1: and millions of dollars, and in a period of time
Speaker 1: became one of the best, if not the best, law
Speaker 1: enforcement community in the United States, to the point where
Speaker 1: under Obama, they were sending attorneys here, government attorneys to
Speaker 1: learn what Cincinnati was doing.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And I think the problem is when you hit success,
Speaker 1: you go, okay, we just we don't need to spend
Speaker 1: this much money. We can't justify the cost of this anymore.
Speaker 1: And so we take the money intended for that and
Speaker 1: send it elsewhere. And what happens is, you know water self, lovely, Okay,
Speaker 1: We're gonna take the money and put it over here. Well,
Speaker 1: now you've ignored it, and we've got a crime problem again.
Speaker 1: And so it goes. And whether that's crime or snow plows,
Speaker 1: it's the same thing. And maybe there's a time when
Speaker 1: the roads to get all clear, go well, why are
Speaker 1: we doing this? We don't give much too and Cincinnati,
Speaker 1: let's spend the money somewhere else. We don't need to
Speaker 1: fix that. You know, we'll fix the plows next year.
Speaker 1: We'll get new plows next year. And then eventually the
Speaker 1: equipment breaks down and you can't services anymore, and you
Speaker 1: get what we got last year. So changes were made
Speaker 1: and tip of the cap because from what I understand,
Speaker 1: having not driven down there, you probably could tell me
Speaker 1: better if you live in Cincinnati or drive downtown that
Speaker 1: things were markedly better.
Speaker 2: But that's what we're hearing, so good for them. Anyway.
Speaker 1: We'll get a news update in Alicia Reese jumps on
Speaker 1: the show next from Hamlin County Commission. She voted against
Speaker 1: the four and a half percent property tax rebate. She
Speaker 1: wanted the full thirty Why and she says the money's there.
Speaker 1: She'll explain after this on the Home of the Best
Speaker 1: Bengals coverage seven hundred WWT.
Speaker 2: Since then, I want to be amic.
Speaker 1: Lonely Buckoun seven hundred held up to the news yesterday,
Speaker 1: the Hamlin County commissioned it is the topic that keeps
Speaker 1: on giving. The property tax rebid in Hamlin County commissions
Speaker 1: are proving four and a half percent for next year,
Speaker 1: and that, of course, way far away from the thirty
Speaker 1: percent promise. When voters approved the half cent tax levy
Speaker 1: and the tax increase in ninety six to fund stadium construction,
Speaker 1: the vote was two to one, and the no vote
Speaker 1: on it, of course is from our good front Commissioner
Speaker 1: Alicia Reese, who joins the show this morning on seven
Speaker 1: hundred w ALW.
Speaker 2: Madam Commissioner, glad to speak with you.
Speaker 6: Good, good to be heard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I gotcha, all right. So we've taught I think
Speaker 1: we've talked this a lot.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: One year we had the thirty percent, got that back promised. Okay,
Speaker 1: Now it's four and a half percent. The approved rate
Speaker 1: of four and a half percent. If given it'd be
Speaker 1: like thirty two million. This is just five million. And
Speaker 1: I look at the numbers and you have been the
Speaker 1: loan dissenting void a voice on this one too.
Speaker 2: Two years ago. I think it was the full third
Speaker 2: three percent.
Speaker 1: We got that back.
Speaker 2: What changed in the last couple of years.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, let me just say that, you know, when
Speaker 6: I ran this my sex time being re elected. But
Speaker 6: when I ran, I got down there, they were at
Speaker 6: single digits, which is where they're at now on the
Speaker 6: property tax rollback that was promised.
Speaker 3: To the voters.
Speaker 6: And I had said that, you know, I came on
Speaker 6: your show and your listeners and we were able to
Speaker 6: get the thirty percent had never been really introduced, and
Speaker 6: we had the thirty percent because we have to do
Speaker 6: it every single year. One of the things that I
Speaker 6: saw was that it was a promise made to the taxpayers,
Speaker 6: but they never wanted to put it in writing, and
Speaker 6: they were hoping that the taxpayers would not be paying attention.
Speaker 6: And so I think what makes this one significant is
Speaker 6: that when we started looking at the biggles, when we
Speaker 6: start going to the Bengal negotiations, that's when this particular
Speaker 6: county commission board they wrote the taxpayers out. They voted
Speaker 6: for something to go against what the tax taxpayers were promised.
Speaker 6: Because as you could see in the Business Courier, the
Speaker 6: headline with county property tax rebate looks to take a
Speaker 6: major hits. New Bengals lease is the factor, and that's
Speaker 6: the factor we keep in the promise to the stadiums,
Speaker 6: but not the promise to the over two hundred thousand homeowners.
Speaker 6: We've got two sets of talking points. Long one when
Speaker 6: it comes to the taxpayers and homeowners. They bring out
Speaker 6: a set of talking points from the administrators and my
Speaker 6: colleagues and they say, hey, we can't do this. It's
Speaker 6: fiscally irresponsible. We don't have any money. They brought a
Speaker 6: chart out. I'd never seen chart. It's going downward and
Speaker 6: we might go bankrupt. My colleague Disease three House have
Speaker 6: put in the paper that because we went with thirty percent,
Speaker 6: which she voted against a tax break for the homeowners
Speaker 6: and thirty percent because of that, we we just can't
Speaker 6: do it and we're going bankrupt. Then they got another
Speaker 6: set of talking points when the Bengals lease came, Oh,
Speaker 6: this is a great thing.
Speaker 5: We got to do it.
Speaker 6: Over three hundred and fifty million dollars and an eight
Speaker 6: hundred million dollar deal with interest, nothing for the taxpayers.
Speaker 6: They were toasting it up. We did it, We did it,
Speaker 6: and we and we screwed the Hamilton county taxpayers. That's
Speaker 6: not irresponsible. They didn't say it was irresponsible when it's
Speaker 6: a fund that does sales tax and the Bengals were
Speaker 6: exempt from sales tax. Maybe that reason why the fund
Speaker 6: is going down. But they got to set another set.
Speaker 6: And then just the other day they had some talking
Speaker 6: points and they said, oh, we've got to do this
Speaker 6: redevelopment again of the banks, which is eight hundred million
Speaker 6: dollars with some tables and chairs and some spaces where
Speaker 6: people can hear free music. They went to clap it
Speaker 6: and we got the money when we wanted to do
Speaker 6: sundance and I supported sundance, but we didn't get it.
Speaker 6: We came up the administrator said, and I got a
Speaker 6: rabbit out of the hat. Here's another two million dollars.
Speaker 5: We can do it.
Speaker 6: Well, we were going to do another thing that we needed.
Speaker 6: He went into the rabbit and the hat. We can
Speaker 6: do it. So it's a magic show down at the
Speaker 6: county that I have observed since i've been there. And
Speaker 6: then it was said that my colleague said, well, maybe
Speaker 6: if we don't do the thirty percent and we'll keep collecting,
Speaker 6: we'll be able to do more in the future. Well,
Speaker 6: we've done this for thirty years. Twenty four of those
Speaker 6: years I wasn't even there. So where was this collection?
Speaker 6: Because for twenty four years we've been in single digits.
Speaker 6: Twenty four years, we haven't done the thirty percent, So
Speaker 6: where is this collection of money that they're referring to.
Speaker 6: We gave them twenty four years. I gave them twenty
Speaker 6: four years before I got there, and then I introduced
Speaker 6: the thirty percent. And now all of a sudden, you
Speaker 6: say that because of the homew owners getting a break,
Speaker 6: we're bankrupting the fund. So there's two sets of talking points.
Speaker 6: It's a every time we get ready for this season,
Speaker 6: as you know songs, it's a magic show the administrator
Speaker 6: when certain people want something, my colleagues come out and jump.
Speaker 6: We found the money for the Bengals. If we didn't
Speaker 6: have the money, maybe we should have got a different deal.
Speaker 6: If the fund was going bankrupt, maybe we should have said, no, Bengals,
Speaker 6: you cannot be exempt from sales tax because we use
Speaker 6: sales tax to fund the stadium. Maybe we should have
Speaker 6: said no, we need a deal like Denver where less
Speaker 6: public money. They almost have no public money going in
Speaker 6: and they're going to have a brand new stadium. So
Speaker 6: to say that it's the homeowner's fault, we got to
Speaker 6: penalize the homeowners. We can't help the homeowners. The other
Speaker 6: argument they said was a thirty percent. I mean, you're
Speaker 6: not getting that much money back, Sloans. If Kroger's, I've
Speaker 6: seen Krogers say we're gonna have five and ten percent off,
Speaker 6: and people bust the door down to get that five
Speaker 6: and ten percent. You use that little card because you
Speaker 6: want to get a percentage off on your gas. People
Speaker 6: are looking for affordability break and any break we can
Speaker 6: give them as important right now now Sloan. Just yesterday
Speaker 6: they went with not giving the homeowners the full thirty
Speaker 6: percent rebate, right and then they're getting ready to vote
Speaker 6: on a budget that will increase your sewer bill. So
Speaker 6: now we're gonna that's that's adding another four percent. They
Speaker 6: added four percent last year. I disagreed. I voted no.
Speaker 6: So that's eight percent. You almost had to ten percent
Speaker 6: in two years where your bill is going up. So
Speaker 6: we're gonna make the bill go up. We're not gonna
Speaker 6: give you the break that we that you were promised.
Speaker 6: We're gonna keep the promise to the Bengals, but all
Speaker 6: of a sudden, no promise of the homeowners.
Speaker 7: We have to pay for this.
Speaker 6: It's two hundred thousand homeowners that need a break. And
Speaker 6: then we also the administrator has proposed in his budget
Speaker 6: and it might go I'm gonna fight against it.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 6: We also want to add to the closing cost.
