Speaker 1: Doing to being a mad.
Speaker 2: Harry Harry Harry is I don't mean style also I
Speaker 2: mean Harry driving this morning. The roadways seven hundred w W.
Speaker 2: Scott's Loan show, first significant snowfall of the season two
Speaker 2: to four plus depending where you are early on this morning.
Speaker 2: The early early hours are extremely difficult. I heard poor
Speaker 2: Chuck Ingram and traffic getting in about three and a
Speaker 2: half hours late this morning. Left at three o'clock, didn't
Speaker 2: get it until just after six sometime. And same for
Speaker 2: Brian Combs and a bunch of other folks. Right, I
Speaker 2: got here about six thirty, so I left the left
Speaker 2: my place at until after six o'clock, and it was
Speaker 2: thirty five in this ice eventy one by the way,
Speaker 2: maybe thirty five miles an hour some spots and after that,
Speaker 2: but those coming in now, I you're driving right now.
Speaker 3: Roads O doubts certainly did a great job.
Speaker 2: The other question would be the counties, but also the
Speaker 2: city of Cincinnati last January. We know snow removal of
Speaker 2: the city was a complete train wreck, was a disaster.
Speaker 2: We had equipment breakdown, shortages, roads left untreated, communication problems
Speaker 2: this time, lots of changes with snowplows, equipped with state
Speaker 2: of the art technology to track routes and a new
Speaker 2: real time snowplow tracker website that apparently is not working
Speaker 2: as it should on that And he's out on the
Speaker 2: street right now. That is a council member. Seth Walsh
Speaker 2: on the show campaigned on the issue of snowplows and
Speaker 2: snow removal, so he is our official snow guy for
Speaker 2: the City of Cincinnati.
Speaker 3: Seth, welcome back. Where are you right now?
Speaker 4: We've just exited the UC area checking out around you
Speaker 4: see health that was a hard spot last year when
Speaker 4: the big snowstorm came in. We could literally couldn't gage
Speaker 4: cancer patients to U see help. But it's looking great
Speaker 4: right now.
Speaker 3: You're actually out there.
Speaker 2: Someone's driving you around, Buddy's driving you around, just because
Speaker 2: you want a lay of the land. You want to
Speaker 2: see what's working and what's not. Give me on a
Speaker 2: scale of one to ten, how impressed are you with
Speaker 2: the snow removal this morning with the City of Cincinnati.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm gonna go seven or eight. This is prior
Speaker 4: already the priority streets have really they're looking really good
Speaker 4: from what I'm seeing right now, and I think that's
Speaker 4: an incredible testament to the hard work of GPS overnight,
Speaker 4: the strategy they put in place of last year and
Speaker 4: make sure we didn't have to mess up from last
Speaker 4: from the last year. And you know, frankly, Priority one
Speaker 4: streets are looking good. I think that we're going to
Speaker 4: see over the rest of the day, we're going to
Speaker 4: get the rest of the side streets taken care of,
Speaker 4: and you know, we'll move that up to a ten
Speaker 4: when we get there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and on that too.
Speaker 2: Last year, there were literally city managers said, hey, listen,
Speaker 2: there's going to be maybe it was some bridges and
Speaker 2: roads said that listen, there's some streets that aren't going
Speaker 2: to get clowed. It's just a matter of fact. Is
Speaker 2: that has that changed since this time last year?
Speaker 4: That's my understanding. Yes, you know, we found last year
Speaker 4: after the snow emergency that there were six hundred streets
Speaker 4: we didn't even know that we hadn't touched. And so
Speaker 4: we have literally redrawn the maps. We've put in place
Speaker 4: a new system that makes so much sense. You know,
Speaker 4: it's a GPS based system where you can actually real
Speaker 4: time track streets are being plowed, what streets have not
Speaker 4: been touched, and then we're making sure, we're hitting all
Speaker 4: of them. And even though the Cloud Tracker is kind
Speaker 4: of hit or miss right now, that's mostly because they
Speaker 4: have too money people coming to watch it. It's working.
Speaker 4: It seems to be working really well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, on that, we're getting some calls. We had difficulty
Speaker 2: trying to log on and see in real time what
Speaker 2: roads have been plowed, and we had calls many a
Speaker 2: lot of people expressing frustration with that, and it's a
Speaker 2: bandwidth issue. I understand that, but is heavily this was
Speaker 2: that with all the problems last years, heavily this this
Speaker 2: solution was advertised. Shouldn't shouldn't that have been an issue
Speaker 2: that was foreseen that a lot of people are getting
Speaker 2: get on to see what the roads look like.
Speaker 4: I would say that the issue that we did not
Speaker 4: foresee was how successful our marketing campaign would be at
Speaker 4: getting people to trust this and use it. Because we
Speaker 4: definitely expected a lot of usage, we did not expect
Speaker 4: nearly as much as we're getting today. And I think
Speaker 4: that's I think that's fantastic, and we're going to get
Speaker 4: it fixed for the next time. That's why you stress
Speaker 4: test these experiences, and we're found out that it's you know,
Speaker 4: it is working hit or miss. I've had the same
Speaker 4: problems that you're talking about there, but the miss is
Speaker 4: the problem, and so we're going to we're going to
Speaker 4: increase that bandwidth. We're going to make it better for
Speaker 4: the next time. Unfortunately that is the problem. But frankly,
Speaker 4: I'd rather take a problem. We have too many people
Speaker 4: watching a successful system than last year, where it was
Speaker 4: literally making up data and making us think that it
Speaker 4: hit streets that it had we hadn't come close to touching.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I guess you'll push it back if if
Speaker 2: you stress test something, it shows you it's working. Apparently
Speaker 2: the stress test wasn't stressful enough.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, yesterday I was watching it. It was
Speaker 4: really it was actually really fun to watch. As we
Speaker 4: were showing what streets were getting pre treated. We were
Speaker 4: getting a lot of comments from people that they've never
Speaker 4: seen so many so many poles out there pre treating roads.
Speaker 4: But then today the snow hits a lot more people
Speaker 4: watched it. So what we expected to stress us to
Speaker 4: have in terms of how many people would watch it,
Speaker 4: we've we've passed. Then today finds out that a lot
Speaker 4: more people are watching it. Again, that's a good problem.
Speaker 5: To have.
Speaker 4: Yes, we got to do better at it. We're going
Speaker 4: to do better at it. But the problem is too
Speaker 4: many people ultimately are watching it that we didn't anticipate.
Speaker 4: And I think we will fix that. And that's an
Speaker 4: easy problem to fix, as opposed to again last year,
Speaker 4: where we literally just didn't pow six hundred streets. That's
Speaker 4: a big problem. This is a little Okay, let's fix
Speaker 4: that internal it problem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not going to be labor the snow tracker
Speaker 2: app or the website anyway being down from time to
Speaker 2: time and getting you know, slow to load and things
Speaker 2: because so many people are watching it. I don't think
Speaker 2: that's a pot It's a step in the right direction
Speaker 2: the sense that you know, last year it was six
Speaker 2: hundred roads if you're simply were left untreated and not
Speaker 2: enough equipment, not enough manpower, not enough everything. And the
Speaker 2: communication was terrible, the communication as much. You know, if
Speaker 2: we get it right for the next no Store, I'm fine.
Speaker 2: If we don't, there's probably more problems there than not.
Speaker 2: But the fact of the matter is the roads are
Speaker 2: getting treated and plowed. That's the big thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, And to your point about communication, I mean here
Speaker 4: in forty five minutes, the director of DPS is going
Speaker 4: to be coming to city Council to talk about, you know,
Speaker 4: all the work we've done the last year. Anyway, so
Speaker 4: we're actually we're getting what. We're not waiting a month
Speaker 4: to have a conversation about what the reaction is. We're
Speaker 4: actually going to get real time. Here's what happened, here's
Speaker 4: how it's put out, Here's where we need to do better.
Speaker 4: This is the first time that I think we've had
Speaker 4: a pretty successful reaction to the snow emergency in many,
Speaker 4: many years. And so yeah, there's a little some little
Speaker 4: things that are fonts in the cracks, but on the whole,
Speaker 4: it's looking good. And I think the fact that we're
Speaker 4: open to the feedback and criticism is really critical as well,
Speaker 4: because for too long, you know, the answer was just well,
Speaker 4: when you're not every sheet can get plotted, and that's
Speaker 4: just not an acceptable answer. And this year we're not
Speaker 4: accepting that as an answer. And I'm happy about that
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 3: You should be.
Speaker 2: I mean that this was the feather in your cap
Speaker 2: to get this done. There is going to be some
Speaker 2: rough patches as you roll this thing out, and I
Speaker 2: think most people understand it and appreciate it, but it's
Speaker 2: moving in the right direction. And the last year, council
Speaker 2: Member Seth Walsh, what was happening behind the scenes relative
Speaker 2: to personnel changes, disciplinary actions, the failures addressed last year?
Speaker 2: What what you to the last three hundred plus days.
Speaker 4: Well, since the snow emergency, I mean you saw some
Speaker 4: of the reporting that came out right afterwards. You know,
Speaker 4: immediately we were trying to figure out what was happening,
Speaker 4: why did we have such a terrible reaction to the
Speaker 4: snow emergency? And lifted up the hood and we I
Speaker 4: mean we found a multitude of problems, and so they
Speaker 4: moved Assistant city Manager Kathy Bailey over DPS and she
Speaker 4: really dug in on figuring out what happened, what support
Speaker 4: needed to be better put in place, what systems need
Speaker 4: to be fixed. They found over forty four different areas
Speaker 4: and let me stress areas not like issues. So each
Speaker 4: area had its own issues that needed to get fixed
Speaker 4: within it that they spent the last three hundred plus
Speaker 4: days fixing. The DPS director at the time retired. We
Speaker 4: brought in Mark Riley, who has been fantastic. I mean
Speaker 4: he was texting me this morning, giving me real time
Speaker 4: updates of what was going on on the streets, really
Speaker 4: making sure that we had this figured out. You know,
Speaker 4: they found out within the first couple of days of
Speaker 4: the emerge to see that we didn't touch six hundred streets,
Speaker 4: and they've spent the last year really going through that
Speaker 4: and redesigning all these snow routes. They've brought in all
Speaker 4: this new technology, but also they haven't We haven't solved
Speaker 4: all four to four of these issues yet because those
Speaker 4: are some massive issues that we're solving. So we've solved
Speaker 4: the immediate problems and then like today, we find you know,
Speaker 4: we got sixty percent of the way there on the
Speaker 4: snowplow tracker. We didn't expect as many people to be
Speaker 4: watching it as possible, so we got to do better
Speaker 4: and we're going to fix that for the next time.
Speaker 4: And there's other issues we're going to continue to work on.
Speaker 4: But the real big stuff is, you know, we have
Speaker 4: a plan to actually pile the streets. And again you're
Speaker 4: from Buffalo off from Michigan. Most of this comes down
Speaker 4: and you pre treat it and then you plow it.
Speaker 4: And we literally we're sending our crews out to Denver, saying,
Speaker 4: how do you take care of your streets? You guys
Speaker 4: want to handle this, and then we're taking their businesses.
Speaker 4: We don't need to reinvent the wheel, and I think
Speaker 4: you see that today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you look at the areas that get a
Speaker 2: lot of snow and go, okay, we don't need to
Speaker 2: replicate that, but we need to learn best practices to
Speaker 2: handle things here in Cincinnati. Seth makes a lot of
Speaker 2: It makes a lot of sense. Did you add more
Speaker 2: plod drivers this year?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: So we actually, you know, it sounds crazy, but we
Speaker 4: actually created a system where everybody is now that would
Speaker 4: drive a plow is actually trained to drive a plow
Speaker 4: instead of last time where we were literally putting people
Speaker 4: behind the wheel for the first time ever. I've actually
Speaker 4: just seen two snowplows in the last like thirty seconds,
Speaker 4: which is a great sign here. So you know, last
Speaker 4: time part of the problem. If you if you can imagine,
Speaker 4: we were literally putting people behind the wheel for the
Speaker 4: first time, giving them a binder with map quest like
Speaker 4: directions to say, hey, here's where you got to drive.
Speaker 4: They were driving in the middle of a blizzard at
Speaker 4: night with like flashlights in their mouths to figure out
Speaker 4: where they had to go. I mean, that's just chaotic
Speaker 4: and that's a mess, and that's the reason we saw
Speaker 4: the disaster we saw. Now these everybody who's driving a
Speaker 4: snowplow today that you see out there has actually gone
Speaker 4: through simulations. They've been trained on how to drive. We've
Speaker 4: brought people in who had the appropriate trainings. We've been
Speaker 4: sentivized people to get trained on how to do it.
Speaker 4: And they're out there and they're doing a great job.
Speaker 4: And I think that day is going to continue to
Speaker 4: show over the months and years ahead, have some really
Speaker 4: positive returns for the city.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's investing in that critical infrastructure. You know,
Speaker 2: you can talk about all those bells and whistles and
Speaker 2: nice stuff, but if the roads aren't plowed and the
Speaker 2: roads aren't full of potholes, that's another issue that was
Speaker 2: addressed to in the last year, then you're gonna have
Speaker 2: very unhappy residents. So it's good to hear that this
Speaker 2: has now become a big priority with you and the
Speaker 2: rest of council.
Speaker 3: Seth.
Speaker 2: I think a tip of the hat. If the roads
Speaker 2: are is good and you're you're driving around right now, well,
Speaker 2: somebody's driving you around, So I'm gonna make it like
Speaker 2: you're on the phone, by the way, I would if
Speaker 2: I were that person, I'd be demanding you buy them
Speaker 2: breakfast if you haven't already. And also the other thing
Speaker 2: too is breakfast. It is the most important meal of
Speaker 2: the day. Also, that the twelve hour ships are new,
Speaker 2: is that correct?