Speaker 2: The property transfer tax.
Speaker 1: I was going to bring that up as well, and
Speaker 1: I'll fold in you know, you know, and again it's
Speaker 1: a probably not fair to bring this up, but I
Speaker 1: think it's the headline about more taxes, right, the one
Speaker 1: percent tax around the convention Center district for food and bars.
Speaker 2: If you partake in that kind of stuff.
Speaker 6: So it it.
Speaker 1: And you know that's outside of the scope too, because
Speaker 1: that's a choice. It's not mandatory like animals, you've got
Speaker 1: to buy stuff. But at the same time, I mean
Speaker 1: we add we add all that up stuff, we add
Speaker 1: it all together. Right, It but still a fee that
Speaker 1: people are going to pay.
Speaker 6: Now, wait a minute, So that's a good point you made.
Speaker 6: You're gonna add a one percent tax if you eat
Speaker 6: around a certain area. They have it in other areas,
Speaker 6: but it's at a property that the county before I
Speaker 6: got there now they voted it's there as a fifty
Speaker 6: two million dollars Millennium hotel was there. It's fifty two
Speaker 6: million dollars it cost to get rid of it and
Speaker 6: tear it down, and then you're replacing it with something
Speaker 6: that you're not making any money. This one percent doesn't
Speaker 6: go to the county. This is going to three CDC.
Speaker 6: You don't get no money back. Fifty two million dollars
Speaker 6: down the two and you put something there that doesn't
Speaker 6: make any money.
Speaker 1: That'll make money though, because you're going to bring people
Speaker 1: from out of town to spend money and pay those taxes.
Speaker 2: That's that's why they're doing it.
Speaker 1: Makes sense.
Speaker 6: Well wait a minute, hold that, Okay, fifty If the
Speaker 6: taxpayers put out fifty two million, then we're not getting
Speaker 6: anything from that that goes to the developers, so we
Speaker 6: get zero. That's what I'm saying. What I said on
Speaker 6: your show, and I broke in first with you, was
Speaker 6: that I told the administrator, I said, why don't we
Speaker 6: get the liquor like down there so that we can
Speaker 6: get the funding back to the county coffer And he's
Speaker 6: supposed to be looking at it. But anytime I say
Speaker 6: something of that magnitude. He looking at it, and he's
Speaker 6: looking at it like I said, it's a magic sho
Speaker 6: You know, there's a movie out called Now You see Me,
Speaker 6: Now you don't. That's what's happening down at the county.
Speaker 6: One minute. If you have an idea to bring money
Speaker 6: in to help the taxpayers, that all of a sudden,
Speaker 6: we can't do it. If you want to give the
Speaker 6: homeowners a break, you can't do it. If you want
Speaker 6: to get a taxpayers a break, you can't do it.
Speaker 6: Then all of a sudden, over here, like you just
Speaker 6: say it, there's a tax but we're not benefiting for him,
Speaker 6: and the homeowner's not benefiting from it. Nothing is going
Speaker 6: back to help us get a break. Is going to
Speaker 6: a developer. All of a sudden, it's a great idea,
Speaker 6: we're moving in the wrong direction. And also there's a
Speaker 6: lot of funds down there at the county. I've tried
Speaker 6: to get my hands around it, because all of a sudden,
Speaker 6: I said, give me, where are all the funds, our money?
Speaker 6: What's in here? They don't give it to me. And
Speaker 6: then all of a sudden, when certain people call, there's
Speaker 6: a rabbit out of the hat. We can do it
Speaker 6: big boos. Okay, don't worry about this, Well, Denise, we
Speaker 6: can't do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think Denise Threehouse said that. By the way,
Speaker 1: Alisha Reesa on the show the sprint of the property
Speaker 1: tax rebate, she said, I think called the last time
Speaker 1: we did the full three thirty one thirty two million
Speaker 1: dollars rebate irresponsible. It is irresponsible back and they responsible
Speaker 1: now and quoted some figures that they fund the reserve fund.
Speaker 1: Is that forty seven percent of maximum at max manual
Speaker 1: debt service the recommended numbers eighty five percent.
Speaker 2: Uh So, who's to if you're.
Speaker 1: Someone who listen to this right now and you're in
Speaker 1: the county Hamlin County Lisha Reese, you're looking at going, well,
Speaker 1: who am I supposed to believe on this?
Speaker 2: Either we have the money or we don't have the money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, it's.
Speaker 6: Well onless. We and her have a difference of opinion.
Speaker 6: I am not for raising taxes, so we're gonna always disagree.
Speaker 6: She voted again giving the homeowners the break. Last time
Speaker 6: she was the one vote that voted against it. But
Speaker 6: to put up that is irresponsible is disingenuous. Her and
Speaker 6: the administrator are together. Every time you hear the administrator
Speaker 6: is almost like an extension of the staff. Because, by
Speaker 6: the way, where was the chart when you look at
Speaker 6: that fund, you got to look at the stadium. So
Speaker 6: before you do a stadium deal, you got to put
Speaker 6: all the chips on the table. So it was irresponsible
Speaker 6: to do a stadium deal knowing that you wouldn't be
Speaker 6: able to give a break to the homeowners. That's why
Speaker 6: I wanted to take it to the ballot. It's not
Speaker 6: about who should have taxpayers believe. I'm for putting it
Speaker 6: to the taxpayers and letting them.
Speaker 8: Have a say.
Speaker 6: If you take the taxpayers off the ballot and not
Speaker 6: have a say, now you just turn it over down
Speaker 6: to the administration. Now, I'll be honest with you. When
Speaker 6: I came in, I came in. I'm the newest member
Speaker 6: of and I came in because people said they wanted
Speaker 6: me to shake it up, open up the process, and
Speaker 6: fight for the taxpayers first. And so that's where I'm
Speaker 6: coming from. So we all got differences of who we
Speaker 6: you know, what we believe and so forth. But I'm
Speaker 6: looking at the numbers the Bengals deal, and if the
Speaker 6: headline was right in the courier is the reason the
Speaker 6: fund is going the way it's going. The fact that
Speaker 6: they're not paying any sales tax themselves is the reason
Speaker 6: that the fund is going bankrupt. So her belief is
Speaker 6: blame the homeowners. Mine is let's look at who's getting
Speaker 6: who's benefiting from the fund, and it's not the homeowners.
Speaker 6: And I believe that we could have done both if
Speaker 6: we would have gotten a better deal. But if you
Speaker 6: don't get a whole house away, and now you come
Speaker 6: back to the people who elected us and you tell
Speaker 6: them we can't do it. We can't keep your promise,
Speaker 6: but we can keep the fromiss to the Bengals, I
Speaker 6: think from the voters that voted for me the two
Speaker 6: hundred eighteen thousand, they're saying, that's a bunch of crap,
Speaker 6: and then to come back on the same thing and
Speaker 6: pile on and say, now we're going to go up
Speaker 6: on your stewer rate. The people that voted for me
Speaker 6: two hunderd eighteen thousand said that's a bunch of bulls,
Speaker 6: And then to come back and say, now we're going
Speaker 6: to balance the budget by now even adding this real
Speaker 6: estate transfer fee. You know, the realators, the investors real
Speaker 6: estate investors, the real estate homeowners, all of them have
Speaker 6: come out over seventy five two hundred members. And they
Speaker 6: didn't even get the courtesy of even being talked to
Speaker 6: the Board of Realtors. They didn't even get the home
Speaker 6: Builders Association, they didn't even get the courtesy of getting
Speaker 6: a phone call. And so they have come out. So
Speaker 6: the experts who are in this have come out and
Speaker 6: said this is going to hurt us as a county
Speaker 6: because people will now move to other counties. The people
Speaker 6: who do this every day for a living and also
Speaker 6: pay taxes have said that rent will go up because
Speaker 6: the landlords now got to pass this this property tax
Speaker 6: on to somebody, and they're going to pass it on.
Speaker 6: And then, as you know, Sloan, there was articles that
Speaker 6: the in Choir is doing on these senior citizens, and
Speaker 6: they had one of them that I brought up. Gentlemen
Speaker 6: seventy three years old, always worked his whole life, painted bills,
Speaker 6: had his home and now getting ready to lose his
Speaker 6: home because the property tax has jumped up triple and
Speaker 6: after his solid security check, he only has he pays
Speaker 6: that right the property tax. He only has forty dollars
Speaker 6: left to pay for medicine, gas and electric et cetera.
Speaker 1: And I know the state is the State's working on
Speaker 1: a plan to help folks like that, which is a
Speaker 1: good thing. Finally, Alisia Reese, I know you also started
Speaker 1: to change that org petition for residents of voice. Does
Speaker 1: that really carry that much weight? I mean it changed
Speaker 1: dot org. It doesn't really influence it then, does it.
Speaker 6: Well, what we want to do is every year we
Speaker 6: have to vote on this, and it always comes at
Speaker 6: the last second, so people might can't get down there.
Speaker 6: I want to start now and hear from the people directly,
Speaker 6: and so therefore that's why we put the petition out there,
Speaker 6: so we could hear from the people directly. I'm hearing
Speaker 6: from them, am I out in the community, But I
Speaker 6: want to make sure they understand my colleagues. They may say, oh,
Speaker 6: it's two to one. No, it's not two to one.
Speaker 6: I got two hundred and eighteen thousand voters. But now
Speaker 6: let's hear from the I'm trying to let them hear
Speaker 6: from the homeowners themselves. And so this petition will it
Speaker 6: won't stop to thirty percent this time, but we would
Speaker 6: be prepared next time. But secondly, it can also impact
Speaker 6: the budget that we're getting ready to do with the
Speaker 6: additional fee for the transfer tax, and so we'll be
Speaker 6: fighting for that. So the reason we're doing this is
Speaker 6: to try to give the people it's to be heard,
Speaker 6: and then we'll be prepared so when we go in
Speaker 6: they say, hey, here's what the people are saying. And
Speaker 6: I do think it can make a difference, because Sloan,
Speaker 6: they didn't. They told me we could never get thirty percent.
Speaker 6: I came on here and we fought, like hell, we
Speaker 6: got it my first year. We came on here, we
Speaker 6: fought like hell, we got it another year, and so
Speaker 6: we just got to keep fighting. But if you get quiet,
Speaker 6: they're hoping you get quiet. They're hoping you don't know.
Speaker 6: We're hoping that you only a few people know what's
Speaker 6: going on, and then by the time you get your bill,
Speaker 6: it's too late because the vote has already been teged.
Speaker 1: She is, she's preaching the gods with the lead show reason.
Speaker 1: I know you had a health scare and I wasn't
Speaker 1: aware of that, but I'm so glad that unfortunately got
Speaker 1: great treatment, great healthcare, you see, and you're doing much
Speaker 1: much better. So it's good to have you back in
Speaker 1: the game and speaking truth of power.
Speaker 8: Great.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I got great health care. Mercy jew mercy. You're
Speaker 6: saying the nurses and the doctors, and my doctor said
Speaker 6: it could have been fatal. So I just want to
Speaker 6: be very spiritual. I want to thank God, but I
Speaker 6: want to say those doctors and nurses. And while I
Speaker 6: was there, what are nurses? That came on the TV.
Speaker 6: They didn't know who I was, and the property tax
Speaker 6: came on and she says, oh, man, I me and
Speaker 6: my husband we can't afford to go up. And so
Speaker 6: that's why I went to the meeting yesterday, even.
Speaker 1: Though you're not supposed to be doing it. Will you
Speaker 1: get shut the hell up and get some rest?
Speaker 2: Would you go?
Speaker 6: I'll go lay down down, put your feed up.
Speaker 1: Elevate, get get the coughs on your ear legs to
Speaker 1: keep the DVT away, and uh live to fight another day.
Speaker 1: God bless you. Alicia, Thanks for coming on. Thank you,
Speaker 1: take care of It's a Scott Slung show. One of
Speaker 1: my favorite all time guests. Right there, Alicia, she just
Speaker 1: she just spits, man, she just goes well, say hi,
Speaker 1: and man, I can go get coffee.
Speaker 2: Come on back. She's still talking. She's the best right there.
Speaker 2: That's great Scott's Slung Show seven hundred WW.
Speaker 1: Helping you navigate the rocky path of fulfilling employement.
Speaker 2: Here's our career, sure about it, Julie Bouki.
Speaker 1: Every Wednesday morning, this time we talked to our good
Speaker 1: friend Julie Balki with the Bauki Group, the principal there. Uh,
Speaker 1: and we've got news now that if you're a Kroger employee,
Speaker 1: it's over. Now you've got to go back to work.
Speaker 1: And they announced this at the same time we just
Speaker 1: had five inches of snowfall, so now you got to
Speaker 1: deal with that.
Speaker 8: Ms.
Speaker 2: Bouki, welcome. How you been.
Speaker 9: Fantastic? Yes, it is. Uh, it's a bit confounding, not surprising,
Speaker 9: but a bit confounding.
Speaker 8: Why is it you found it?
Speaker 6: Why?
Speaker 1: Why is that so confounded? We go back to because
Speaker 1: there's there's something to be set up for human interaction.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, I got a zoom meeting and there's
Speaker 1: delay and there's glitches like leaving.
Speaker 2: Everybody on there. Somebody said about working in an office.
Speaker 9: Though you know there's Yeah, so let's let's take a
Speaker 9: look at at the last fourteen months with Kroger. August
Speaker 9: to twenty twenty four, they laid off one thousand administrative people.
Speaker 9: In February they laid off two hundred corporate staff. And
Speaker 9: they required people to be in the office three to
Speaker 9: four days a week. So they already had a three
Speaker 9: to four day requirement for being in And so now
Speaker 9: we're saying, okay, so now you're getting rid of hybrid,
Speaker 9: and you're getting rid of hybrid and flexibility for everybody.
Speaker 9: And I'm just, I would just I'm curious, and I'm
Speaker 9: sure they have an answer, but what does five days
Speaker 9: do for you that three to four days didn't do
Speaker 9: for you? And when we look at when we look
Speaker 9: at the trends, it's just it's fascinating because it's right
Speaker 9: now we're in a place where when you look at
Speaker 9: the number of work days period done in this country,
Speaker 9: twenty five percent of the work days are done remotely
Speaker 9: and that number has not changed for two years. It
Speaker 9: was sixty some percent during COVID. So I have always said,
Speaker 9: hybrid is where we're going to land. Some flexibility, Hybrid
Speaker 9: is where we're going to land. And when you look
Speaker 9: at then you start looking at Okay, so what impact
Speaker 9: does this have women have dropped out of the workforce.
Speaker 9: Forty three percent of women who work full time are
Speaker 9: the primary breadwinner. They are estimating by the end of
Speaker 9: twenty twenty five, which were almost there, half a million
Speaker 9: women will have dropped out of the workforce. Women were
Speaker 9: their happiest and most engaged during COVID when they got
Speaker 9: some time and flexibility. Right, and then you say, all right,
Speaker 9: so half a million women leaving the workforce, that's going
Speaker 9: to keep going. That's going to keep building. Seventy some
Speaker 9: percent of women I was reading the survey said they
Speaker 9: would consider changing jobs if they lost their flexibility. And
Speaker 9: so it's it is. And then just on top of that,
Speaker 9: it's attraction, retention and engagement strategy. And the experts in
Speaker 9: this field, the people who are really they're studying the
Speaker 9: companies that are trying this, that are doing kind of
Speaker 9: ab groups to see what the difference is when they
Speaker 9: have fully in the office and fully you know, and
Speaker 9: some sort of level of hybrid. The numbers are very clear.
Speaker 9: Turnover goes down, profitability goes up, and we're seeing as
Speaker 9: over and over and over again, and no performance difference.
Speaker 9: There was a study done by the Stanford economist Nick Bloom,
Speaker 9: who's sort of.
Speaker 7: The guru of all this.
Speaker 9: And so when you say we want you in eight
Speaker 9: to five, five days a week, Kroger perfectly, absolutely has
Speaker 9: the right to say that, no doubt about it. Your
Speaker 9: company you can run at how you want. But the
Speaker 9: ripple effect on your ability to retain your people that
Speaker 9: you currently have to attract new people, especially younger people,
Speaker 9: and have them fully in absolutely diminish this. There's no
Speaker 9: doubt about that. And if you're willing to live with that,
Speaker 9: go right ahead.
Speaker 1: But that's just a fact of where we are right
Speaker 1: and we have metrics now right as we have five
Speaker 1: years of data. Multiple studies show that remote workers are
Speaker 1: often more productive than those who work in the office.
Speaker 1: For your distractions, can you time right, you've got a
Speaker 1: better work life balance which keeps you engaged. If productivity
Speaker 1: hasn't declined and arguable in many cases, has improved doing
Speaker 1: remote work. What is Kroger or anyone's business justification for
Speaker 1: forcing people back to the office.
Speaker 9: They use words like better teamwork, better, it is better that. Okay,
Speaker 9: I get that, But what the studies are showing is
Speaker 9: that when organizations who figure out how to manage inside
Speaker 9: of a hybrid or flexible structure, learn to set expectations,
Speaker 9: gain commitment, and really, you know, hold people accountable while
Speaker 9: giving them autonomy. Those are the ones that are going
Speaker 9: to attract and retain the best people. Your best people
Speaker 9: want options on how to live their lives, and they
Speaker 9: have options, so they're going to start you start losing
Speaker 9: your ability to pull the best people into your applicants,
Speaker 9: into your applicant pool. And it's just, yeah, I don't
Speaker 9: it's I'd love to have a crystal wall and know
Speaker 9: what's what it's going to be like in five years,
Speaker 9: but you know, it's it's interesting to see. And part
Speaker 9: of this too, is tied back to I mean I
Speaker 9: was reading some things that said, well, they're just trying
Speaker 9: to get that they're doing this to try to get
Speaker 9: people to quit like that. Always, anytime I hear that,
Speaker 9: I think that if that's true, that's dumb because you're
Speaker 9: going to lose your best people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, your best people have other options.
Speaker 1: If you're good, you have a But then again, I
Speaker 1: mean the past, the way would work would be that Okay, hey,
Speaker 1: we've got different roles for our best people, and that's
Speaker 1: them as the rules, right, they can Griffy Jr.
Speaker 2: Role, so to speak.
Speaker 1: It's like, if you're a performer and you're doing well,
Speaker 1: we tend to look go out and give you plenty
Speaker 1: of room that we wouldn't give other employees.
Speaker 2: But now you're not doing that doesn't make any sense?
Speaker 9: Yeah, I know. I'd especially love to know what the
Speaker 9: impact is going to be on the IT department because
Speaker 9: those are the ones. Those are the people who have
Speaker 9: sent There is zero reason for me to come in
Speaker 9: the office. I can see maybe a couple days a week,
Speaker 9: but that's that's the department that it is, the function
Speaker 9: that really was the that was the one who really
Speaker 9: the canary and coal mine on remote work because they
Speaker 9: work with technology all the time and it's not location dependent,
Speaker 9: and so those how will you retain your IT people
Speaker 9: and attract new IT talents when you're completely going against
Speaker 9: the tide. So I'm sure they've thought through all these things.
Speaker 7: I hope so.