Speaker 3: Say that again, the twelve hour ships?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think was it twenty four hour coverage? And you know,
Speaker 2: there was a huge burnout issue because I remember, you know,
Speaker 2: news would be talking to people who are driving a
Speaker 2: truck for twenty four straight hours being snowblind. And now
Speaker 2: you've kind of even changed the way that the ships
Speaker 2: are scheduled, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, so we got we put them on twelve
Speaker 4: hour shifts. There's a select crew that's on twelve hour
Speaker 4: shifts when the weather starts to change. But in emergencies
Speaker 4: like this, we put people on the twelve hour shifts.
Speaker 4: And you know, emergency I think is a very loose
Speaker 4: word for what we're dealing with today. But yeah, they're
Speaker 4: on twelve hour shifts. They're hard work, and they were
Speaker 4: out all night again yesterday they were pre treating watching
Speaker 4: that on the snowploud tracker cool and I think that's
Speaker 4: really important that you can see your roads got appreciated
Speaker 4: and then today you can see hopefully you know, as
Speaker 4: the day progressage of ALC your roads goot plowed and
Speaker 4: them they're they're hard workers. And none of this problem
Speaker 4: has ever been the drivers. The problem has been the
Speaker 4: system we set up has failed them. And I think
Speaker 4: for the first time they're they're set up for success
Speaker 4: and we're seeing that.
Speaker 2: We know Seth Walsh that the tracker only activates during
Speaker 2: full winter response operations. What you call that like for
Speaker 2: example the snow just remindfully, what's the threshold for that?
Speaker 3: Who makes the call.
Speaker 2: And we didn't have one during the dusting is I
Speaker 2: think we had a conversation about that as well. We'll
Speaker 2: change eventually to where any snow event where the roads
Speaker 2: are treated, will least snow where they're doing their job.
Speaker 4: Oh well, I don't want to talk too far out
Speaker 4: of school on this one, but I think that that
Speaker 4: was a little bit of some bureaucratic speak when we
Speaker 4: gave that answer. I think this is again part of
Speaker 4: how we were learning and growing. So last time when
Speaker 4: we had the dusting, the reason that the snowplow tractor
Speaker 4: wasn't working. Is there weren't snowplows out there? And shortly
Speaker 4: before you and I had our last call about this,
Speaker 4: one of the things I challenged them on was, hey,
Speaker 4: we're pre treating streets like show people, We're pre treating
Speaker 4: streets so you don't have to have a snowplow out there.
Speaker 4: And you see this time again, you can track the
Speaker 4: pre treating in your streets on there. They reacted quickly,
Speaker 4: they made the adaptions, they moved forward. So I think
Speaker 4: the appropriate answer how you track snowplows is if there's
Speaker 4: a snowplow snowpower out there, you should be able to
Speaker 4: track it. And if that is pre treating your street,
Speaker 4: if that is power your street, we want to be
Speaker 4: able to track the snowpower. If you can't track it
Speaker 4: outside of the situation like today where there's too many
Speaker 4: people watching it, you can't track it, it's because there's
Speaker 4: no snowplow out there. And then you can ask us
Speaker 4: why is it not snowplowt there. We'll probably say it's
Speaker 4: because it's a sunny day and there's not no reason
Speaker 4: for one. That's the hope, at least.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well right exactly.
Speaker 2: I mean, if there's a threat, as we know, you
Speaker 2: know Cincinnati's, we freak out the minute there's even the
Speaker 2: forecast of snow. We start driving with our hazards on.
Speaker 2: We pump our brakes. Some people drive sixty miles over
Speaker 2: the speed limits and people thirty miles under the speed limit.
Speaker 2: It's chaos out there before the first flake even flies.
Speaker 2: I think having that system in place, when that's part
Speaker 2: of it's like, hey, the roads are treated. There's a
Speaker 2: little bit of comfort there knowing that you guys are on.
Speaker 2: I think it's a good ad for the competence of
Speaker 2: the city.
Speaker 4: I agree, and I think it's going to be critical
Speaker 4: as schools have to make decisions about whether they're gonn
Speaker 4: to be open or closed. You know, they have to
Speaker 4: build trust the city is going to be able to
Speaker 4: do their job and get the streets plowed, and the
Speaker 4: part of city government is rebuilding that trust. What happened
Speaker 4: last year was big in the sense of is ten inches,
Speaker 4: but it's been an issue that's been building a building
Speaker 4: building for years, and so hopefully this allows not only
Speaker 4: have streets clear, but to be able to get schools
Speaker 4: open appropriately build trust that we were ready for, and
Speaker 4: it just kind of ripples out from there so that
Speaker 4: you know, jobs aren't interrupted and people can continue their
Speaker 4: lives even though snow's coming down. They get enjoy the
Speaker 4: beauty of watching the snow as opposed to worry about
Speaker 4: driving in it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The other element of this too, you kind of touched
Speaker 2: down a little bit is the prioritization of streets. Obviously,
Speaker 2: the arteries, the ones that get you to the hospitals
Speaker 2: for example, campuses, things like that, those have to be
Speaker 2: cleared for emergency runs and the like. Side streets get deprioritized.
Speaker 2: But what is a reasonable wait for people listening this
Speaker 2: morning seth wallsh relative to their street being cloud.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think the biggest way I'd say it is, you know,
Speaker 4: right off the bat, we've got to clear the arteries,
Speaker 4: and to your point, you know, cancer not cancer hospitals
Speaker 4: are really important because people need to be able to
Speaker 4: get to and fro there from there. From there, we
Speaker 4: kind of spread out to you know, the streets that
Speaker 4: most people are traveling on. You probably know what they
Speaker 4: are because you're probably driving on them. And then once
Speaker 4: the snow really kind of stops, it allows us to
Speaker 4: start tackling and triage in the side streets, but immediately
Speaker 4: when the snow's coming down, we're trying to get those
Speaker 4: the main arteries, the main emergency roads, the main roads
Speaker 4: people are going to be driving on as clear as possible.
Speaker 4: We just keep hitting them and then I'm when the
Speaker 4: show's over, we're gonna go out there. We're gonna hit
Speaker 4: the side streets and get those clear because that's a
Speaker 4: lot easier to just hit it once or twice and
Speaker 4: then it's completely solved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I love the you know, the when the
Speaker 2: apps up and fully working should be for the next
Speaker 2: cycle here, then you're gonna be there's gonna be accountability.
Speaker 2: You can see that where the roads are, when they've
Speaker 2: been treated, when they've been plowed, where they've been salted
Speaker 2: and plowed. There's a whole bunch of metrics on the page.
Speaker 2: And that's a step in the right direction for sure.
Speaker 2: I know, a little glitchy this morning with that website
Speaker 2: not working at times, a little slow to load, but
Speaker 2: you're confident you're going to get this taken care of
Speaker 2: for the next round.
Speaker 4: I'm I'm very confident and I'm I'm optimistic that going forward,
Speaker 4: it will not be a thing in Cincinnati where you
Speaker 4: say my street never gets plowed. If your street doesn't
Speaker 4: get plowed, it should be for other reasons, like it's
Speaker 4: a private street, not because it's subsidious and Snati street
Speaker 4: and we just don't plow it. And I think that'd
Speaker 4: be a huge change that hopefully you don't even realize happened.
Speaker 2: He says, well, well, she's in the thick of it
Speaker 2: right now, checking out the roads, make sure the plow
Speaker 2: crews are doing what they're doing, making sure of things
Speaker 2: working right. It sounds certainly well, not perfect, light years
Speaker 2: away from where we were, well almost a year ago
Speaker 2: in January went that ten inch storm and literally six
Speaker 2: hundred streets not plowed. That is an unmitigated disaster. Far
Speaker 2: sight better today for sure, Buddy. Appreciate you checking in
Speaker 2: this morning, Seth as always. Thanks again, Thanks scott Council
Speaker 2: member Seth Wilson in the Scotsland Show on seven hundred
Speaker 2: w Dow.
Speaker 5: There you go.
Speaker 2: Hopefully your commutes okay, And looks like a lot of
Speaker 2: the roads got cleared in the last couple hours anyway
Speaker 2: for those straggling the work.
Speaker 3: Maybe a little bit late this morning. That's good. That's good.
Speaker 2: So yeah, not perfect by any stretch of the imagination,
Speaker 2: but far sight better than it was. At least the
Speaker 2: needle is moving in the right direction slowly with news.
Speaker 2: We'll get a full traffic and weather update seconds away
Speaker 2: here on seven hundred wlws hi Scott's here seven hundred
Speaker 2: w Hope you get to where you're going. If you
Speaker 2: had to get where you're going, If you didn't have
Speaker 2: to get anywhere, then good for you. What you doing
Speaker 2: A bad day yesterday? Well, one good, one bad, the
Speaker 2: really bad. I was watching, for some reason, watching that
Speaker 2: stupid Monday night game last night, the Patriots and the Giants,
Speaker 2: and watched the kicker, young Ouku, do something I've never
Speaker 2: seen before in all my years of watching football. If
Speaker 2: you haven't seen the clip yet, it is worth it.
Speaker 2: Not only did he miss the football in the field
Speaker 2: goal attempt, his he kicked the he kicked the ground
Speaker 2: in front of the ball like he didn't make contact
Speaker 2: with the ball.
Speaker 3: His foot struck a good I don't know.
Speaker 2: I had to be probably a foot behind the football
Speaker 2: like drove his tone into the groud like Joe Burrow,
Speaker 2: to the point where Jackson got the quarterback said, some
Speaker 2: caught on the sideline saying some very unsavory words coming
Speaker 2: out of his mouth. But I've never seen that before
Speaker 2: in my life. And I brought it up to Tom
Speaker 2: Brenneman and we were passing the hall. He said, nope,
Speaker 2: I've covered a lot of football. I've watched a lot
Speaker 2: of football. I've never seen that happen on any level.
Speaker 2: That was incredible. And Joe Burrow got tackled at turf
Speaker 2: toe surgery. He actually did it to himself. I don't
Speaker 2: think he's injured or hurt. Then they tried to fake
Speaker 2: it and pass it and they got sacked and it
Speaker 2: was just a It's the Giants. New York teams are terrible,
Speaker 2: just terrible. The other good news story, I guess if
Speaker 2: you're Lane Kiffin, you got paid new head coach at LSU.
Speaker 2: But those interesting, these other videos of this or he's
Speaker 2: getting on the private plane to fly to Baton rouge Ole,
Speaker 2: Miss fans are out on the tarmac booing him, like
Speaker 2: throwing stuff at him, and he said yeah. At the
Speaker 2: press conference. On the way to the airport, people are
Speaker 2: trying to run him off the road. They were so
Speaker 2: mad at him leaving before the Bowl Bull games.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Number one is if you were gonna get a pay,
Speaker 2: if you're gonna make thirteen million dollars, you do this,
Speaker 2: I would do the same thing.
Speaker 3: Presumably you do the same thing. Yeah, I'll tank some heat.
Speaker 3: I don't care.
Speaker 2: The other element is that's outside of Lane Kiffin's control,
Speaker 2: Like you're mad at him for doing what.
Speaker 3: Well, you left.
Speaker 2: You quit in the middle of the you quit. That's
Speaker 2: how works in college football. It doesn't work that way
Speaker 2: in the NFL. They have a rule that says, well,
Speaker 2: you can't leave during the season for another job. College
Speaker 2: football could certainly do that and fix that problem, but
Speaker 2: they choose not to. Part of that has to do
Speaker 2: with recruiting because unlike the NFL, where there's a draft,
Speaker 2: you know you're when you're not coaching and coming up
Speaker 2: with game plans, you're out recruiting. So it's a twenty
Speaker 2: four to seven job. It's a three hundred and sixty
Speaker 2: five day a year job. There's just no good time
Speaker 2: to leave when when when's a good time? Right after
Speaker 2: you start? So college footle go change it and say, hey, listen,
Speaker 2: there's a window. I don't know if it's a month
Speaker 2: or however long it is. After the last bowl game
Speaker 2: and before they start of the season, you can apply
Speaker 2: and get a job or someone can hire you away.
Speaker 2: But that's in Thailand. College swoop. That's not Lane Givens
Speaker 2: fault man. I think that's some weak sauce. If you're
Speaker 2: trying to run them off, allegedly run them off the road,
Speaker 2: or you're you're mad at him, why gotta leave it
Speaker 2: s and app again. I realized what happened with Tony
Speaker 2: Pike and Brian Kelly when Brian Kelly left. But them's
Speaker 2: the rules. If college footballans to fix it, they should.
Speaker 2: If they don't, it's on them. That's where the anger
Speaker 2: should lie. Anyway, this is a very interesting week, and
Speaker 2: I in my lifetime, I don't think I've seen something
Speaker 2: that has changed the game in such a short period
Speaker 2: of time as AI this week. This week marks the
Speaker 2: three year anniversary since the launch of Chat GPT. It
Speaker 2: feels like artificial intelligence, whether it's Chat, GPT or Claude.
Speaker 2: I use Claude, there's other products out there. It feels
Speaker 2: like it's been around for about ten years. Doesn't that
Speaker 2: it's hard to believe they rolled it out three years ago,
Speaker 2: November twenty twenty two, and simply because within months millions
Speaker 2: of hundreds of millions of people were online using AI assistance.
Speaker 2: You could write, you could code, you could analyze, you
Speaker 2: can reason, you can research, and it feels it feels
Speaker 2: like cheating.
Speaker 3: You know, future.
Speaker 2: Generations will look at us and go, well, that technology,
Speaker 2: who is really bad? But it's so much better now.
Speaker 2: How it's going to improve? We don't know. It's going
Speaker 2: to get wiser, smarter, faster, and more intuitive, there's no
Speaker 2: doubt about it. But future generationals kind of laugh at us,
Speaker 2: like it just feels like it's magic, Like you're cheating. Well,
Speaker 2: that's kind of cheating. I know people who do coding.
Speaker 2: I know people who do research and can generate just
Speaker 2: tons of good data in a very very short period
Speaker 2: of time, literally in seconds or minutes, as the case
Speaker 2: may be. And now your whole industry that's built around
Speaker 2: these language models, and it's affected pretty much all of us.
Speaker 2: You're not using AI and yours you kind of are.
Speaker 2: Programmers use coding assistance for drafting and editing. Designers use
Speaker 2: image generation, there's chatbots, research analysis, thirty to I think
Speaker 2: the upwards like four out of ten white collar workers
Speaker 2: now use it regularly use generative AD and it affects
Speaker 2: ninety percent of all jobs right now, and that's only
Speaker 2: going to get up to one hundred at some point.
Speaker 2: But it's also a disruptor too, because the image generators
Speaker 2: have basically democratized visual creation is what's going on. So
Speaker 2: you know, we're going to see all these lines blurred
Speaker 2: if they're not already. About artistic ownership and copyright, we're
Speaker 2: having fights over that right now. We have AI generated
Speaker 2: art in music and video. There's songs that are charting
Speaker 2: that are completely AI made. There's voices that are completely
Speaker 2: a AI. You never know it. So there's a lot
Speaker 2: of controversy as well. I think the point is coming
Speaker 2: certainly within our lifetimes where most of the stuff that
Speaker 2: you as far as content goes, is going to be
Speaker 2: created by AI because you know, you don't have to
Speaker 2: worry about actors going on strike, you don't have to
Speaker 2: worry about production costs and filming on location and things
Speaker 2: like that. AI can dream all that stuff up and
Speaker 2: do such a good job because it's only going to
Speaker 2: get better of tricking the eye into seeing what you
Speaker 2: say we see you know, people falling for stuff all
Speaker 2: the time. And I think the other challenge, the big
Speaker 2: challenge of this one, at least from my end of it,
Speaker 2: when it comes to content, is with deep fakes and
Speaker 2: a I generated content. I keep getting this ad pop
Speaker 2: up on social I'm sure you've seen it as well,
Speaker 2: where it's a it's kind of like a it's allegedly
Speaker 2: it's a robot dog. I think they have a robot cat,
Speaker 2: but it's a robot dog and it looks extremely realistic,
Speaker 2: like yeah, even veterinarians are fooled by this, and you
Speaker 2: think it's a real dog and you look at them,
Speaker 2: Oh that's and you know, like I'm watching, going, okay,
Speaker 2: that's AI. It's clearly AI. It's fake and there's no
Speaker 2: way the robot looks exactly like that. It's just it's impossible.
Speaker 2: But you wonder how many people are fooled going, oh,
Speaker 2: it's a dog that looks exactly like and you open
Speaker 2: the box. It's nothing like that. It's not that lifelike. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's an AI image, is what that is? And say,
Speaker 2: it's what we can tell now. And I think in
Speaker 2: the next few years, and it's getting harder and harder
Speaker 2: to discern with the naked eye what's real and what's fake.
Speaker 2: So there's gonna be a lot of challenges with that
Speaker 2: coming up, and the challenges to anyone who's in the
Speaker 2: entertainment field for that matter, because you know, future entertainers
Speaker 2: are gonna be AI based, it's gonna be AI generated
Speaker 2: if they be such a thing. And you know, it's
Speaker 2: all integrated right now. It's hard to believe all this
Speaker 2: has just happened in the last three years. I think
Speaker 2: to me that is the amazing part. Three years since
Speaker 2: Chad GBT was launched. It feels like it's it's about
Speaker 2: ten because in the past it was yeah, okay, search
Speaker 2: engines and bots and things like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know we had Google.
Speaker 2: Well Google's become commonplace, but before that, there were other
Speaker 2: search engines out there that we would use, or social
Speaker 2: media platforms right that are now extinct for that matter.
Speaker 3: But the chatbots that that's that's going to be.
Speaker 2: Interesting to see how it develops over the next wee
Speaker 2: probably two weeks is going to feel like two years
Speaker 2: at this point. Anyway, it's slowly here on seven hundred
Speaker 2: WW and got Steve Gooden coming up he's an interesting
Speaker 2: perspective on this. Steve, of course, you know he ran
Speaker 2: for council, but also his background. He's an attorney constitutionals,
Speaker 2: a very sharp all one of the sharpest attorneys I
Speaker 2: think in the in the state for that matter, but
Speaker 2: also a former judge advocate general for the United States Army.
Speaker 2: And we talk to him, especially pick his sup a
Speaker 2: legal mind about Venezuela and the attacks. And now we
Speaker 2: have somewhat of a constitutional crisis. You know, you love
Speaker 2: him or hate him. The thing about the Trump administration
Speaker 2: is it is a very interesting test of our legal system.
Speaker 2: Now if you don't like it, you're complaining that he's
Speaker 2: shrinding the Constitution, and this is awful for the country.
Speaker 2: And every day it's something new and how you pervert
Speaker 2: the Constitution of twisted your needs and meets. But as
Speaker 2: we saw with January sixth, which you know, my mind
Speaker 2: dissuaded him from getting my vote, I wasn't going to
Speaker 2: do after that. You know, I understand it's a constitutal test.
Speaker 2: I look at that way and go, okay, all of
Speaker 2: these are probing to see how far we can take
Speaker 2: the Constitution. I think from a legal standpo he's an
Speaker 2: armchair fan of the law. Myself certainly know a turn,
Speaker 2: but I watch this and go, yeah. The other side
Speaker 2: of this fact is like the Constitution is living, breathing document,
Speaker 2: and what happens is people test the Constitution all the
Speaker 2: time and that is interpreted by the Supreme Court of
Speaker 2: the United States to find out what the parameters law are.
Speaker 3: And it's always changing.
Speaker 2: It's it's always becoming something else, simply because there's so
Speaker 2: many things that happen on a daily basis that the
Speaker 2: framers didn't foresee. It's it's amazing to see how this
Speaker 2: document is supple, that is holds a test of time
Speaker 2: for twohndred and fifties.
Speaker 3: So really it's really cool.
Speaker 2: But this one, I think even pushes the limits of
Speaker 2: the Constitution itself in a sense, because Navy pilots ordered
Speaker 2: to attack that another suspected drug runner off the coast
Speaker 2: of Venezuela back in what September, and survivors afterward were
Speaker 2: spot in the water, according to reports from multiple outlets. Now,
Speaker 2: the Secretary Offense Pete's Headswith ordered a second attack to
Speaker 2: kill everybody that was clinging to the wreckage. Now, he
Speaker 2: said that report is inaccurate. The White House says it
Speaker 2: was actually Admiral Frank Bradley and not to Secretary of
Speaker 2: Defense that ordered that. President Trump says he didn't order it.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's it's gonna be a lot of finger
Speaker 2: pointing here, and eventually what happens is probably Frank Bradley
Speaker 2: is the one who falls on the sharp stick as
Speaker 2: often as the case. But White House yesterday defending the
Speaker 2: legality of that attack. Congress said we're going to investigate this,
Speaker 2: and it's bipartisan. It's not just Democrats too, like Jeffers,
Speaker 2: it's many others as well, saying, well, we've got to
Speaker 2: look at this because it's pretty clear with the laws
Speaker 2: of Engagement, laws of war, rules of war. You know,
Speaker 2: killing in already a questionable enemy combatant, but killing someone
Speaker 2: who is no longer a threat is against our rules.
Speaker 2: And it states that the DoD has been pretty clear
Speaker 2: on this for various reasons. Anyway, we'll get into what
Speaker 2: all this means with Steve Gooden covered at ten oh
Speaker 2: seven this morning here on the Scotts Loan Show on
Speaker 2: seven hundred WWT. Good news is the weather looks like
Speaker 2: it's over right now. These storms have moved out left
Speaker 2: a good several inches of snow depending where our roads
Speaker 2: are getting cleared. Just at congress Member or congress Member
Speaker 2: Console member Seth Walsh on the show because he was like, literally,
Speaker 2: he's the guy getting all the street stuff fixed. That
Speaker 2: was his rallying cry for his reelection. And I know
Speaker 2: the app the storm tracker, and I want to say
Speaker 2: app it's on appets just a website. The plowtracker was
Speaker 2: down periodically. He said, well, you know what, we had
Speaker 2: some twenty more people on that looking at than we anticipated,
Speaker 2: even during the stress test. So we'll get that right
Speaker 2: for the next time we get significant snowfall in Cincinnati.
Speaker 2: But he's driving around and roads look pretty clear. In
Speaker 2: a lot of heirs, I will say Odat did a
Speaker 2: great job too.
Speaker 3: This morning.
Speaker 2: When I rolled in very early, this would have been
Speaker 2: six o'clock, six thirty, I got into the station roads,
Speaker 2: I was like thirty thirty five maybe forty miles an
Speaker 2: hour in places driving seventy five south. I know those
Speaker 2: driving northbound where just it was like three hour delay
Speaker 2: in some cases took forever for folks to get in.
Speaker 2: But I'll buy and large in this case, we are
Speaker 2: fairly clear roads right now, So cruiser out there, whether
Speaker 2: it's the state, the county, or the city. And they
Speaker 2: got us caught up at this point too, so it's
Speaker 2: all good anyway. I'm gonna get a quick time out
Speaker 2: in more to follow Scott's loan on this snowy Tuesday.
Speaker 3: Here I got you covered seven hundred.
Speaker 2: WW news update and it's away here on seven hundred
Speaker 2: WW Scott's Loan show. Here is a This is an
Speaker 2: old weird trick for you. I just saw this win
Speaker 2: I didn't. I'm really if there's a thing to it.
Speaker 2: It's called dark showering. Apparently, if you take a shower, well,
Speaker 2: the lights are off for the lighting dim rather than bright,
Speaker 2: and you're, you know, getting all the the undercarriage clean
Speaker 2: because you don't want the rust, get the simonies on there.
Speaker 2: It's not only the hygiene you're doing, but apparently by
Speaker 2: dimming you're turning off the lights. You create you're creating
Speaker 2: what they call a sensory cocoon that signals the body
Speaker 2: to unwine. And this, of course is important if you
Speaker 2: shower at night. Now, are you a morning shower? Are
Speaker 2: you an evening shower? Are you a I don't know,
Speaker 2: two times a day shower. But if you shower in
Speaker 2: the evenings before bed, which I'm a fan of because
Speaker 2: I like to be clean before I slid in the bed,
Speaker 2: it helps you down regulate your body's stress response. So
Speaker 2: and it also supports natural circadian transition from day to
Speaker 2: night and night to day. And it's kind of a
Speaker 2: threshold moment, they said, So you're not only just getting clean,
Speaker 2: but the warmth of the shower and the soap and
Speaker 2: the smells and everything in the dark is leading you
Speaker 2: to sleepy time. So stress goes down, you're kind of unwinding.
Speaker 2: It's the signal to your body to chill out, get
Speaker 2: ready for bed, improves your sleep, gets your mood right,
Speaker 2: your mindfulness. And there's I guess, I don't know I'm
Speaker 2: rating this, and it says in a time where most
Speaker 2: people barely have space for rest, let alone intimacy, dark
Speaker 2: showering has the power to rewaken sensuality. The low light,
Speaker 2: warm water, and heightened sensor awareness creates a soft atmospheric mood.
Speaker 3: I don't know what that means.
Speaker 2: Intimacy, But you're by yourself, I mean, if you're in
Speaker 2: the shower someone else then I'm good for you, but
Speaker 2: you're clean and dirty at the same time. So apparently
Speaker 2: this is a new thing. Maybe not a new thing.
Speaker 2: It's been around turning the lights off for your shower,
Speaker 2: but I don't know. You get that certain age too,
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, that's all well and good. They start
Speaker 2: worrying about, well, you know, I trip over the shower
Speaker 2: into the curb of the shower, or I got to
Speaker 2: try and grab a towel. And on the other side
Speaker 2: as well, you know what, I hate myself image is
Speaker 2: so bad. This is good because I don't want to
Speaker 2: see myself naked. I can't stand it dark showering.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 2: We'll get a news update in we'll get a little
Speaker 2: bit more serious after ten oh seven was Steve Good,
Speaker 2: an attorney and former judge Advocate General for the US Army,
Speaker 2: and what is going on on Veszuela, specifically with not
Speaker 2: just a strike against an alleged drug smuggler in a boat,
Speaker 2: but killing those who were already in the water. So
Speaker 2: you know there's an issue there whether or not that's
Speaker 2: a war crime. The words war crimes are being thrown
Speaker 2: around right now relative to the Pentagon. We'll get to
Speaker 2: that with Steve and kick the tires on it. Just
Speaker 2: ahead on the Scott's Loan Show, Home of the Best
Speaker 2: Bengals coverage seven hundred WWT Cincinnati. All right, snow behind us.
Speaker 3: We move forward, always moving forward.