Speaker 9: But it's just interesting to watch because it will lead
Speaker 9: to people are already pressured. So when you lays that
Speaker 9: many people say twelve hundred or more in the last year,
Speaker 9: who's doing that work right now? Who's doing work you are?
Speaker 9: It's trickling down to the people who are still there,
Speaker 9: and so you're you're you're putting your people in a
Speaker 9: pressure cooker and it's just, you know, just from a
Speaker 9: long term attraction, retention and engagement strategy, it's just a loser.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's Julie Baki our career short on the Scotslon
Speaker 1: Show on seven hundred welw Kroger announcing a return to
Speaker 1: office five days a week rather than the remote work
Speaker 1: starting in January, and they said that it's in person
Speaker 1: teamwork is very very important. But you know, collaboration and
Speaker 1: the argument is that if you collaborate, if you innovate,
Speaker 1: doing all the stuff together as a team, face to face,
Speaker 1: it suffers when you work remotely. But there are plenty
Speaker 1: of companies in the world that are entirely remote from
Speaker 1: all over the world that are extremely successful. So if
Speaker 1: that's we're true, why are they the outliers.
Speaker 9: It's interesting. Spotify the music I think of a Spotify
Speaker 9: Spotify they put up a big billboard in Times Square
Speaker 9: someplaces said we hire adults, we don't hire children, so
Speaker 9: you know, sort of a we try. We hire the
Speaker 9: right people, we hold them accountable, we give them autonomy
Speaker 9: and don't treat them like children, like we have to
Speaker 9: be looking over the cube ball at them at all times.
Speaker 9: All state insurance went entirely remote, and so there's it's
Speaker 9: we're there's going to be I think that the bottom
Speaker 9: line here is one size doesn't fit all. And so
Speaker 9: of course you know your people who work in your
Speaker 9: stores and your manufacturing facilities, of course they have to
Speaker 9: be have to be there. And so but I think
Speaker 9: where we start to lose it is we start to say, okay, well,
Speaker 9: because our people in the stores have to be there,
Speaker 9: all of you have to be in the office. And
Speaker 9: that's comparing apples and oranges. If people will take those
Speaker 9: jobs in stores, they know they have to be in
Speaker 9: the stores, But what are you really doing in terms
Speaker 9: of your corporate staff and administration? And I think it's
Speaker 9: going to be interesting to follow because Elon Musk tried
Speaker 9: that and went back the other way. He came back
Speaker 9: on it and said okay, because he started losing talent
Speaker 9: like really fast because recruiters got on LinkedIn, other companies
Speaker 9: got on LinkedIn, just start picking off his best talent.
Speaker 9: We're not going to make you. We're not going to
Speaker 9: make you come in five days a week, and so
Speaker 9: he had to backtrack that. And so sometimes what's happening
Speaker 9: behind the scenes is they backtrack on that. But that's
Speaker 9: never an announcement, that's not a clickable link. Oh you know,
Speaker 9: they backtrack. Kroger backtracks and now people can work remotely.
Speaker 9: You'll never hear that. So if that happens, it will
Speaker 9: be on an exception basis. It will happen department by departments.
Speaker 9: But I think you know it's it's I've seen in
Speaker 9: some companies they say, well, this department, we had to
Speaker 9: let them do that because they were going to lose
Speaker 9: all their talent. Well no, dah, you know, I mean
Speaker 9: it's we're in a different world right now, and we
Speaker 9: can't do it the way boomers, myself included a net
Speaker 9: group used to do it, because it's not only was
Speaker 9: it not necessarily the right way then, but it was
Speaker 9: the only way then.
Speaker 5: It's all we do.
Speaker 9: We're in a different place right now. We have to
Speaker 9: look differently at how we manage people. Just because it
Speaker 9: worked for you doesn't mean it can work forever or
Speaker 9: it works for everyone, especially with women outcasing, men graduating
Speaker 9: from college going into the workforce. We have to we
Speaker 9: have to start doing things, being open to trying things.
Speaker 3: Shall I say?
Speaker 2: All right, there's an issue of trust here.
Speaker 1: So I'd imagine there are many people betrayed because they're told, hey,
Speaker 1: remote work, COVID comes along, it's permanent, now it's long term,
Speaker 1: And so they make these huge life decisions. You may
Speaker 1: move to a different city, you may obsorb some caregiving responsibility,
Speaker 1: how you bought a home in a different area, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I a're like, okay, never mind,
Speaker 1: that's over. Now you're got to come back. Don't you
Speaker 1: lose all your trust? Would that work for us?
Speaker 9: Yes? And we wonder why when you look at how
Speaker 9: people feel about their employer, trust is at a very
Speaker 9: very is it a very low this belief that I'm
Speaker 9: supposed to give one hundred and twenty percent for my employer,
Speaker 9: but I know that I can be laid off at
Speaker 9: any moments, or they can change the rules. They can,
Speaker 9: of course they can, but don't don't do that and
Speaker 9: then expect your people to operate with one hundred percent loyalty.
Speaker 9: It's not a thing in the employment relationship.
Speaker 1: It is not a thing in the employment raiser because
Speaker 1: you're like, well, this is this is kind of dumb,
Speaker 1: but you know, I and Kroger's still a great company obviously,
Speaker 1: but you got to wonder about the message it sends.
Speaker 1: And of course this gives lead way to the other
Speaker 1: employees go, well Kroger's doing it.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah, talk to your HR people about talk to your recruiters,
Speaker 9: your people who are responsible for hiring in your corporate offices,
Speaker 9: and ask them what they're seeing in terms of what
Speaker 9: people want. If people say a lot of times it'll
Speaker 9: say remote or hybrid. But then when you when you
Speaker 9: have an interview, it's like, well we really want you
Speaker 9: to okay, you know, I mean and so there's bait
Speaker 9: and switch going on on job boards as well. So no,
Speaker 9: the trust between employer and employee, no, you know, I
Speaker 9: think it goes both ways. Well, the CEO of AT
Speaker 9: and T took some heat for saying, you know, two
Speaker 9: weeks pay for two weeks work, no loyalty.
Speaker 2: Well you know, okay, that's kind of the way it
Speaker 2: ought to be.
Speaker 1: Frankly, yeah, yeah, that's it. I get a check, here's
Speaker 1: what you pay me to do. And you know, if
Speaker 1: you want to buff and beyond, it will cost you more.
Speaker 1: If not, then pay good luck with it.
Speaker 3: Julie Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the element here too is it's like, if
Speaker 1: you're doing this some people are a lot of the
Speaker 1: people coming back, it's going to feel like you're going
Speaker 1: to get a pay cut. Let me explain, you now
Speaker 1: have to commute. That's an expense. There, You got that
Speaker 1: expense parking, transit or gas. You got to have the wardrobe,
Speaker 1: so that's going to cost your money. You're probably gonna
Speaker 1: eat out a few more times. That's going to cause childcare.
Speaker 1: That's a significant pay cut, isn't it.
Speaker 8: Yep? Yep.
Speaker 9: And so you can decide Amazon or Google are one
Speaker 9: of those companies that people just went not so. JP
Speaker 9: Morgan like signing a petition blah blah blah, and Jamie
Speaker 9: Diame is like, you know, you can shove that petition
Speaker 9: because it ain't changing. So you can. You can make
Speaker 9: your thoughts known where you are interesting and but then
Speaker 9: you are, you have free will. You can also go
Speaker 9: work elsewhere. And because the job market is what it is,
Speaker 9: there's some betting on the side of employers that you're
Speaker 9: just gonna keep your rear end right in that chair
Speaker 9: because you don't have any of your options. That's not
Speaker 9: necessarily true. But when the job market picks back up again,
Speaker 9: and it will, those are going to be the first
Speaker 9: people to leave.
Speaker 2: Yeah, gotcha.
Speaker 1: She's Julie Bowki, our career shrip on the Scotslan Show
Speaker 1: every Wednesday morning. She and your team ready to go
Speaker 1: to work for you. And that's Deboukigroup dot com be
Speaker 1: a uk. E have a great week. We'll chat next Wednesday.
Speaker 1: All right, be well, take care. News on the way
Speaker 1: in just minutes. Council Member Mark Jeffers is here. I
Speaker 1: fully believe in tipping the hat and giving credit where
Speaker 1: credits due. Last year tore apart the city of Cincinnati
Speaker 1: for it's a businal response to the January snowstorm, much
Speaker 1: much different months later. We'll get to him about that,
Speaker 1: and what else do you expect about this as well?
Speaker 1: And how well it went with the new services plan
Speaker 1: in place to battle the snow. Now that we're beyond it,
Speaker 1: kind of look back and see how it went. Just
Speaker 1: ahead seven hundred WLW. Do you want to be an
Speaker 1: American idiot? It's got a flood show on seven hundred
Speaker 1: w WELW Cincinnati. We got what two to four to
Speaker 1: five some areas even a little bit more than five
Speaker 1: five and a half inches of snow this week and
Speaker 1: CBG's had a daily record, so we got a record
Speaker 1: amount of snow in one day this early in the
Speaker 1: season compared to last year where it was an unmitigated
Speaker 1: snow disaster simply because well we didn't have enough plouse.
Speaker 1: There was confusion to lack of communication. There were streets
Speaker 1: admittedly weeks later that went unplowed and said well, you're
Speaker 1: just gonna have to deal with it. Changes were made
Speaker 1: and happy to report, and we love to celebrate the
Speaker 1: wins we do because I love to criticize, but I
Speaker 1: also love to tip the cap and go, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: and we did good this time. Good for you would
Speaker 1: be the city getting the snow removed and what most
Speaker 1: people would say is a reasonable amount of time and
Speaker 1: a good job done by all. Mark Jeffreys's council member
Speaker 1: sits on the Infrastructure Committee and has sweated over this
Speaker 1: for the better part of a year now, since last
Speaker 1: January when we had the snow mageddon that caused so
Speaker 1: much angst in pain. Mark, welcome back or.