Speaker 2: Constitutional crisis burning at the Pentagon after Navy pilot's ordered
Speaker 2: to attack a suspected drug runner off the coast of
Speaker 2: Venezuela in September. Afterwards survivor's spot in the water, and
Speaker 2: according to reports, Secretary of Defense Headseth ordered a second
Speaker 2: attack to quote kill everybody claning the wreckage. She said,
Speaker 2: that's inaccurate. The White House now says Admiral Frank Bradley
Speaker 2: and not Hegsith directed the strikes. President Trump says he
Speaker 2: didn't order it, said the first one was effective, we
Speaker 2: didn't do the second one. White House defended the legality
Speaker 2: of it all. But now Congress, in a bipartisan fashion,
Speaker 2: believe it or not, wants to investigate, and some members
Speaker 2: are warning, if substantiated, this could violate the laws of war.
Speaker 2: We're talking about significant constitutional violations and war crimes. No
Speaker 2: one better suited to talk about this in Cincinnati than
Speaker 2: Attorney Steve Good and of course he was also an
Speaker 2: Army judge advocate general, so understands the process here, Steve, welcome, high.
Speaker 5: Ben great snowed in but good.
Speaker 2: Otherwise, well, it's good. Now we can work from home.
Speaker 2: When we used to go mad I got to leave
Speaker 2: five hours early to get into war. Some people here
Speaker 2: were three hour through our commute when normally takes him
Speaker 2: about twenty minutes. So yeah, if you left earlier this morning,
Speaker 2: we had the worst of it, that's for sure. So yeah,
Speaker 2: if you go work from home, get or done, big boy?
Speaker 3: So what do you at first? Blush? This is not good.
Speaker 2: The core argument here, the core legal argument we'll get
Speaker 2: to in a second, but from a perspective of someone
Speaker 2: who served as an attorney the fact attorney in the
Speaker 2: United States Military of the Army as a judge at
Speaker 2: the general this is if this is true, is this
Speaker 2: a wark?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 6: You know, it's really hard to say. And I'll tell
Speaker 6: you it's funny. I used to teach the law of
Speaker 6: war and the rules of engagement and all the stuff
Speaker 6: down at Fort Bragg. And you know this was a
Speaker 6: Seal Team six operation actually done out of Fort Brag,
Speaker 6: So I know that world a bit. I spent about
Speaker 6: thirteen months there during the Iraq War. And I can
Speaker 6: tell you that it's more complicated than it might seem.
Speaker 6: I mean, there's really multiple parts of the what we
Speaker 6: call the American law of war. We have our own
Speaker 6: rules of engagement, but we're also signatories to the Geneva Convention,
Speaker 6: which deals with how we treat prisoners of war and
Speaker 6: injured soldiers on the other side. And really what's happened
Speaker 6: here is the Trump folks have made an argument that
Speaker 6: we're in an armed conflict with Venezuela, which is where
Speaker 6: most of these boats are originating from, because of their
Speaker 6: role in the cocaine trade. They have designated Maduro, their president,
Speaker 6: as a terrorist, what they're calling a narco terrorist. Now,
Speaker 6: this is kind of a term that's sort of new,
Speaker 6: it's sort of made up. This concept has been kicking
Speaker 6: around since the Reagan administration. That this is really the
Speaker 6: first time that the America, that the United States and
Speaker 6: a lot of people are paying attention to this. That
Speaker 6: the United States basically said the regime in Venezuela is illegitimate.
Speaker 6: They are part of the problem. They are pumping fatanyl
Speaker 6: and cocaine and other drugs into the United States.
Speaker 5: And we consider this to be.
Speaker 6: An armed you know, an armed conflict, which is the
Speaker 6: first thing you have to have in order for the
Speaker 6: rules of engagement to take place or to be applicable.
Speaker 6: And then second, we're considering these folks on these boats
Speaker 6: to be armed combatants. Now, whether any of that all
Speaker 6: turns out to be true is really what I think
Speaker 6: these hearings are going to flesh out.
Speaker 5: You know, at this point, we don't have anything in any.
Speaker 6: Facts that I have heard that seriously robut the administration's
Speaker 6: claim that these folks were drug runners. So if you
Speaker 6: accept the argument that the government of Venezuela and the
Speaker 6: people behind this are in quote unquote narco terrorists, that
Speaker 6: we're in conflict with them because they're bringing these dangerous
Speaker 6: drugs to go with fentanyl into the United States. Uh,
Speaker 6: then then there is some justification of the laws of
Speaker 6: war to engage. Now this very specific issue about what
Speaker 6: they call it double tap strike, which is heads up
Speaker 6: or the admiral or whoever it was, going back and
Speaker 6: shooting the prisoner or not the prisoner shooting the two survivors.
Speaker 5: That's not uncommon.
Speaker 6: Uh. The double tap thing is something that occurred in
Speaker 6: the Rack over and over again that occurred, and uh,
Speaker 6: the idf uses it in some of their battles and
Speaker 6: palest on and so forth. So it's not an uncommon thing.
Speaker 6: The theory being that that the the injured person, if
Speaker 6: he truly is a combatant, is still sort of in
Speaker 6: the fight, could call for backup, could cause problems. Now,
Speaker 6: it is distasteful, it is tough, and there's a lot
Speaker 6: of conflict in military law circles about whether it's appropriate,
Speaker 6: whether you have some sort of obligation to go try
Speaker 6: to rescue that person even though they're they're down. So
Speaker 6: all of this, in my mind, is going to hinge
Speaker 6: on the administrations. The accuracy really of the administration sort
Speaker 6: of designation of Venezuela and its government as being actually
Speaker 6: in combat with us because of the drug thing. That
Speaker 6: is a kind of a new frontier legally speaking. But
Speaker 6: if that holds water, then then it's sort of a
Speaker 6: fair game for us to engage these folks as they come.
Speaker 5: Back and forth.
Speaker 6: And I've really not heard any evidence to the contrary
Speaker 6: that that isn't true. And if you look, the other
Speaker 6: thing that's really fascinating to me that I think is
Speaker 6: getting lost in all this is we are having a
Speaker 6: slow but discernible build.
Speaker 5: Up around Venezuela.
Speaker 6: And if you read in the New York Times, which
Speaker 6: is sometimes are ead with a huge grain of salt,
Speaker 6: you know, they've been writing for weeks that there are
Speaker 6: sources in the administration saying that there is a movement
Speaker 6: toward total regime change, you know, in Venezuela. On the part,
Speaker 6: you know that there are people in the Trump administration,
Speaker 6: including Mark Arrubio, who really just want to overthrow the
Speaker 6: government of Venezuela under the theory that it will bust
Speaker 6: up out of the narco terrorism, in that Venezuela is
Speaker 6: actually propping up Cuba, the cognist Cuban regime. So there
Speaker 6: may be a much larger long term play here on
Speaker 6: the part of the Trump administration in terms of actually
Speaker 6: changing the entire administration in Venezuela. So really, at this
Speaker 6: point we've got it. There are more facts that we
Speaker 6: really need to know before we can talk about it
Speaker 6: with any kind of you know, any kind of certainty.
Speaker 6: But those are the sorts of things we should be
Speaker 6: looking for.
Speaker 2: Well, initially, Steve Gunn, I can't help but think, Okay,
Speaker 2: maybe this is a signal to Mexico and China is
Speaker 2: under givenment in Mexico and other nations because if you
Speaker 2: go after Venezuela, they are literally the I mean they really,
Speaker 2: if you believe the government reports leading up to this,
Speaker 2: they're not a big player when it comes to narco trafficking.
Speaker 2: It's a very small percentage. You know, certainly when you
Speaker 2: look at south of the border, you think Mexico and
Speaker 2: drug cartels and other countries like that, but certainly not Venezuela.
Speaker 2: And even the government reporting up to this point and
Speaker 2: said now they're not really not on the radar for this,
Speaker 2: but you're making a case of what this is. And
Speaker 2: I wonder if that's a signal for other nations going off,
Speaker 2: they're going to go after Venezuela. It may be the
Speaker 2: bigger players next, So that even I think is going
Speaker 2: to get called a question by either Congress or the
Speaker 2: Supreme Court eventually.
Speaker 6: I think you're right, and I think if we're looking
Speaker 6: at this not just that, if we step back from
Speaker 6: whatever happened with these boats and look at the bigger
Speaker 6: picture here, I mean, it looks to me like of
Speaker 6: all the kind of narco terrorists, drug trafficking nations in
Speaker 6: South and Central America. They've picked the weakest one and
Speaker 6: the weakest government, which is Venezuela. We know that most
Speaker 6: of the FEDNOYL is coming up through Mexico, but we
Speaker 6: also know because of all kinds of geopolitical reasons, we're
Speaker 6: not going to invade Mexico.
Speaker 5: We can't.
Speaker 6: We know that's really the problem. And but Venezuela is
Speaker 6: probably these of those countries from how it's always been
Speaker 6: explained to me is they're very much involved in the
Speaker 6: coke king trade, but a lot of it goes to
Speaker 6: Europe from Venezuela for whatever reason. I mean, you know,
Speaker 6: you have the US is kind of a secondary market
Speaker 6: for their drugs. So it's clearly meant to send a
Speaker 6: signal to and destabilize and send a signal to the
Speaker 6: whole mass, the whole region, you know, by going after
Speaker 6: these boats in these very simininess, very small way. But
Speaker 6: also it looks like very slowly amassing troops and ships
Speaker 6: in that region. And the other thing I think kind
Speaker 6: of tone throw it into the mix is just this week,
Speaker 6: Trump pardoned the president of Honduras, who was in a
Speaker 6: US federal prison for cocaine traps. Yeah, so they and
Speaker 6: if you read all these together, it looks to me
Speaker 6: like the Trump administration is telling these folks down, you know,
Speaker 6: the presidents, the generals and the folks who are really
Speaker 6: kind of looking the other way or actually participating in
Speaker 6: the dirugt trade in these countries, like, hey, I'm going
Speaker 6: to be picking winners and losers here in a big way.
Speaker 6: And if you want to cut a deal with me,
Speaker 6: you ought to be cutting a deal with me right now.
Speaker 6: And absolutely going after Venezuela, which is sort of the
Speaker 6: weak link. It has to be about sending a message
Speaker 6: to Mexico particularly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I get the political gamesmanship that's going on here,
Speaker 2: Steve Goodin. But the other hand is, you know these
Speaker 2: are real kills. The one now when the question is
Speaker 2: the second strike, I'm looking at a court order. Well,
Speaker 2: it's from the US Court of Appeals about nine years
Speaker 2: ago that says if a soldier, and this is in
Speaker 2: your guys, is to be the army intentionally kills a pow,
Speaker 2: he commits murder. We don't kill POW's in the Navy.
Speaker 2: According to the Commander's Book of Naval Operations, enemy combatants
Speaker 2: or combatants or civilians defenseless because of a shipwreck also
Speaker 2: fall into that category. So I guess the observation here
Speaker 2: would be if you've already destroyed the ship and whatever
Speaker 2: that ship is carrying, yeah, I guess you don't have
Speaker 2: to rescue the prisoners in that case or the people
Speaker 2: who are still alive from that. But going and killing
Speaker 2: them that is that's a different type of me. It's
Speaker 2: an execution, is what it is. Does that not fall
Speaker 2: into the category of work rhymes in?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 6: You know that That is the one piece of this
Speaker 6: where I think there will be some real investigation. I mean,
Speaker 6: that's again what they call the double tap. You have
Speaker 6: the you have the strike, you have the destructure, and
Speaker 6: then you come back and and hit it a second time.
Speaker 6: Uh and and you're right like particularly you know under
Speaker 6: under the navy rags. You know, a shipwrecked person is
Speaker 6: somebody that I guess you would in theory have an
Speaker 6: obligation to go back and help. But then the other
Speaker 6: question is going to be who gave the order, When
Speaker 6: was the order given, what was the context of the order.
Speaker 6: There's been a lot of talk, I guess by like
Speaker 6: Senator Mark Kelly and others about this idea that some
Speaker 6: of the individual troops involved could have could face court
Speaker 6: martial because they had an obligation to resist an illegal order.
Speaker 6: But in this case, I don't know that you know
Speaker 6: in the moment that it would be so obvious to
Speaker 6: the officer that this is illegal. I mean, these these
Speaker 6: individuals who were in the water were not POW's and
Speaker 6: I view, they were not subject to the genemic convention.
Speaker 6: They were not in our custody. You know, this was
Speaker 6: still kind of an active or what they may now
Speaker 6: call a kinetic operation. So there is going to be
Speaker 6: some inquiry into that about who gave the order. There's
Speaker 6: been conflicting reports. Some say it was heg Seth, the
Speaker 6: others say it's this admiral. There were some indication, but
Speaker 6: did it come from the president? All of that seems
Speaker 6: kind of unlikely that he would have been engaged in this.
Speaker 5: Kind of a granular level.
Speaker 6: But yes, that is the one part of these operations
Speaker 6: where I think there is going to be some look.
Speaker 6: But I also, you know, the flip side of this is,
Speaker 6: I mean from a political standpoint, and if this plays
Speaker 6: out in the congressional hearing, it will become a political matter.
Speaker 6: It's already become a political matter. I don't want to
Speaker 6: sound colder callous, but perhaps I am being colder callous
Speaker 6: in this is the countless lives that we have lost
Speaker 6: in this country to fetanyl and to drug addiction and
Speaker 6: to other things that these folks have profited on. And indeed,
Speaker 6: these folks were running drugs back and forth here. My
Speaker 6: gut is that the American people just aren't going to
Speaker 6: care about these two guys really running drugs.
Speaker 2: But that's really the crux of this, right Steve is like,
Speaker 2: I'm with you on that one. If you're bringing drugs
Speaker 2: and narcotics in this country, you deserve to get what's
Speaker 2: coming into a long time coming. But how are we
Speaker 2: sure that these are actually drug runners? That's the big question.
Speaker 2: And in any military operation, what kind of oversight is
Speaker 2: there to make sure that these are actually who they
Speaker 2: say they are?
Speaker 6: Well, and again that that's where a lot of the
Speaker 6: court martials end up falling apart in this area, because
Speaker 6: I mean, I mean, this is no different in my mind.
Speaker 6: For I mean, if you accept, I guess the idea
Speaker 6: that we were lawfully engaged with a and you know,
Speaker 6: in a in a in an armed conflict with these folks,
Speaker 6: which I think is the first big threshold question. You know,
Speaker 6: these are the kinds of questions that came up all
Speaker 6: the time in Iraq court martials, which is, you know,
Speaker 6: was that person was the person who was shot?
Speaker 5: Really? Uh?
Speaker 6: You know, really a terrorist really attacking troops? You know,
Speaker 6: were they really planning a roadside bomb?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 5: You know, these kinds of things really do.
Speaker 6: Hinge upon the intelligence and then a court martial setting
Speaker 6: if we're going if it does go that way, which
Speaker 6: it thinks unlikely, but if it does, you know, you
Speaker 6: really do have a jury of your peers and a
Speaker 6: court marcial. And I've tried a few court martials, I've
Speaker 6: seen the down of Fort Bragg. I mean, they you
Speaker 6: tend to you end up with a panel I call
Speaker 6: a jury there of soldiers or sailors who are.
Speaker 5: Your rank or higher. Uh.
Speaker 6: And and these are folks that tend to give you
Speaker 6: the benefit of the doubt on situations like this, particularly
Speaker 6: if you were relying on intelligence. So it really is
Speaker 6: going to boil down to a question of intelligence and
Speaker 6: who you want when. And look, if they're just out
Speaker 6: there randomly blowing boats up, I mean, I agree that's bad.
Speaker 6: And I agree that people look to the United States
Speaker 6: to have a higher standard, and we probably you know,
Speaker 6: and we should. But if there was credible intel there
Speaker 6: and uh and and this this whole you know, the
Speaker 6: public buys into and the Senate buys into the idea
Speaker 6: that we really are rightfully in conflict with these countries
Speaker 6: that are whose governments allow and encourage and sometimes you've
Speaker 6: promit from these drugs coming in. Then it's ultimately going
Speaker 6: to turn on a political question, and all these things
Speaker 6: about the Uniform Code to Military Justice and the Genevan Convention,
Speaker 6: a lot of that's going to fall by the wayside
Speaker 6: of my opinion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's going to be a difficult legal
Speaker 2: arm because you go, well, the reason why we're this
Speaker 2: is an act of war, right, because we've now taken
Speaker 2: Narco terrorists and projected them as essentially a standing army
Speaker 2: or war crimes, and so therefore we have military justification
Speaker 2: of attack. But if this is the report is true
Speaker 2: that you killed people who were essentially survivors of a
Speaker 2: shipwrecker in this case, an attack, and you killed them,
Speaker 2: the defense can't then be well, you know, the rules
Speaker 2: of war don't apply in this case. Because you essentially
Speaker 2: said they did earlier. That's a tough argument. The other
Speaker 2: element here too, and this is the political element. Steve
Speaker 2: goodin the Senate voted forty nine to fifty one against
Speaker 2: blocking unilateral authority for the president for these strikes. So
Speaker 2: the Congress's value to certain war powers contribute to this.
Speaker 5: Well, you know that's been going on forever.
Speaker 6: I mean, yeah, you know, the War Powers Act in
Speaker 6: nineteen seventy three was meant to sort of him in Nixon,
Speaker 6: you know, after the Cambodian bombings, and and really you know,
Speaker 6: it's on the books, but Congress has really never enforced it.
Speaker 6: And just the hard reality is, you know, we have
Speaker 6: a really declared war since World War Two, but yet
Speaker 6: we've been in Korea, we've been in Vietnam, we've been
Speaker 6: in Afghanistan, we're in Iraq, and you know, tens of
Speaker 6: thousands of casualties and you know, we you know, we've
Speaker 6: cost hundreds of thousands of casualties on the other side,
Speaker 6: you know, all without a declaration of war.
Speaker 5: But you know the reality is that.
Speaker 6: In today's world and its tied together as the whole
Speaker 6: world is, we have to have you know, our executive
Speaker 6: branch in our military has to have some autonomy to
Speaker 6: make these smaller, you know, these not through war it acts,
Speaker 6: but to engage in these kinds of operations or else
Speaker 6: we're going.
Speaker 5: To be.
Speaker 6: Sometimes they work out horribly and sometimes you know, they
Speaker 6: get ahead of the public and the public ultimately pushes back,
Speaker 6: which is what Frank ultimately occurred.
Speaker 5: In Vietnam and Iraq and other places.
Speaker 6: But you have to you know, these things ultimately do
Speaker 6: become political in a way.
Speaker 5: But in the in the short term, you know, you're right.
Speaker 6: I mean, the Senate is never really, not even since
Speaker 6: seventy three, really raining the president in a big way
Speaker 6: on these things.
Speaker 5: Is they're afraid to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we see presidencies. Was Biden and trumpet extension
Speaker 2: of that, an acceleration of that, and it's everything's done
Speaker 2: by executive order. Congresson do anything. You can't even get
Speaker 2: a budget together for crying out loud. And finally here too.
Speaker 2: You know, for those who think it's a Trump it's
Speaker 2: like this is as old as the president's up. I mean,
Speaker 2: if you think of you know, Clinton and Aristete and Haiti,
Speaker 2: you had Noriega and Panama, you had Bush, you had
Speaker 2: Obama with strikes. All these constitutional questions and war powers
Speaker 2: came in. This is just the latest incarnation of that
Speaker 2: under President Trump'll see how it plays out. Steve Good,
Speaker 2: attorney at law, former judge edicat General in the United
Speaker 2: States Army. Thanks again, Budd, appreciate the inside good stuff anytime.
Speaker 5: Star.
Speaker 2: Well, let's get a news update in and more to
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Speaker 2: roach are looking really good right now. Snow is about
Speaker 2: out of here too. One's the next round coming. We'll
Speaker 2: let you know next On seven hundred WW. Worlds look
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Speaker 2: but getting better by the second and onward upward. Let's know,
Speaker 2: you should just get past the melting point this time
Speaker 2: tomorrow and just kind of a chance, you know, some
Speaker 2: flurries here and there for the duration anyway, so the
Speaker 2: worst is definitely behind us here slowly on seven hundred WW.
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Speaker 2: We Got You, We Got You. I was talking a
Speaker 2: little bit about this yesterday and I've now seen in
Speaker 2: the interim and maybe just because I was just talking
Speaker 2: about now two different stories that talked about out the
Speaker 2: insolvency of Social Security just kind of to recap and
Speaker 2: my thoughts on this is we've known this was coming
Speaker 2: for forty years, but for the first time candidates for
Speaker 2: Senate in next year's midterms, because that's all I tell you,
Speaker 2: the midterms, a midterm. I know, I wouldn't say the
Speaker 2: least political person here at the station, but because it
Speaker 2: does impact us, for sure, it's important, but it's not
Speaker 2: the center of my life. I'm oyl Leary to people
Speaker 2: who everything is that's about, like following this primary or
Speaker 2: that's primary. It's a selection in Tennessee today for example,
Speaker 2: Like Okay, well it's interesting, but not like the country
Speaker 2: hangs the balance here.
Speaker 3: You might think it does, but it doesn't.
Speaker 2: Candidates in next year's midterms, though, are going to have
Speaker 2: to address the issue of insolvency when it comes to
Speaker 2: Social Security so eleven months from because this is going
Speaker 2: to come due on their watch, essentially proving again there's
Speaker 2: no free launch, right. So the Social Security and Retirement
Speaker 2: Fund as we know it'll be depleted in twenty thirty three,
Speaker 2: and if that indeed happened, and again that's a big
Speaker 2: if to because Congress can just take more money from
Speaker 2: somewhere else and patch it. But that's still a lot
Speaker 2: of money. It's a what one percent, roughly one percent
Speaker 2: of our GDP, so you know, it seems like a
Speaker 2: lot of money. But they could find a way to
Speaker 2: fix at least quite a band aid. And they've done
Speaker 2: this with the budget, you know, continuing resolutions. That's all
Speaker 2: it is, is kicking the can down the road. But again,
Speaker 2: it just adds more and more to that debt bomb,
Speaker 2: which is a much bigger issue that's on the horizon,
Speaker 2: and this will just accelerate that process. When we can
Speaker 2: no longer service the debt on our loans and then
Speaker 2: we're in real trouble. That's pretty much turn the lights
Speaker 2: out if that indeed happens. Well to the Social Security though,
Speaker 2: as we all get older and get closer to it,
Speaker 2: we don't want people touching our benefits because we quote
Speaker 2: unquote earned it. This is my money, it's not your money,
Speaker 2: it's not my money. What happened was they spent your
Speaker 2: money out of the other things. They put a patch
Speaker 2: in forty years ago to deal with this issue, and
Speaker 2: that was, you know, throwing some more money in the
Speaker 2: trust fund, but that's going to be depleted again in
Speaker 2: twenty thirty three. The reality is the average beneficiary is
Speaker 2: about two thousand dollars a month. You'll see that down
Speaker 2: to about fifteen hundred dollars a month if indeed this
Speaker 2: goes on. Because we have the Baby Boom generation, which
Speaker 2: is at peak retirement. Youngest are now well almost they
Speaker 2: were at though sixty one, oldest is seven almost eighty
Speaker 2: years old, and we're not reproducing the population at the
Speaker 2: same right, so we have fewer workers to support more people.
Speaker 2: That model, and I saw that in my lifetime, which
Speaker 2: is why I'm a big proponent about on. But to
Speaker 2: say relative to private investment, as I saw my dad
Speaker 2: go through this. My dad was worked in steel mills,
Speaker 2: and your kid, you kind of know what's going to
Speaker 2: but you really don't know what's going on. When he
Speaker 2: was in his forties, maybe late thirties, early forties, the
Speaker 2: pension and steel completely went away. He was left little
Speaker 2: with pennies on the dollar left hold in the bag.
Speaker 2: And this is before they kicked in, Hey, listen, we're
Speaker 2: going to have to have insurance on pensions that didn't
Speaker 2: exist in his era. He watched his dad and his
Speaker 2: grandfather work for thirty years and get a gold watch.
Speaker 2: He was expecting the same, and they change the rules
Speaker 2: on them and a whole generation of people. I saw
Speaker 2: that and what it did to him could never really
Speaker 2: recover and it made me steadfastly and that before when
Speaker 2: it come to find this, going wow, you've got to
Speaker 2: really take care of yourself. You've got to make sure
Speaker 2: you set some money aside as difficult as it might be,
Speaker 2: you're gonna have to make some tough, tough choices in
Speaker 2: order to save a little bit of money at some point,
Speaker 2: because it's going to be totally dependent on that they
Speaker 2: can't take away from you. And so now we look
Speaker 2: ahead to this twenty twenty three or twenty thirty three,
Speaker 2: rather three hundred and fifty billion dollars shortfall in this thing.
Speaker 2: And now it's just that accelerated because also as part
Speaker 2: of the One Beautiful Bill, one big Beautiful Bill, we
Speaker 2: know that seniors got a break when it came to pensions,
Speaker 2: jobs and taxes on what they pay. That helped accelerate
Speaker 2: it by I think another year and a half. So
Speaker 2: when it reduced income rates paid by seniors, that decrease
Speaker 2: the revenue flow into the trust fund, and insolvency got
Speaker 2: moved up to now twenty thirty three, so it got
Speaker 2: a little bit worse in that regard as well. And
Speaker 2: I've always said, I think the future test of patriots
Speaker 2: and it may be me it maybe you, is not
Speaker 2: going to be you know, studying the constitution and rallying
Speaker 2: around amendments, first amendments, second Amendment, whatever it might be.
Speaker 2: It's going to be, hey, we're going to have to
Speaker 2: get less benefits and pay more money in order to
Speaker 2: right size this thing. And it looks like that that
Speaker 2: is coming to fruition here in the next eleven years
Speaker 2: for sure. But all along and the way to fix
Speaker 2: the thing in this guy, of course destroyed by progressives
Speaker 2: because you want a safety blanket there. The government's job
Speaker 2: is to protect you. But what do they actually do.
Speaker 2: They don't really do they good job in countries like Chile,
Speaker 2: I know, Mexico, Australia, I was just there. Britain does
Speaker 2: this and they've made a transition from social security to
Speaker 2: individual retirement compliants, and it seems to be working there.
Speaker 2: The way to do this is just to let people
Speaker 2: keep their own money. I get what happened when FDR
Speaker 2: initiated social security back in the day because of the
Speaker 2: Great Depression. But the thing we live our lives to
Speaker 2: say what we did in the nineteen thirties and nineteen twenties,
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties, and the whole depression was accelerated by the
Speaker 2: way we you know, piece of people. Basically it was
Speaker 2: had right. People were buying on we're buying stock with
Speaker 2: the expectation I'll go up forever. But they were doing
Speaker 2: it on credit, and when they called the credit, no
Speaker 2: one had it. Everyone was underwater, kind of like what
Speaker 2: happened with the housing market in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 2: To a large degree. Today though we know at least
Speaker 2: we think we know a lot better than that. And
Speaker 2: the thing is everyone wants to guarantee It's like social
Speaker 2: security is guaranteed. Well, what if the markets go down.