Speaker 8: Are you doing well, thanks Scott, Yes, sir, so eighty.
Speaker 2: Snowplod trucks, twelve hour shifts. You got it done.
Speaker 1: I was mentioned earlier in the show was talking to
Speaker 1: someone from Price Hill and said, we haven't had our
Speaker 1: side streets cleared when snow like this in probably a
Speaker 1: decade or more. And I was happy when I came
Speaker 1: out and got back home after work and saw that
Speaker 1: the roads were cleared. Couldn't believe it. Took pictures and
Speaker 1: posted it that when you hear that kind of feedback,
Speaker 1: you deserve a pat on the back for a job
Speaker 1: well done.
Speaker 5: Well, look what I would say is leadership matters, and
Speaker 5: we have a new leader in Department of Public Works,
Speaker 5: this guy Mark Riley came in and at the end
Speaker 5: of the day, I mean, by seventeen years of PFG,
Speaker 5: I learned, you know, there's input, measures and output, and
Speaker 5: the output that we only care about is it snow
Speaker 5: removed quickly?
Speaker 8: Is it all the rugues cleared?
Speaker 5: You know, But a lot of the stuff that he did,
Speaker 5: his input really mattered, Like bringing in new technology baffled
Speaker 5: all of our minds that you know. It was like
Speaker 5: going on a road trip back in the seventies and
Speaker 5: eighties where you had the paper maps. People had paper
Speaker 5: maps until last.
Speaker 8: Year for doing snow removal.
Speaker 5: So now we've got all of the trucks outfitted with iPads,
Speaker 5: so they have the technology, they know where to go,
Speaker 5: what's been treated, what hasn't been treated.
Speaker 8: He mapped all the routes, which you know before we.
Speaker 5: Learned last year that some of the streets were just
Speaker 5: not in the maps, which is mind boggling.
Speaker 8: So hence all the streets were cleared. He pre treated.
Speaker 5: Another insight, which makes total sense, is look, these storms
Speaker 5: move west to east, so he pretreats west to east.
Speaker 5: Makes complete sense, to the west side before you do
Speaker 5: the far east regions, because that's how the snow is
Speaker 5: going to.
Speaker 8: Move, you know.
Speaker 5: So all of these things, you know, leveraging new technologies,
Speaker 5: weather stations, drones, I think they're the right things to do.
Speaker 5: And ultimately the only thing that really matters are whether
Speaker 5: the roads are cleared in a reasonable amount of time,
Speaker 5: and in this case, you know, they certainly were. So
Speaker 5: Kudo's the new director and the administration for really putting
Speaker 5: in a lot of the work and training people. They
Speaker 5: had obstacle courses where they were training the you know,
Speaker 5: the drivers to make sure they knew how to drive
Speaker 5: down these small streets and you.
Speaker 8: Know they put in the work and it really, it really.
Speaker 1: Matters good to see. So ten years ago, my little
Speaker 1: brother moved from Clifton out west but lived in Clifton
Speaker 1: on a hilly street. Is most streets in Clifton are
Speaker 1: pretty hilly, and as long as you lived in that house,
Speaker 1: most of the people on that street, unless they had
Speaker 1: a really really good vehicle or the way, literally would
Speaker 1: be stuck home and couldn't go to work because they
Speaker 1: couldn't get out of the driveway. And that went on
Speaker 1: for the years that he lived there in Clifton, and
Speaker 1: I thought, what an abysmal failure. And I talked to
Speaker 1: some people, are like, yeah, it's just that's the way
Speaker 1: it is. We don't have the equipment to get down
Speaker 1: these streets. Somebody hears that and they see what's happening now,
Speaker 1: and I think they're thankful for the.
Speaker 2: Leadership we have. As you said, it's a leadership issue.
Speaker 1: I guess the big question would be looking back, and
Speaker 1: maybe you studied this, maybe it didn't well before your time,
Speaker 1: but how did the city get that neglected for that
Speaker 1: long a period of time, and seemingly no one in
Speaker 1: leadership cares.
Speaker 2: I mean, how did we get to this point?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean they'd pointed out yesterday we were one
Speaker 5: hundred and twenty five more people TECH twenty years ago
Speaker 5: in Department of Public Works.
Speaker 8: So you might ask yourself, why is it that we're
Speaker 8: not doing as much literc cleanup. Well, we have a
Speaker 8: lot for people. So these things gradually over time.
Speaker 5: It's kind of the boiling frogs Inrome, right, you know,
Speaker 5: you just find you're like, all right, this happens. This happens,
Speaker 5: you make little decisions before we know it. You have
Speaker 5: this massive issue, you know, and I think, look, I
Speaker 5: mean even last year, I live in a small side
Speaker 5: street in Clifton and it is hilly, and I could
Speaker 5: not get up my hill. And on the fourth day
Speaker 5: of the storm, I eventually called to PS. I'm like, look,
Speaker 5: I'm not going to be you know, one of those
Speaker 5: CONSO members to get out there and say I need
Speaker 5: my street cloud because it's a small resident. But by
Speaker 5: the fourth day and I couldn't even get back and forth.
Speaker 8: This is ridiculous. And so this time one hundred percent cleared.
Speaker 5: Last year in January, all of us were getting texts complaining, rightfully,
Speaker 5: this time I was getting text you know, saying hey,
Speaker 5: look we can played last year, but thank you.
Speaker 8: So you know, you you they put.
Speaker 5: In the work. You know, it's like a professional sports team, right,
Speaker 5: you know, they did all the training and then ultimately
Speaker 5: what ultimately matters is how you perform in the field.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what do you Mark?
Speaker 1: There's there's a corollary here. I think I mentioned it
Speaker 1: was crime too because it fits the same, uh same.
Speaker 1: I've used the crime as an example. I think it's
Speaker 1: true of streets so long ago. We had the riots
Speaker 1: of two thousand and one and civil and arrest of course,
Speaker 1: and we had to rethink how we did policing. We
Speaker 1: did the uh uh, we did the agreement with the
Speaker 1: collaborate agreement with the feds.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 1: And at one point we were the literally the darling
Speaker 1: of the policing community, where we had you know, White
Speaker 1: House attorneys and people from the FBI, and they're from
Speaker 1: the government coming in to Cincinnati learn how we're doing
Speaker 1: it here in community policing. And I think what happens
Speaker 1: is and government your rust out your laws and go okay,
Speaker 1: well everything crimes do, everything's good, and then you take
Speaker 1: the money that's Earmark for that and said, well, why
Speaker 1: are we spending money on a problem we solved. We're
Speaker 1: going to spend it on something else, something new and shiny.
Speaker 1: You neglect it, And well, as a result, crime comes
Speaker 1: back in and we're seeing levels because of the lack
Speaker 1: of attention to detail, We're seeing those levels go back again,
Speaker 1: and problems we thought we solved are now coming back
Speaker 1: to roost. I think it's probably the same with snow removal, right,
Speaker 1: It's like, hey, we're doing really good job. Let's just
Speaker 1: take the money and spend it on something else because
Speaker 1: we're doing a good job instead of continuing the care
Speaker 1: and nurture and feed it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean, look, I mean, as you well know, we
Speaker 5: have a lot of competing priorities in city, right, public safety,
Speaker 5: you know, basic public services.
Speaker 8: You know our parks and our rec centers and.
Speaker 5: You know all of those things, and so it's always
Speaker 5: trying to figure out what is the biggest priority. But
Speaker 5: the priority always has to be on basic safety and
Speaker 5: delivering core city services, picking up the trash, paving the roads,
Speaker 5: filling the potholes, clearing the snow, keeping people safe like
Speaker 5: that has to.
Speaker 8: Be and out always the number one priority.
Speaker 5: Before you go off and do something else, you know,
Speaker 5: I mean I learned that at P and G. It's
Speaker 5: like you can have this, you know, great new.
Speaker 8: Innovation that's all up here in the clouds, you.
Speaker 5: Know, but if you're not delivering your core business, you know,
Speaker 5: what you're what you were about.
Speaker 8: Then everything else is meaningless.
Speaker 5: And so for us, our core is just that basic
Speaker 5: public service, basic needs. So you know, that's where we'll
Speaker 5: remain focused.
Speaker 8: And you know, on public.
Speaker 5: Safety, look, we just gave you know, CPD the largest
Speaker 5: rays in forty years, you know, the lastation because we
Speaker 5: want we have to retain and recruit new officers. You know,
Speaker 5: we've authorized four x you know, two x more new
Speaker 5: recruit classes. We have to continue to put uh you know,
Speaker 5: put new officers on the street. And that's the investment
Speaker 5: we need to continue to make in the next coumple
Speaker 5: of years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Cosmember Mark jeffrees On a little victory lap here
Speaker 1: after the successful snow removally Austria. It wasn't entirely perfect
Speaker 1: for sure, but a far site better than we were
Speaker 1: a year ago, and that should be applauded.
Speaker 2: I believe when you look at this and you know you.
Speaker 1: Hear stories from individuals, and I mentioned a couple of
Speaker 1: people you talked to some folks, maybe that many per
Speaker 1: What what metrics do you look at after this was done?
Speaker 1: When you had the meeting yesterday and infrastructure about this
Speaker 1: and is there actual data out there showing that we
Speaker 1: improved significantly year over year?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I asked that question yesterday and as part of
Speaker 5: our budget process will formalize it, Like what is the
Speaker 5: key performance indicator the KPI? You know, and it should
Speaker 5: be how quickly snow was removed? Like, ultimately that's the
Speaker 5: only thing you ultimately care about shore. Are people showing up,
Speaker 5: are you fully staffed?