Speaker 2: The markets may go down, but they do go back up.
Speaker 2: You may lose in the short term, but the long
Speaker 2: term you'll gain. It's always been that case because we're
Speaker 2: investing in future development and building and companies, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. That's part of how this whole thing works.
Speaker 2: And I understand there's so many people in this country
Speaker 2: that are risk averse that no, no, I want my
Speaker 2: guaranteed money.
Speaker 3: We just don't.
Speaker 2: We don't do pensions anymore, and those are largely going
Speaker 2: away for that reason, seems to me. And you know,
Speaker 2: when you look at the private accounts, the rate return
Speaker 2: on it is much higher than Social Security. You know,
Speaker 2: and if people start opting out I mentioned younger people
Speaker 2: would that would be the death of Social Security for sure,
Speaker 2: because you know, you pay to administer the tax and
Speaker 2: bureaucracy and the Social Security administration and all that, when
Speaker 2: you could just invest in, pay a fund manager and
Speaker 2: get money back on it and still be ahead of
Speaker 2: the game. You're talking what twelve I think twelve point
Speaker 2: four percent taxes what we pay for Social Security. And
Speaker 2: you know, if you're paying into this and been paying
Speaker 2: enter did it for a long time, and there's a
Speaker 2: threat you may not get that money back. That's a
Speaker 2: different thing entirely. And the old adage about well I
Speaker 2: paid into if that's my money, No, they've they've done
Speaker 2: other things. It's not sustaining itself anymore because we're paying
Speaker 2: out so many benefits to people are retired right now
Speaker 2: that the future generations are retirees are in jeopardy. Now again,
Speaker 2: do I think this is going to happen? And most
Speaker 2: experts will tell you no, they're going to fix this thing,
Speaker 2: They're going to patch it. But again it's with more
Speaker 2: bowered money as opposed to actually fixing the root cause
Speaker 2: of this thing. If you just get away with Social
Speaker 2: Security and we're left to your own devices to invest,
Speaker 2: how many people would And I think that's the scary part.
Speaker 2: You know, we know that Americans were really bad at investing.
Speaker 2: Now there are many people will tell you, well, it's
Speaker 2: because you you know, buy avocado toast and get tattoos.
Speaker 2: That's not necessarily true. Certainly, today's generation is faced with
Speaker 2: an earnings crisis. We haven't had to face that. My
Speaker 2: generation has seen it to some degree. But you know,
Speaker 2: younger generations are really getting squeezed. Gen Zers for example,
Speaker 2: you know, aren't buying Christmas and spending money Christmas as
Speaker 2: they have generations past, because it's so tight on money,
Speaker 2: with student loans and the cost of everything, inflation going
Speaker 2: up as they're just they're out of that line of
Speaker 2: work buying houses and all that stuff. So we're depending
Speaker 2: on them to buy stuff and work in order to
Speaker 2: fund our lifestyle and that's just simply not happening at
Speaker 2: this point. So I feel for younger generations for sure,
Speaker 2: because it's not lifestyle chases the choices they're making that
Speaker 2: are causing them to out largely be poor. But it's
Speaker 2: because of economic forces, for sure, and something we got
Speaker 2: to figure out in this country. If we don't, it's
Speaker 2: at our own peril because if you're older, you to
Speaker 2: bet on younger people to keep you afloat.
Speaker 3: That's how the system works.
Speaker 2: Called a Ponzi scheme if you will, but that's how
Speaker 2: the system goes. It seems to me like I would
Speaker 2: think that if we did this, younger people would not
Speaker 2: save money at all for retirement. But maybe at some
Speaker 2: point you do make money, get money back, and you
Speaker 2: do something with that.
Speaker 3: It's on you.
Speaker 2: And then what happens when you have all these people
Speaker 2: who aren't participating in the system with then Now we
Speaker 2: do have course plenty of good charities out there. I
Speaker 2: think people would be more charitable, and we have churches
Speaker 2: and other institutions out there in a safety net to
Speaker 2: some degree, but it's not run by the government.
Speaker 3: I think that's what bothers a lot of people.
Speaker 2: It just seems like, you know, I'm pretty much leave
Speaker 2: government out of my life kind of guy. If I'm
Speaker 2: an old school conservative maybe, but more libertarian going well,
Speaker 2: you know, again, there's a lot of things you got
Speaker 2: to do as an adult to prepare yourself for the future,
Speaker 2: whether it's health or education.
Speaker 3: Whatever it might be.
Speaker 2: You know, when you hit that period of adulthood, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of adult things you have to do. One
Speaker 2: of those is making sure you've got trying as best
Speaker 2: you can to set money ahead, not only for a
Speaker 2: rainy day, but for retirement. And I'm not you know,
Speaker 2: telling you you suck as a person because you're not
Speaker 2: doing that. As I said, I fully understand the economic
Speaker 2: realities out there, especially for younger people. It's difficult for
Speaker 2: you to save any money, let alone for retirement. It's
Speaker 2: such and you know, let's face it, in your twenties.
Speaker 2: I mean, I was the first I'm part of that
Speaker 2: Gen X or crowd that came along post pension, as
Speaker 2: I mentioned with my dad and first generation too, and
Speaker 2: we're starting to see those of us who are older
Speaker 2: gen xers start to retire. Now we're seeing them. We're
Speaker 2: seeing them retire solely based on four own case. I mean,
Speaker 2: pensions are some people get pensions, for sure, if that's
Speaker 2: you gay, good job, But largely it's in the public sector.
Speaker 2: Private sector's done away with that, and there's plenty. I
Speaker 2: don't know what the stats are because it's too early
Speaker 2: to tell how well we've saved as that generation's a
Speaker 2: cohort towards retirement ourselves, because we're the first generation to
Speaker 2: have to fund it on our own entirely. That said,
Speaker 2: I you know, it seemed all these years there's enough
Speaker 2: people in that group to look at it and get
Speaker 2: a good sample. I would think of how prepared you
Speaker 2: are to no longer work now Some people admittedly I'm
Speaker 2: going to wind up work on the rest of my
Speaker 2: life is what they will tell you. And you know,
Speaker 2: there's plenty of peple who enjoy their job, their career path,
Speaker 2: whatever their business, and want to work until they fall over.
Speaker 2: And good for you if that's what you want to do.
Speaker 2: But I think there's the majority of people just want
Speaker 2: to would love to stop working at some point and
Speaker 2: call quits the pull up stakes and said that said
Speaker 2: I'm tired of working. I want to relax now, or
Speaker 2: it just simply physically can't do it anymore. And for
Speaker 2: those people who do that and have to work, that's
Speaker 2: really sad. But we've known it for a long time.
Speaker 2: It's kind of companed upon you to say, for retirement,
Speaker 2: looking at social security is more of a benefit and go, hey,
Speaker 2: you know, if I get it, it's gravy on top
Speaker 2: of what I've already invested and saved. But so many
Speaker 2: people look at that as the primary source of social
Speaker 2: Security is retirement, and that's that was never designed for that.
Speaker 2: It was to make sure basically that the very the
Speaker 2: very basics of life. And this is even FDR said,
Speaker 2: this isn't about you know, you go on vacation and
Speaker 2: buying a new car every couple of years and you're
Speaker 2: not going to get that much money back. It's just
Speaker 2: simply out of the cards. But it's enough to maybe
Speaker 2: buy medicine or food or the very basic necessities of life,
Speaker 2: but you've got to cover the rest yourself. So it
Speaker 2: was never designed for this. Hey you know, I can
Speaker 2: retire in two thousand dollars a month, and you know
Speaker 2: my house, maybe my house if I have one, is
Speaker 2: paid for. But you're able to afford everything else in
Speaker 2: life and to be tight. But I can get it
Speaker 2: was that designed for that? It was about it's mainly supplemental,
Speaker 2: and I think that's something else in the entitlement crowd
Speaker 2: we got wrong. So and an als I look at
Speaker 2: this guy. I just I don't know if this is
Speaker 2: solvent anymore in a sense that that Social Security needs.
Speaker 3: To die that death. How would you do that? I
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 2: I've heard plans about facing it out over ten years
Speaker 2: basically and or cutting having a cut off. Perhaps that
Speaker 2: And I think that's the other thing is how the
Speaker 2: hell do you get out of this? That's a difficult.
Speaker 2: Park One quick calling this before I get it news
Speaker 2: updating here on seven hundred w A do able to
Speaker 2: make a Mike and Clairmont County on it on seven
Speaker 2: hundred w W Scott Slunsho, what's up, Mike?
Speaker 7: You were equating solo security to steel workers pension fund.
Speaker 7: The dibbers is those security is mandated. You can't opt out,
Speaker 7: never could you can't. You're you're you'd.
Speaker 3: Have to that's what I'm saying. You'd have to you'd
Speaker 3: have to phase it, you'd have to phase it out.
Speaker 8: Well, I'm saying though, but you know, that's why it
Speaker 8: is entitled, and we did pay it in and we
Speaker 8: are entitled to get it back down. If I put
Speaker 8: money in the bank on an interest rate.
Speaker 7: They have to pay it back. And that's basically what
Speaker 7: you did in close security.
Speaker 8: You paid it in.
Speaker 7: With the promise of getting it back yep, when you retirement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's but a big one. It's a promise, not
Speaker 2: a contract. I'm saying, is if there's no money left
Speaker 2: because we have it was all built on the fact
Speaker 2: we had more workers and retirees. Now we have more
Speaker 2: retires than workers. It's not the same. And that's essentially
Speaker 2: what happened with my you know, with pensions in America,
Speaker 2: my dad's pension for Gentlin Steel is you know, American
Speaker 2: steel got off short and left and there were enough
Speaker 2: workers to support the retirees. And that happened in the auto
Speaker 2: industry for that matter as well. So it's you know,
Speaker 2: whether it's whether it's fair or not, is that that's
Speaker 2: that's debatable, but that's the reality of it. There's just
Speaker 2: not enough money left and where's that going to come from?
Speaker 2: Is the big question. And they've got to address this
Speaker 2: in the next eleven years for sure. Got to get
Speaker 2: a news update in more to follow. None of you
Speaker 2: saw this. If you're headed downtown the Convention Center Hotel
Speaker 2: as a go because they're going to add a tax
Speaker 2: every time you buy a meal or a drink in
Speaker 2: areas of downtown Cincinnati. Joe Runemil from three c DC
Speaker 2: will lay it out of force. Next on the Scots
Speaker 2: Fland Show seven hundred WWD Cincinnati.
Speaker 3: You want to be in a man.
Speaker 2: He's got a clone on this. Snow is Tuesday morning,
Speaker 2: seven hundred w WELW. Snow is behind us now, of course,
Speaker 2: so we can talk about some other things, and that
Speaker 2: includes starting in March twenty twenty six, if you go
Speaker 2: downtown to eat at a restaurer on Relisa a certain
Speaker 2: area and some restaurants and bars are going to add
Speaker 2: a one percent fee on all their sales. That's going
Speaker 2: to help finance the five hundred million dollar plus seven
Speaker 2: hundred room Marriott Convention Center Hotel. It's going to go
Speaker 2: in right and Brenton right next to the newly redundant
Speaker 2: Duke Energy Convention Center on that from.
Speaker 3: Three c DC.
Speaker 2: He's the guy that put it all together. That's Joe
Speaker 2: Rude Milli. It's all his idea. Joe welcome.
Speaker 3: How you been.
Speaker 9: Buddy, it's been great. Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good job on this one. Everyone wants to pay more.
Speaker 2: It's it's interesting because you hear that, you go, man
Speaker 2: another tax. You know, if you live in Hamlin County,
Speaker 2: you're hit by the uh. You know you're supposed to
Speaker 2: get that property tax rebate of Atalisia Reeson talking about
Speaker 2: how well that's not going to come back to anytime soon.
Speaker 2: We're seeing more and more taxes and then there's another
Speaker 2: one percent.
Speaker 3: Uh. There's going to be a tough sell to bargain restaurants,
Speaker 3: or wasn't it.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, the bargain restaurants didn't want to add
Speaker 1: an extra fee, and I won't point out it's a fee,
Speaker 1: not a tax, first of all.
Speaker 9: And it's a usage fee.
Speaker 1: So it's people who are at these restaurants in the
Speaker 1: Fountain district that really are going to be the ones
Speaker 1: that benefit the most from this new hotel and all
Speaker 1: the people that were going to be bringing downtown with
Speaker 1: the construction of the hotel, with the new Convention Center
Speaker 1: and the modernization there, as well as the Elm Street
Speaker 1: players that we that we just opened up with the
Speaker 1: brand new UC Health ice rink. So I think it's
Speaker 1: a credit to the businesses for them stepping up. And
Speaker 1: I think they saw essentially without their participation, this hotel
Speaker 1: couldn't be built, and so I want to credit them
Speaker 1: and thank them honestly for stepping up. And as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: they didn't want to add an extra fee, but it's
Speaker 1: necessary for the community.
Speaker 9: And ultimately, I think.
Speaker 1: They saw the importance of this project for our downtown
Speaker 1: in the whole region.
Speaker 3: How do you picture this to them?
Speaker 1: Essentially just that you know, we're making this generational investment
Speaker 1: in our convention district and everybody else has come to
Speaker 1: the table. You have money from the city, the county,
Speaker 1: the state, three CDC visits, since the support, everybody is
Speaker 1: at the table. The hotel operators have added a one
Speaker 1: percent feed to the transit occupancy tack that's been in
Speaker 1: place for a year. And so essentially we went to
Speaker 1: the restaurant tour and said, look, we understand you don't
Speaker 1: want to add this fee, but without your participation in this,
Speaker 1: we can't build this hotel. It's a complicated financing stack,
Speaker 1: a lot of different sources. As I mentioned, there's a
Speaker 1: ton of parties that are involved. But without this piece,
Speaker 1: we can't close that gap. And so they said, we understand.
Speaker 1: We love our community. It's an exciting time for Cincinnati.
Speaker 1: This is us making a collective investment in the community.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know that Jose sales are of course, you know,
Speaker 2: one of our best chefs in Cincinnati opened his new
Speaker 2: restaurant in that air, specifically because of the proximity of
Speaker 2: the convention Center and the hotel. But if you're a
Speaker 2: business it's already operating this area before the convention hotel
Speaker 2: was planned. Was there pushback more from them than from
Speaker 2: the newcomers.
Speaker 1: Well, I think there are a lot of questions and
Speaker 1: trying to understand what this was. I think whether it's
Speaker 1: a long standing business or one that's opening new. Obviously,
Speaker 1: these past you know, eighteen months while we've been under
Speaker 1: construction on the convention Center have been difficult.
Speaker 9: I think we all collectively.
Speaker 1: Agree that when this new, modernized convention center opens, when
Speaker 1: the hotel is added, it is going to be massively
Speaker 1: impactful for all of those whether they've been operating a
Speaker 1: long time or they're brand new. And so I think
Speaker 1: they recognize the foot traffic and the activity that this
Speaker 1: investment is going to make in the area. And so
Speaker 1: when it came down to it, ultimately, you know, this
Speaker 1: is one penny per dollar spence, right, and so if
Speaker 1: you go down and you're eating at a restaurant or
Speaker 1: getting a drink at a bar in the Fountain District
Speaker 1: and your tab is twenty five dollars, you're going to
Speaker 1: add another quarter to that. If it's fifty dollars, fifty cents, right,
Speaker 1: If it's one hundred bucks, it's a dollar. And so
Speaker 1: I think ultimately they recognized that while they didn't want
Speaker 1: to add another fee, it was necessary, and so they
Speaker 1: wanted to be good community partners and they really stepped
Speaker 1: us to the plate just like all these other organizations have,
Speaker 1: and they understood really the bigger picture of what we're trying.
Speaker 3: To ACCOLI here sure makes sense.
Speaker 2: Joe Rudimiller from three CDC on talking about the one
Speaker 2: percent restaurant in bar Tech. It's going to hit businesses
Speaker 2: around the new Convention Center and hotel and on that.
Speaker 2: There's no formal list yet of the bars and wrestlers participating.
Speaker 2: Is that going to come out before council? The reason
Speaker 2: I ask that is to don't voters or consumers in
Speaker 2: this met need to know exactly how it's like it's
Speaker 2: hits only one percent? I mean, you probably shouldn't go
Speaker 2: out eating if you can afford extra dollar one hundred.
Speaker 2: But on that point, don't don't we deserve to know
Speaker 2: which businesses are in and out?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Sure, I mean right now this is going through kind
Speaker 1: of the legislative process and it's not actually going to
Speaker 1: be formally launched until March first of next year, so
Speaker 1: we're still finalizing that list. It will be shared at
Speaker 1: some point, not in an advance of council essentially at
Speaker 1: this point kind of getting into the weeds. The property
Speaker 1: owners have to opt in, and that's who's listed on
Speaker 1: the city council legislation. So that would be like this,
Speaker 1: the three CDC owns the building, so we've opted in.
Speaker 1: There's six property owners, and then the businesses within there
Speaker 1: also have to opt in. So that list will eventually
Speaker 1: be shared. But yeah, we we believe that. Again it's
Speaker 1: it's one penny per dollar spent. I would point out
Speaker 1: again it is not attacked as a service a service fee,
Speaker 1: and also that you know this is this is only
Speaker 1: going to be paid by people who are going out
Speaker 1: and dining in the bars and restaurants that they are
Speaker 1: coming out in this uh specific geographic area just a
Speaker 1: few blocks kind of around the convention center there. We
Speaker 1: think those businesses stand to benefit mode from the additional traffic.
Speaker 1: And and also it's not attacked that everybody in Hamilton
Speaker 1: County is going to pay. It's just folks who if
Speaker 1: they're coming down, they will pay that service fee when
Speaker 1: they're when they're enjoying it here in the Lovely Fat It's.
Speaker 2: Similar to initially when we did the street car years ago,
Speaker 2: and it was like we're just going to do a
Speaker 2: tax along the track. And the businesses that came from
Speaker 2: being that close in that proximity to the tracks, are
Speaker 2: they uh of the triale is that.
Speaker 3: They're the ones that going to pay.
Speaker 2: And now that got shot down and that seems like
Speaker 2: more of a fair thing, like what you're doing here.
Speaker 2: The businesses are going to directly benefit from the hotel
Speaker 2: and convention center pay that, but again that does go
Speaker 2: back to consumers on that and you said the fee
Speaker 2: doesn't start till March of next year. Construction begins this month.
Speaker 2: What happens if businesses eventually, I mean some go because
Speaker 2: it's voluntary. Can't force people to pay. This's what they
Speaker 2: change your mind or closed or just it doesn't generate
Speaker 2: the expected revenue.
Speaker 3: What happens in.
Speaker 1: Sure, So One, it's based on the expected generated revenue
Speaker 1: that we are able to get additional bond financing. So
Speaker 1: that's why it's important to have it set up right
Speaker 1: now before the fee is actually being collected.
Speaker 9: We have projections on what we think this will generate.
Speaker 1: Also, as new businesses open, they will be asked to participate.
Speaker 1: Once the business ops in, they are no longer allowed
Speaker 1: to opt out.
Speaker 9: So once you're in, you're in.
Speaker 1: We do intend to add future businesses within the Fountain
Speaker 1: District to this NCAA or the Fountain District Community Authority
Speaker 1: as we move forward, So we're confident at the revenue
Speaker 1: that will be ultimately generated collectively will be enough to
Speaker 1: help pay down the debt to build the hotel. Gotcha,
Speaker 1: And I would also point out that this is not
Speaker 1: the only new community authority in the area. There's one
Speaker 1: of the banks and the businesses down there. People may
Speaker 1: not even realize that when you go down and eat
Speaker 1: or drink at the banks, you're also paying a one
Speaker 1: percent fee. Now they use that money from marketing. It
Speaker 1: primarily goes to their Dora district and buying the cops
Speaker 1: and putting together the materials for that. And there's also
Speaker 1: one out in Liberty Center where they use that NCAA
Speaker 1: fee for infrastructure around that development. So there are other NCAAs.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that people even realize. Again, if you're
Speaker 1: going down to the banks that you're paying this speed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it gets baked and you'll see it on
Speaker 2: your ticket. But again it's a dollar for every hundred
Speaker 2: fifty cents for every fifty, so yeah, it makes sense.
Speaker 2: The other element here too is, let's face it, I
Speaker 2: think Jeff Cramerting council member, said this that this is
Speaker 2: going to hit largely out of town convention of visitors
Speaker 2: at some point here too. Doesn't mean that folks like
Speaker 2: me and you won't go there. Of course we will,
Speaker 2: but this is targeted towards those out of talents because
Speaker 2: we'd rather get their money than that ours and out
Speaker 2: of tiers. We love taking our money, so it's a
Speaker 2: good thing for everybody. What percentage of customers is a
Speaker 2: projection there are going to be out of town convention
Speaker 2: attendees versus residents of Cincinnati, Hamblin County, Warren Kamder, Butler County,
Speaker 2: Northern Kentucky.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we don't have any projections on the breakdown of
Speaker 1: intown versus out of town. We do expect that the
Speaker 1: majority of this will be put people who are coming
Speaker 1: from out of town who are visiting conventions, who are
Speaker 1: staying in the hotels in this area and frequenting the
Speaker 1: bars and restaurants. So there isn't a specific breakdown, but
Speaker 1: I think that's a great point that counts. I mean,
Speaker 1: cramering makes and I think that's something that we expect
Speaker 1: is that this will primarily be paid by people who
Speaker 1: are from out of town coming to enjoy these great
Speaker 1: new amenities. And I think one of the things that
Speaker 1: really sets us apart is when we finish these projects
Speaker 1: and we have this modernized convention center, this brand new hotel,
Speaker 1: ELM Street plaza, we're really unique in Cincinnati and that
Speaker 1: you can walk out our convention center and you have
Speaker 1: this incredible collection of high quality restaurants and bars right
Speaker 1: in the area that is walkable. You don't have to
Speaker 1: hop in your car to drive. A lot of convention
Speaker 1: centers sit off in a distance it's difficult to navigate.
Speaker 1: This is all right down, very walkable. You can walk
Speaker 1: a few steps the Fountain Square and all the great
Speaker 1: programming there.
Speaker 9: You can go up to over the Run, and you
Speaker 9: can go down to the Bank.
Speaker 1: So we really think that this whole collective investment sets
Speaker 1: us apart from a lot of our competitors because of
Speaker 1: the proximity of all of these great assets that we
Speaker 1: have downtown. And so this is just one more step
Speaker 1: forward in getting us to that point.
Speaker 2: Okay, very good, Joe Rudymiller from three CDC. On the
Speaker 2: one percent tax around the convention center, bars and restaurants
Speaker 2: will pay that. It's a thirty year commitment unless the
Speaker 2: construction deck gets paid off early. Totally voluntary for the businesses,
Speaker 2: by the way, which is the big question. And it's
Speaker 2: all part of what's called the New Community Authority. That's
Speaker 2: a state financing tool that louts of sport to collect
Speaker 2: charges for area public improvements around that convention Center District.
Speaker 2: You said early on, Joe that this could not be
Speaker 2: built without that one percent fee. But one million of
Speaker 2: the what five hundred and thirty six million dollar plus
Speaker 2: financing deal, that's like two one thousandths of a percent.
Speaker 2: One way look at that and go, that seems to
Speaker 2: just be like not even you know, whipped cream or
Speaker 2: a cherry on top that that feels like maybe a
Speaker 2: quarter teaspoon of sprinkles at that point. Is that you
Speaker 2: hear that and go, why is the million dollar a
Speaker 2: year so critical the entire project hinches on it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it gets pledged towards the overall bond financing,
Speaker 1: and so it allows us to unlock more money because
Speaker 1: we say we can back those bonds with this million
Speaker 1: dollars that we're collecting. So if not just a million dollars,
Speaker 1: it's that it opens up access to additional capital that
Speaker 1: we can get through that bond finding dancing and allows
Speaker 1: us to essentially get more money upfront for the project
Speaker 1: and make the construction happen. And then this is one
Speaker 1: way that the people who are buying those bonds can
Speaker 1: understand this money is pledged to that there is this
Speaker 1: revenue stream coming in. So that they can ensure that
Speaker 1: the money will get paid back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, gotcha, And I guess I look at it. Okay,
Speaker 2: you got that money. You've got one hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: million from the Port Authority from bonds that you're talking about,
Speaker 2: fifty million dollars from the city, another roughly fifty million
Speaker 2: dollars from the state and Investment fund. There another thirty
Speaker 2: seven million in state tax credits. A lot of public
Speaker 2: money going back in. And then you know, at the
Speaker 2: end of it, we're still asking private businesses to contribute
Speaker 2: even more on top of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we're asking everybody to contribute, right, you
Speaker 1: mentioned all those sources. In addition, the developer is going
Speaker 1: to bring equity and also take out a loan. I
Speaker 1: mentioned already that the hotel operators increase their trains and
Speaker 1: occupancy tax by one percent. So everybody has really come
Speaker 1: to the table here. This is a collective investment in
Speaker 1: the community for the community and buy the community. So
Speaker 1: everybody is pitching in. Everybody is giving what they can
Speaker 1: to this. And so again I would applaud the restaurant
Speaker 1: tours for stepping up to the plate and saying, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't want to add another feed, but we understand
Speaker 1: that this is necessary and we need to do this
Speaker 1: in order to continue to move forward as a community.
Speaker 2: It seems like we're going to see more of the
Speaker 2: community authorities you mentioned the Banks and Liberty Center and
Speaker 2: now the Convention Center District that it feels like that
Speaker 2: that is going to be how these projects are done
Speaker 2: all over the state.
Speaker 1: I think as possible. There are other community authorities in
Speaker 1: different jurisdictions, so there's now only three here in southwest Ohio.
Speaker 1: It is a, you know, a somewhat unique financing tool
Speaker 1: that I think a lot of people probably didn't know
Speaker 1: about or weren't aware of. I'm not sure how much
Speaker 1: we will see these continue to just spring up. I
Speaker 1: think they're kind of unique on a case by case basis,
Speaker 1: so it's not something that we're seeing necessarily as a trend.
Speaker 1: We just know that in this instance, we kick the
Speaker 1: tires on any way we can finance this hotel and
Speaker 1: looked at a lot of different avenues and this and
Speaker 1: this is kind of the last piece, hopefully to the puzzle.
Speaker 2: Do you feel comfortable with the number of bars and
Speaker 2: restaurants you have sign up already?
Speaker 3: You're going to need more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we feel comfortable with the amount that
Speaker 1: we have to start. As I mentioned, I think we'll
Speaker 1: continue to work on businesses that are either not participating
Speaker 1: or open new to make sure that they understand the
Speaker 1: importance of participating in this. So we feel good about
Speaker 1: where we're at now, but expect to add more and
Speaker 1: so hopefully we can pay down that debt sooner and
Speaker 1: this would ultimately then you know, go away.