Speaker 8: Are you know, do you have the right parts?
Speaker 5: All those things are important, But the only service clearing
Speaker 5: the roads more quickly. And so I think you know
Speaker 5: right now we've said, hey, they need to be cleared
Speaker 5: within forty eight hours, and I think we hit that
Speaker 5: this time.
Speaker 8: Obviously, you know what happened to.
Speaker 5: Jenny Org It was a lot more severe storm, you know, so,
Speaker 5: but we need to the other thing I appreciate is, look,
Speaker 5: I mean you said yesterday it used to be ten
Speaker 5: years ago that snow urgencies were all hands on deck
Speaker 5: across the city, and we're going back to that. I
Speaker 5: don't know why we ever went away from that, you know,
Speaker 5: because it makes absolutely no sense to staff up our
Speaker 5: Department of Public Works for a once every five years
Speaker 5: or ten years storm. What you could do is pull
Speaker 5: staff from you know, a wreck center or parks or
Speaker 5: other places where they can fill in where you need
Speaker 5: extra bodies, which makes little sense. What I would also
Speaker 5: say Scott is like, I really appreciate the wreck rally
Speaker 5: getting out ahead of some of the pothole issues too.
Speaker 5: So he is proposing buying this pothole patcher And basically
Speaker 5: what it is it allows one person to operate it
Speaker 5: versus four, so you have you've freed up three other
Speaker 5: people's time to go else on potholes or whatever, and
Speaker 5: you can fill one hundred potholes per day, so you're
Speaker 5: filling a lot more.
Speaker 8: It's automating it with a lot fewer people, which allows
Speaker 8: you to do more with you know, with less.
Speaker 5: So really appreciate that because that's going to be the
Speaker 5: next challenge we have right after these snow emergencies. You know,
Speaker 5: we always have potholes and getting ahead of that it's
Speaker 5: going to be important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the technology helps too. You need less manpower
Speaker 1: because it's a one person operation. Now you get four
Speaker 1: of those units. You got four people out there filling potholes,
Speaker 1: and uh now you you know it's a force multiplier,
Speaker 1: which I think people listening go, Okay, that's a good
Speaker 1: spending money right there, let's do that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: You got the pause where I know that the snowplow
Speaker 1: tracker failed and I got in yesterday morning and in
Speaker 1: the snowstorm, and uh so I don't see how they're doing.
Speaker 1: And of course I got the black screen of death
Speaker 1: and went, oh my god, really you got uh but
Speaker 1: you know it was because so many people were looking
Speaker 1: at it. But you know, you go, well, we weren't
Speaker 1: expecting as many people. Well the I guess maybe the
Speaker 1: way to if ore to poke holes in anything, go, well,
Speaker 1: you guys, advertise a hell out of this. You knew
Speaker 1: people were upset about the streets being plowed. They're going
Speaker 1: to check this thing. Uh, it was allegedly stressed as
Speaker 1: it didn't work out. How do we not repeat this
Speaker 1: next time we had a significant snowfall.
Speaker 8: One hundred percent.
Speaker 5: I know that they're doing kind of an after action
Speaker 5: review this week on it to figure that out, you know.
Speaker 8: I mean, look, it comes back to put out with measures.
Speaker 5: The thing that people really care about is when I
Speaker 5: leave my house, is my street clean so I can
Speaker 5: get to the hospital or a job, or do my
Speaker 5: kids to school.
Speaker 1: That's the ultimate thing.
Speaker 5: The tracker is important and it's helpful for people to see,
Speaker 5: and we have to fix it and we will and
Speaker 5: it you know, it needs to be stress tested, you know.
Speaker 5: But ultimately the thing that people care about at the
Speaker 5: end of the day is just clear my clear, my
Speaker 5: m street, you know, so I can get to where
Speaker 5: I need to go.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean if you look at it and every street
Speaker 1: is clear to except yours, it's just going to take
Speaker 1: you off. But I think it's a great tactile thing,
Speaker 1: you know. You it makes sense you look at and go, wow, Okay,
Speaker 1: they've done a lot of streets. Maybe mine is next
Speaker 1: residence in and there guessing as to when it made manut.
Speaker 1: But the best advertise you can have for the new
Speaker 1: system you put in place totally, no, one hundred percent.
Speaker 8: I mean, there's a role for it.
Speaker 5: It allows people to be informed so they can see,
Speaker 5: you know, where streets are or are not clear and
Speaker 5: you need to a make sure that it's accurate.
Speaker 8: Last year was not accurate, and now it's accurate.
Speaker 5: And then b we need to make sure they have
Speaker 5: enough room in the server to, you know, for to
Speaker 5: handle the demands.
Speaker 8: And I think Fisher learned the lesson there.
Speaker 1: Would you agree that the one of the biggest problems
Speaker 1: of this whole thing has been communication?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean community.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, at the end of the day, I
Speaker 5: don't know if I would agree. I think last and
Speaker 5: last Yearanuary, the issue was we just didn't get the
Speaker 5: job done. You know, it starts there, like we did
Speaker 5: not plow the streets, you know quick enough. We did
Speaker 5: not plow all the streets, And the reason were all
Speaker 5: these other you know issues, paper maps and all the
Speaker 5: streets weren't mapped, et cetera.
Speaker 8: So that I think was the biggest issue.
Speaker 5: Now that we would through this new director, it looks like,
Speaker 5: all right, we've got our act together, We've done this work,
Speaker 5: we're actually executing. Now we have to like communicate effectively,
Speaker 5: make sure we're communicating what we're doing, uh, and make
Speaker 5: sure people understand where they can get information.
Speaker 1: Well, on that point, I mean, one of the easiest
Speaker 1: ways to communicate pop but obviously social media it had
Speaker 1: been easy to put out and we didn't maybe did
Speaker 1: after the fact that we were looking like there's nothing
Speaker 1: on there from the mayor's feed or anyone else, saying, hey,
Speaker 1: well the system is overwhelmed. Right now, this is why
Speaker 1: you're not saying we're treating streets et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2: And that wasn't dime. I mean, that seems like an
Speaker 2: easy one to do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, we need to communicate that right when it happens.
Speaker 8: I mean, I believe in proactive communication.
Speaker 5: If something goes right, communicated, If something goes wrong, communicated.
Speaker 8: And that's where you know, look, I said this yesterday.
Speaker 5: I have to give you know, I give the administration
Speaker 5: credit doing this review of saying this is where we failed,
Speaker 5: because it's not easy. We live very public jobs. You
Speaker 5: know a lot of people have a private job. You
Speaker 5: work in a restaurant or an office, and you know,
Speaker 5: if you fail, the world to know about it, you know,
Speaker 5: kudos to them. Like, the only way to make it
Speaker 5: right is to own up to what you did and
Speaker 5: where you did not do well so that we can improve.
Speaker 5: And we did that, and then now you know, it
Speaker 5: looks like we've taken it to heart and we've we've
Speaker 5: definitely improved.
Speaker 8: And make sure I bring that up.
Speaker 1: Too, because it again, this isn't a vacumens it's the
Speaker 1: crime issue too, And there were times where there was
Speaker 1: no communication from the administration about what was happening, and
Speaker 1: it was a it was a big concern for people
Speaker 1: in a day and age when it's been easier than
Speaker 1: ever before to communicate and get your message out.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Look, I mean expectations have changed, right, you know, we're
Speaker 5: not the pony Express. When people express here here, you know,
Speaker 5: get something a couple of days later. When something happens,
Speaker 5: you know, often people need I mean people need to.
Speaker 8: Know right away, you know.
Speaker 5: And it's just the nature of the world that we
Speaker 5: live in, and understandably they expect them.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: All right, so people hear this are going great, But
Speaker 1: in the future, if my road isn't plowed, what's my recourse?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean the first is, uh, you know, reach out.
Speaker 5: I mean, reach out to your councilor verse, you know. Frankly,
Speaker 5: I mean that's what we did last year. I had
Speaker 5: countless people who emailed me, texted me and said, hey,
Speaker 5: my road's not cloud and then we're painting the ass
Speaker 5: and then we figure out like, okay, where did the
Speaker 5: system go wrong? And that's where we really need to
Speaker 5: because success I always say for me, I'm out of
Speaker 5: here in eight years maximum, right, because we were term limitted.
Speaker 5: And success is not that I'm just a pain in
Speaker 5: the butt enough to like when I'm gone, then it
Speaker 5: goes back to failure.
Speaker 8: Success is a change the system.
Speaker 5: And so if your street is not plowed, let us
Speaker 5: know so that we can understand why where the system failed,
Speaker 5: so we can fix the system.
Speaker 8: So long after all of us are gone, the system
Speaker 8: is running more effectively.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it seems like, yes, it's very successful in
Speaker 1: the rollout, and we'll see again how well we do
Speaker 1: next time around. You're only good as the last crisis
Speaker 1: you've you've been through now at this rate, of course,
Speaker 1: this almost guarantees now, Mark Jeffries, that we will not
Speaker 1: get any more significant snowfall the season. Of course, that's
Speaker 1: that will works.
Speaker 8: The snowfall das right where you right, snowfall.
Speaker 2: Right, kids don't want to hear that, but it's it's
Speaker 2: what it is. He is a council member.
Speaker 1: Mark Jeffreys and the Scots Lund Show on seven hundred
Speaker 1: ww sits on Infrastructure Committee having a meeting yesterday and
Speaker 1: addressing what happened with the two to five snowfall inches
Speaker 1: that we received and a lot don't of course, in
Speaker 1: the overnight hours. I think we had two inches in
Speaker 1: one hour, and of course and when that happens, the
Speaker 1: snowplows can't keep up. And it was one of those
Speaker 1: odd situations where the earlier in the morning you had
Speaker 1: had been on the road, the worst it was, and
Speaker 1: then by you know, seven eight o'clock they were able
Speaker 1: to catch back up, and of course by the commute
Speaker 1: home it was fine and actually had a lot of
Speaker 1: the shoulders clean and all the side streets done, which
Speaker 1: is very refreshing considering we were back in January with
Speaker 1: that snowstar Mark all the best, thanks again for jumping
Speaker 1: on the show.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you. Thanks all the best.
Speaker 1: News update coming up in just about four or five
Speaker 1: minutes on seven hundred w W and then Sarah jumps in.
Speaker 1: We've got the Bengals of the Bills this week. I'm
Speaker 1: going up for the game there. We've got some Reds news.
Speaker 1: She wants to get into as well.
Speaker 2: What Reds. It's never too early to talk about summer?
Speaker 3: Is it now?
Speaker 2: On the Home of the Reds and the Best Bengals
Speaker 2: Coverage seven hundred WW.
Speaker 7: George, Sorry, oh my god. Every big holiday party here
Speaker 7: and I heart today we do.
Speaker 1: Sarah will be snorting her way through sports this morning
Speaker 1: here on seven hundred WW, jumping over the kid Chris Show.
Speaker 1: It's US Sports of All Snorts aka the Snort Report,
Speaker 1: talking about sports and social media and the like. And
Speaker 1: I saw you had our good buddy Brendon Sajo, formerly
Speaker 1: of wlw T News five sports.
Speaker 7: Channel five sports reporter, Yeah from Cincinnati, went to LISSU
Speaker 7: and he's in Cincinnati for all of twenty four hours
Speaker 7: and decided to start his time here with Chris and
Speaker 7: I this morning bought that.
Speaker 1: Was also wrong with Tom. He's making the rounds. He
Speaker 1: really shows stuff right now. He's doing well. So it's
Speaker 1: he was on Oprah's podcast yesterday.
Speaker 7: Yeah. So Oprah has a podcast, which I did not
Speaker 7: know about until Brandon started to brok.
Speaker 2: She has a podcast, she has a show.
Speaker 7: Does she need a pun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she needs all that she needs people doing.
Speaker 7: It for Yeah, I loved it. I'm like this thing
Speaker 7: was over seven hundred thousand subscribers. But yeah, Oprah, she
Speaker 7: had a bunch of men that have podcast on I
Speaker 7: guess talking about men's mental health on there, and so
Speaker 7: Brandon was invited to talk about that and then came
Speaker 7: on our show to talk about the Mental Game podcast
Speaker 7: as well, which is the one that he hosts.
Speaker 2: Nice so good, doing good, doing great.
Speaker 7: So like our buddy, Dave, the producer said, oh, so
Speaker 7: he went from Oprah to EBM this morning.
Speaker 2: It's a little bit of a down dras wake till
Speaker 2: Chris that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so it was good to have him in this morning.
Speaker 2: What do you think you are?
Speaker 7: Gail King?
Speaker 3: You know what?
Speaker 7: He did tell us that he got to talk to
Speaker 7: Gail King too. She was there, I know. Anyway, Oprah
Speaker 7: and Gail, So welcome back Brandon Saho for a day,
Speaker 7: then he gets back out to La So one hundred
Speaker 7: and thirteen days till opening day. If you're tired of
Speaker 7: and you need a little bit of optimism in your life,
Speaker 7: like all right, No.
Speaker 2: The Bengals are not out of it, They're just two games.
Speaker 3: Out of it.
Speaker 7: We're going to get to the Bengals here. We're going
Speaker 7: to start with the Reds and then work our way
Speaker 7: to the Bengals because we do have some things that
Speaker 7: are trending in sports social media here in Cincinnati. That's
Speaker 7: why we're starting with opening days. Let's go, no Reds caravan.
Speaker 7: They made that announcement the other day. I guess it's
Speaker 7: too close to when they're going to be doing the
Speaker 7: Reds Fest in.
Speaker 2: The movement, because the conventions are the first thing they're
Speaker 2: really going to go in.
Speaker 7: This is going to be the first big event happening
Speaker 7: January sixteenth and seventeenth. So they said, you know what,
Speaker 7: this year, we're going to do away with the caravan.
Speaker 7: And uh so Sorrylima, Yeah, everybody, I know, how about this.
Speaker 7: We're going to send Sarah to Lima to entertain that.
Speaker 7: You know what, let's not do that.
Speaker 2: Let's be at the Huntington Town Center.
Speaker 7: You think, are we going to see Saga Clause today
Speaker 7: at this party?
Speaker 2: Of course you will, no, no doubt about it.
Speaker 3: That suit.
Speaker 7: He didn't get a fresh cut, so I think it's
Speaker 7: going down.
Speaker 1: And that's and the Saga Claws suit has not been
Speaker 1: washing the Truman administration.
Speaker 7: Just so you know, chicken in the bocket.
Speaker 2: Oh my guy's got the salmon and the beard.
Speaker 7: Our buddy Tom Brenneman, he's here early for the party,
Speaker 7: for that party, this first year. He goes what I expect.
Speaker 7: I'm like, nothing but a good time, my friend.
Speaker 1: Can we put you down for a the old town
Speaker 1: in the nineties Christmas parties.
Speaker 6: I can tell you that.
Speaker 1: I had you down in the potlock Tom bringing the
Speaker 1: jelly mold.
Speaker 4: Still do that?
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, let's go.
Speaker 7: Yeah, get to cooking Tom.
Speaker 1: Tom and his magic crock pott.
Speaker 2: He's gonna go.
Speaker 7: I could see Tom doing some pretty good start the
Speaker 7: crockpott balls. He comes off like a crockpot kind of
Speaker 7: like he seems.
Speaker 2: Like one of those half assed meat balls with a
Speaker 2: jelly in it.
Speaker 7: Hey, those are some really good apps.
Speaker 1: He put the little tooth picking up damn straight, give
Speaker 1: me a give me a spork.
Speaker 3: And let's go.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 7: So you know that he's you know that he's like
Speaker 7: still new because he's very early to this party. Like
Speaker 7: we saw three hours ago, three o'clock, he's here to
Speaker 7: help set up everybody's actually, everybody hates an ass kisser.
Speaker 8: You got the job.
Speaker 1: Just ride the wake.
Speaker 2: God, the.
Speaker 7: Reds are trending because, according to a recent report from ESPN,
Speaker 7: the Reds are continuing. This is what they say to
Speaker 7: pursue Kyle Schwarberg, the agent. I can't even do it
Speaker 7: with a straight face.
Speaker 1: Sure, what makes like the whole gross domestic product of Cincinnati?
Speaker 1: I think got got that kind of money?
Speaker 7: Do we have a chance?
Speaker 2: Ninety nine trillion dollars?
Speaker 7: They're they're only up against the Phillies, the Red Sox,
Speaker 7: and the Mets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how much of Schwarber one hundred million dollars? What
Speaker 1: was the Reds perrol last year?
Speaker 7: Remember, like a couple of millions. You're gonna have to
Speaker 7: look that up. Yeah, no big deal. Dig deep in
Speaker 7: those pockets.
Speaker 1: Let's got's fifty.
Speaker 7: Six bombs last year? One hundred and thirty two RBIs
Speaker 7: let's go.
Speaker 2: I think they'll come out. Reds will make a tenor
Speaker 2: and offer for him.
Speaker 7: Winter meetings are this weekend in Orlando. My friend, we shall.
Speaker 2: See seventy seventy percent of your budget.
Speaker 7: We could really use his arm. We need a hitter.
Speaker 1: We need someone to hit the damn pearl seventy five
Speaker 1: percent to get one guy. Do you really see is
Speaker 1: that feasible for Cincinnati, Ohio.
Speaker 7: I think anything is possible.
Speaker 1: Pinkle'll take the hometown discount. Okay, I'll do it for
Speaker 1: ninety eight five.
Speaker 7: You know what we almost got. We almost got through
Speaker 7: talking about Kyle Schwarber without bringing up Agam.
Speaker 2: Oh, Marty, Middletown, Oh, Middletown, Sir, It's like they go.
Speaker 7: Hand in hand. Talk to Seg about Kyle Schwarber. He
Speaker 7: can't say his name without bringing up Middletown. Of course,
Speaker 7: he said he's going to drive him to and from
Speaker 7: the stadium. If the runs pick him up, they will.
Speaker 7: And you know what, I believe them. I believe that
Speaker 7: if anyone were to drive Kyle Schwarber around the city,
Speaker 7: it would definitely be said.
Speaker 2: I've seen seg drive before.
Speaker 1: And if he had, if he had a day, a
Speaker 1: night game and then there was get away the next morning,
Speaker 1: he just sleep at the stadium, it'd be faster. Sure,
Speaker 1: it'd be fast.
Speaker 7: For sure, Segould lightown his life for this business man special.
Speaker 2: I'll just sleep at the stadium, and by the time
Speaker 2: I get home and get back, it's.
Speaker 7: Might as well. Kyle Schwarber above everything else, above sleep.
Speaker 7: We know that cycle catch up in his little office,
Speaker 7: So I love it.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 7: Alrighty Aside from the Reds trending, the Bengals not really
Speaker 7: much of an update yesterday except for the iced out
Speaker 7: unis that they're going to wear this weekend in Buffalo.
Speaker 7: Nice orange helmets, white jerseys, white pants, black Sociday. There
Speaker 7: we go going to be a cool twenty nine degrees
Speaker 7: in Buffalo. You're going to be there during Sunday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's June weather. It's summer in Buffalo.
Speaker 7: I feel like that's no big deal for Buffalo.
Speaker 2: It's not too bad at all. Chance of pre SIPs Saturday.
Speaker 7: I think you're going to get the snow on Saturday.
Speaker 2: It's always snow, sir.
Speaker 7: Are you prepared to sit in a pile of snow?
Speaker 2: I'm prepared. You know, this game is like a heat
Speaker 2: wave compared the last three I've been to there.
Speaker 7: What was the temperature the last time that you were there?
Speaker 2: It was in the single digits.
Speaker 7: Is that when it was a blizzard and you had
Speaker 7: to like walk to mon.
Speaker 2: No, it was it was snowed a little bit. It
Speaker 2: was a Casey playoff.
Speaker 1: Game and the Bills lost, and when they were hiring
Speaker 1: people snow snowhead led up by that point too, but
Speaker 1: it was h Yeah, it was single digits and last
Speaker 1: suff with the wind chill. So the wind comes off
Speaker 1: the lake there and it's very cold. But this one
Speaker 1: looks like not much wind and whether should be good.
Speaker 7: So you'll head up there this weekend.
Speaker 2: You're gonna go to your brother Friday. Yea brother and
Speaker 2: some buddies.
Speaker 1: Very cool, gonna road trip it up there, have a
Speaker 1: boy's weekend, taking Monday off coming back.
Speaker 7: I figured you would take Monday off and there's no
Speaker 7: way he's going to make it.
Speaker 2: That was initially at four o'clock game, four five games.
Speaker 7: Yeah, then they bumped it and.
Speaker 2: Speaking of cold, i'd much where they have a one
Speaker 2: o'clock h.
Speaker 7: Yeah, no kidding, because what is it now? It's the
Speaker 7: Packers and Bears. Is that the one they switched with?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think so.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, But so the other day head coach Zach
Speaker 7: Taylor held a press conference on Monday to get the
Speaker 7: week started. He was asked about t Higgins. We know
Speaker 7: that Tea took a really hard hit at the end
Speaker 7: of that game against the Patriots. They were like, is
Speaker 7: t going to be playing this weekend? He said he's
Speaker 7: still in concussions.
Speaker 2: He's playing, he's playing.
Speaker 7: I'm leaning towards him playing because a lot of the
Speaker 7: Bengals reporters are saying that, you know, t is walking
Speaker 7: around the locker room, seems like he's doing fine. He
Speaker 7: has been participating in some things here and there. I'm
Speaker 7: leaning towards Tea playing. If I'm a betting woman, that's
Speaker 7: not going to.
Speaker 1: Say carrying an ice bag around on his neck and
Speaker 1: rubbing his temples like, oh, my head's killing me.
Speaker 7: But it was really bad.
Speaker 2: It was a bad There's no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: It didn't we get Tea and Jamar and I think, honestly,
Speaker 1: I mean, as big a Bill's fan as I am,
Speaker 1: this is.
Speaker 7: Going to be a really good game on I'm excited if.
Speaker 1: You can somehow corral James Cook. I think I think
Speaker 1: Begal's a good shot to win this game.
Speaker 2: I really do.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'm not even gonna put a prediction out there
Speaker 7: because anytime I do what's wrong, and.
Speaker 2: That's a problem.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, I have a wide receivers and
Speaker 1: they're so banged up at this point, they're they're vulnerable.
Speaker 7: Well in the Bengals defense has found a way to
Speaker 7: turn it around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll see if he can make it two in
Speaker 1: a row. Though if people some people are acting like
Speaker 1: this is a five game winning streak.
Speaker 7: We're still a four and eight team. Don't forget about that.
Speaker 7: Somebody not playing this weekend, No surprise here, Trey Hendrickson.
Speaker 7: Zach Taylor said he's doubtful. He's still working through that
Speaker 7: hip slash. This is sketchy. Maybe they're store hanging out
Speaker 7: the casino. I have no idea, but it's really sketchy.
Speaker 7: But the reporters asked Zach, so what has Trey been
Speaker 7: doing this whole time, because he's been out for weeks,
Speaker 7: and he said that he's been rehabbing with Trainers. And
Speaker 7: Zach did say he does anticipate trade return this season.
Speaker 1: Hmm.
Speaker 7: But the rumor is is that Trade needs some sort
Speaker 7: of off season surgery. That's the rumor. So why would
Speaker 7: you even push him. I mean, they're winning without trade.
Speaker 7: They beat the Steelers without Trade, they beat the Ravens
Speaker 7: without Dray, and they're about to go to Buffalo this
Speaker 7: weekend without him too. Trey's not even traveling with the team.
Speaker 2: Either, without him. I want to worry about that.
Speaker 1: They are they're winning without absolutely.
Speaker 7: Just try to keep the defense off the field. First
Speaker 7: homes you again, nobody wants their defense out there. As
Speaker 7: much as the Bengals defense has improved, it's like, let's
Speaker 7: keep all let's just keep the offense rolling. It's good
Speaker 7: to see Joe back with those guys too. That game
Speaker 7: on Thanksgiving was very exciting. A little rough in the
Speaker 7: first half, but they were really clicking in that second
Speaker 7: half and it was made me feel really optimistic about
Speaker 7: the rest of the season, not that there's a whole
Speaker 7: lot left, but be excited about it. I'm trying that
Speaker 7: Joe's back. I think he just has this aura in
Speaker 7: the locker room, like our leader's back. We're going to start.
Speaker 1: Yes, He'll go down and lead him down the field.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing is, I think it's a different,
Speaker 1: much better offense. On Sunday, we'll see with the Bengals
Speaker 1: and the Bills.
Speaker 7: We also got our guy, Mike is Sticky back after
Speaker 7: he had that peck injury, so Yoshi's starting to catch the.
Speaker 2: Ball again again.
Speaker 1: One game does not make a trend, I.
Speaker 7: Know, but this is the Bengals fanom me where I'm like,
Speaker 7: all right, one game and everything is just really turned around. Yeah,
Speaker 7: you win this weekend, and then you've got the Ravens
Speaker 7: here next.
Speaker 1: Easy schedule. After this, you already beat them. You got
Speaker 1: them at home, right, you've got Miami.
Speaker 7: I don't even think the home field advantage matters though
Speaker 7: it really doesn't.
Speaker 2: And sometimes you'd much rather play then.
Speaker 7: Yeah, then you're going to go to Miami. You finish
Speaker 7: out this season against the Browns. Easy dub there right right? Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 7: so as long as everybody can stay the brown No,
Speaker 7: it's the Browns easy now. Why I believe in our.
Speaker 1: Guys after that game? One game at a time, baby,
Speaker 1: one game at a time. But they've got a much
Speaker 1: easier path there than the Ravens and the Steelers do,
Speaker 1: that's for sure.
Speaker 7: And you know what, I don't believe in the Ravens
Speaker 7: on the Steelers. I'm not buying what they're social.
Speaker 2: Terrible.
Speaker 7: The Steelers looked awful on.
Speaker 1: Sunday last week.
Speaker 2: You loved the Bills. Now this week you hate the Bills.
Speaker 2: Such a woman, were.
Speaker 8: You?
Speaker 7: So I went out to I went to this new
Speaker 7: bar in Covington, and we did like a watch party
Speaker 7: there to watch the Steelers and the Bills really and
Speaker 7: uh and the whole bar is like cheering on the Bills.
Speaker 7: I said, this is going to be like a complete
Speaker 7: one eighty next week and when we're eating the Bills.
Speaker 2: So I love it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, four team Team.
Speaker 2: Plus is filthy. Steelers you know, Cam Hayward.
Speaker 7: And Steelers are so dirty. I hate that team.
Speaker 2: Everybody hates the Steelers. Steeler fans, I don't know.
Speaker 7: I think a lot of Steelers fans start to turn
Speaker 7: on their back. Aaron Rodgers is turning on his own guys.
Speaker 2: How about that fire tomblin chan.
Speaker 7: I know, I don't even think they're fans of their
Speaker 7: own team.
Speaker 2: James half empty luck baby, That's.
Speaker 7: How it was at the end of that game on
Speaker 7: not Even It was like the fourth quarter and they
Speaker 7: showed an aerial shot of the stadium. I'm like, where'd
Speaker 7: all the fans go? Not seeing a lot of terrible
Speaker 7: towels now, So safe travels this weekend, my friends.
Speaker 2: You're not going.
Speaker 7: I will not be there.
Speaker 2: Now if you had like free tickets and we're in
Speaker 2: the oh, of.
Speaker 7: Course, Yeah, I would sit out on the twenty nine
Speaker 7: y gree weather. Yeah, it is a bucket list to
Speaker 7: go see a game there in.
Speaker 2: Buffalo last season for the old stadium. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 5: Do the whole thing.
Speaker 7: Yeah, like I want to do the whole thing, Like
Speaker 7: I want to wear snowsuit and sit in snow.
Speaker 2: Piles with ketchup and mustard o ron.
Speaker 7: Hey if it keeps me warm.
Speaker 2: I you're gonna jump through a table?
Speaker 7: Oh, are you gonna try to do that this? No,
Speaker 7: you don't need another body part. No, you're too old
Speaker 7: for the AJA.
Speaker 2: I'm gone. It's over for me.
Speaker 7: Michelle's listening, like, please, I'm dealing with my knee. We
Speaker 7: don't need another body part getting replaced around.
Speaker 1: I'm on the back nine. Some days I'm at the
Speaker 1: clubhouse getting a hot dog at the turn. Other days
Speaker 1: I'm putting out at eighteen and You're gone, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna take a step off.
Speaker 2: And I'll be dead.
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