Speaker 3: Have you done?
Speaker 2: What's a public reaction? I mean, is there any pushback
Speaker 2: that you've heard so far? Any polling your community meetings
Speaker 2: to discuss this. I mean, again, it's just one percent,
Speaker 2: is very small slice of the pie, but enough crumbs
Speaker 2: make a loaf.
Speaker 3: Are you earn aning negative ursus?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean I think if you look at you know,
Speaker 1: social media, which is always a bastion of really high
Speaker 1: quality engagement and conversation, I think it's been mixed. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people do understand it. And we
Speaker 1: saw a lot of social media comments yesterday say and
Speaker 1: you know this is this is a one percent fee
Speaker 1: on one hundred dollars tab. I'm going to pay one
Speaker 1: dollar And I think a lot of people get it.
Speaker 1: I think if you just look at a headline, maybe
Speaker 1: you get frustrated. I think people that actually dive in
Speaker 1: and read the article, which we obviously need more people
Speaker 1: to do that understand the bigger picture and understand what
Speaker 1: we're trying to do here and why this is necessary.
Speaker 3: Right right, Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 2: We need that hotel down there, and I suppose there
Speaker 2: are other options if if business has felt like somehow
Speaker 2: this is going to give them a disadvantage in that,
Speaker 2: you know, I can get a stake at this restaurant.
Speaker 2: It's going to cost me twenty dollars more because it's
Speaker 2: near the convention center.
Speaker 3: No one's going to go for that.
Speaker 2: But you know, a dollar on a couple hundred dollars tab,
Speaker 2: you're not not or one hundred dollar tab, you're probably
Speaker 2: not going to notice it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think that's our thinking is it's
Speaker 1: spread out, it's depending on every dollar spent, and it's
Speaker 1: again it's a usage fee, So people who are using it,
Speaker 1: they will pay that. Those who don't, you know, they
Speaker 1: they won't have to pay that. I think that we
Speaker 1: believe that there is such high quality restaurant, tours and
Speaker 1: bars in that area that people are not going to
Speaker 1: be dissuaded from coming down to visit them because of
Speaker 1: this one penny per dollar that they're that they're paying
Speaker 1: into this bigger picture to help build this hotel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's going to be higher end restaurants and bars,
Speaker 3: right like Aaron Off Center on that.
Speaker 1: Yeah that yeah, I mean, you know, I think the
Speaker 1: other thing that's really cool about the Fountain District is
Speaker 1: if you go to entertainment districts across the country, what
Speaker 1: you see as a lot of chain restaurants, and when
Speaker 1: you're in the Fountain District, you recognize these are these
Speaker 1: are primarily almost all of them are locally owned businesses.
Speaker 1: These are cra Cincinnati entrepreneurs. These are people who are
Speaker 1: committed to the community, who love being here, and who
Speaker 1: put out I think, some of the best food in
Speaker 1: the country. And so I think there is this incredible
Speaker 1: collection of these locally owned businesses in the Fountain District
Speaker 1: and again I'm grateful to them that they've come on
Speaker 1: board for the most part, nearly all of them, and
Speaker 1: are willing to participate in this and make this investment
Speaker 1: in our community.
Speaker 2: Now you're eating at Salazar's or Rubies or Media, you're
Speaker 2: not going to notice that dollar on one hundred, that's
Speaker 2: for sure. He's Joe Rudimiller at three c DC. And
Speaker 2: the good news is whether you like this or doesn't
Speaker 2: matter to you. The twenty one host Store hotel is
Speaker 2: going to open up and twenty twenty eight to fifth
Speaker 2: in Plumb and bring a whole lot of new bodies downtown.
Speaker 3: We've got to get back in the convention business. It's
Speaker 3: been too long.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. I think we're really excited. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've been down to the new Elm Street plaza.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's beautiful, it's gorgeous.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's been great. I think it's succeeded our expectations.
Speaker 1: The ice rinks there, and in the summer it's going
Speaker 1: to be a beautiful green space that can be used
Speaker 1: by both the community, convention visitors, residents and everyone. So
Speaker 1: I think we're really on a great track here. We're
Speaker 1: excited about that opening. The Convention Center is going to
Speaker 1: be finished on time and on budget. We're turning that
Speaker 1: over January first, and we'll open the building with RedFest
Speaker 1: on January sixteenth. So we're really excited about the trajectory
Speaker 1: that we're on and where we're headed as a community.
Speaker 1: This is I believe, a generational investment in the southwest
Speaker 1: corner of our downtown that I think is going to
Speaker 1: have ripple effects.
Speaker 9: For the whole region.
Speaker 1: We're going to be able to attract bigger events, bigger conventions,
Speaker 1: and everybody is going to reap the benefits of that,
Speaker 1: whether you're a small business in the Fountain district or
Speaker 1: in the surrounding area. I think everybody ultimately is going
Speaker 1: to be uplifted by this investment that everybody is collectively
Speaker 1: making it in the community.
Speaker 3: Will we do an arena next? Is that priority that.
Speaker 9: Is not on our radar currently.
Speaker 1: I know there's a lot of conversation about the arena,
Speaker 1: and so it's something that that continues to be out
Speaker 1: there and be discussed. We have not been formally engaged
Speaker 1: on that yet, so we're hearing those conversations and right
Speaker 1: now our focus is really on getting this hotel built,
Speaker 1: finishing up the convention center, and then we also have
Speaker 1: some great things going on in northern over the Rhine
Speaker 1: with the new find the Community Center that we're building
Speaker 1: and renovating the old OTR Rec Center and the Crossroad
Speaker 1: Health Center. So we have a lot on our plate
Speaker 1: that we're working on. I know that there are a
Speaker 1: lot of great minds thinking about how to move forward
Speaker 1: on that.
Speaker 2: Arena as well as should be. And then you get
Speaker 2: three c DC you Joe Rudemeller. Of course, you know,
Speaker 2: you start slapping head, cracking heads, make this thing happen.
Speaker 2: Let's get this done exactly. Let's go, let's let's off
Speaker 2: and go here, Joe Rudemeller. Three got your maade out
Speaker 2: to be a mobster or something like that. All right,
Speaker 2: tough guy, We got to get going. Thanks again, buddy.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you.
Speaker 9: Thanks well, I appreciate you hiting me on.
Speaker 2: Yes, sir, take care. We gotta get a news update in. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you're gonna get people.
Speaker 8: Now.
Speaker 3: There are another tax and then he said it wasn't
Speaker 3: a tip of fee. It's a tax. Let's call it
Speaker 3: what it is.
Speaker 2: But you know, if you're feeling that at that level
Speaker 2: of restaurant, you probably shouldn't be eating there. And the
Speaker 2: restaurants are good with it. I'm sure their clientele will
Speaker 2: be good with it. And a lot out of towners
Speaker 2: are gonna pay for our sins as it should be.
Speaker 2: That's the American way. After all, sloany seven hundred ww.
Speaker 1: Time to talk about money, how to make it, how
Speaker 1: did keep it, and how to keep others off your stack.
Speaker 3: This is all worth advice with Andy Shaeffer.
Speaker 2: Money never sleeps, but Andy Shaeffer he likes to get
Speaker 2: a good nine hours, nine ten hours.
Speaker 3: Andy, how you doing, brother.
Speaker 10: I'm good.
Speaker 3: I got nine hours last tear? Did you get your
Speaker 3: nine hours? Yeah? Hey, Money's gonna stay awake. I don't
Speaker 3: need to stay awake. You guys, you got to watch.
Speaker 2: All right, So let's jump into this holiday season. And
Speaker 2: then we saw some of the post government shutdown data
Speaker 2: coming into outdated obviously a little bit there too, but
Speaker 2: starting to understand a little bit more with each passing day,
Speaker 2: the positioning and the impact on the Federal Reserve certainly
Speaker 2: laid out for us.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and I think it is important to understand that
Speaker 10: it does have an impact on the economy and the
Speaker 10: Federal Reserve for them to be able to make smart
Speaker 10: decisions moving into December. And so we did get some
Speaker 10: delayed September retail sales numbers and it showed spending was
Speaker 10: up point two percent, but we had a point six
Speaker 10: percent gain back in August now, you know, if you
Speaker 10: take out auto sales and gas, that was really pretty flat.
Speaker 10: But the softists came after a strong summer, and it
Speaker 10: appears to me like it's more of a reversion than
Speaker 10: a collapse. And so that data is starting to soften
Speaker 10: a little bit now. The producer price index that showed
Speaker 10: an increase of about point three percent, that kind of
Speaker 10: matched what economists were already feeling like the numbers would
Speaker 10: come in at. And so I think that those costs
Speaker 10: have been contained enough for the Fed keep the December
Speaker 10: rate cut on the table.
Speaker 2: All right, So yet another rate coming up, rate cut
Speaker 2: coming up this month? When is that exactly what?
Speaker 10: It's early December? I can't remember the exact day, Maybe
Speaker 10: the twelfth.
Speaker 2: Okay, so another morethly week or so week and a half,
Speaker 2: all right, So we looked at all as at the
Speaker 2: jobless claims felled, the consumer confidence slip though, so it's
Speaker 2: like conflicting information here.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and sometimes that can be good, you know. So
Speaker 10: we did see the jobless claims fall to about two
Speaker 10: hundred and sixteen thousand, that was the lowest since April.
Speaker 10: And so you know that tells you on the surface,
Speaker 10: all right, Well, you know, and a lot of people
Speaker 10: weren't really losing their job, and this is kind of
Speaker 10: more of the same of what we've been talking about.
Speaker 10: But what we've seen or continuing claims continue to move higher.
Speaker 10: So if you're out of work and you've been collecting unemployment,
Speaker 10: you know, that's still continuing on and that's kind of
Speaker 10: been at the top of the recent range. And so
Speaker 10: there's a stable labor market right now that's losing some momentum.
Speaker 10: Consumer confidence, you know, we always watch that very closely.
Speaker 10: It's slipped to eighty eight point seven in November. That's
Speaker 10: its weakest reading since April. Households basically cited inflation, tariffs,
Speaker 10: and politics as concerns. And so I think, you know,
Speaker 10: in a nutshell, what we're what we're talking about to
Speaker 10: summarize is that I think the economy is steadying, but
Speaker 10: the momentum is starting to moderate to some degree. Growth
Speaker 10: is still intact, but the edges are softening enough to
Speaker 10: reinforce the FED shift towards easing this month.
Speaker 2: Right which is a cut because let's face it, those
Speaker 2: lower income end credit use is rising, discretionary spending is fading.
Speaker 2: That's reflecting about the consumer conference numbers.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and that's right. And one of the interesting things
Speaker 10: that we're going to get fairly soon is the Fed's
Speaker 10: Beige Book and you might hear that terminology, and it's
Speaker 10: very interesting to me. And essentially what the Beige book is,
Speaker 10: it's it's what we consider antidotal evidence of economic activity
Speaker 10: across the FED twelve district. Now, the closest one to
Speaker 10: us is up in Cleveland. Cincinnati actually has a Cleveland
Speaker 10: branch here downtown, so that's pretty neat. But the Fed's
Speaker 10: base book is more of a qualitative analysis versus quantitative,
Speaker 10: and what that means is that it's it's more an
Speaker 10: understanding of concepts and experience. As you know, they do
Speaker 10: interviews and observations and the FED twelve districts get together
Speaker 10: and discuss it. So it's more about you know, momentum,
Speaker 10: emotion and things like that. But it is very important
Speaker 10: to the FED in order for them to make a
Speaker 10: good decision about where we are as far as labor
Speaker 10: market is concerned. And you know, right now, what we're
Speaker 10: getting back from these districts is that we're we're seeing
Speaker 10: a little bit weaker hiring and in some cooler wage growth.
Speaker 10: So you know, again, sometimes news that's not super bad
Speaker 10: but kind of cooling can help us and help the
Speaker 10: FED be a little bit more confidence in cutting rates
Speaker 10: moving forward, which will you know, we'll obviously help our
Speaker 10: labor market.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The FED seems they have a lot of meetings that
Speaker 2: big on meetings, aren't they.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they like to meet they like me, they like Catholics.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I think, well then they also
Speaker 10: like to talk about their meetings. And the thing about
Speaker 10: it is is I think there's some politics at play.
Speaker 10: You know, obviously the FED is an independent organization outside
Speaker 10: of politics, but you have two separate factions within the FED.
Speaker 10: You have some that want to make sure that inflation
Speaker 10: gets very under control to try to reach their two
Speaker 10: percent target. You know, we're somewhere around three percent at
Speaker 10: this point. And then you have others that say, hey,
Speaker 10: the momentum is going in the right direction as far
Speaker 10: as inflation, we're not seeing it heat up, and they
Speaker 10: want to, you know, start cutting rates and start piling
Speaker 10: momentum into our economy. And so you have these two
Speaker 10: different factions that are kind of, you know, always at
Speaker 10: each other's throats, and they get up and they stop
Speaker 10: about it and they talk about why their opinion is,
Speaker 10: you know, super important, and how smart they are, and
Speaker 10: so we get a lot of them every week.
Speaker 9: We actually have one coming up tomorrow.
Speaker 3: Okay, another meeting. You gotta love the meetings.
Speaker 2: Speaking the consumer confidence end and spending because we're in
Speaker 2: the holiday season right now. We just had Black Friday,
Speaker 2: so we're in the thick of it as we speak.
Speaker 2: I saw some interesting, sobering numbers for that matter. Younger
Speaker 2: consumers cutting back on holiday spending, you know, Gen Millennials,
Speaker 2: Gen Axors, gen Zers not so much. But baby boomers,
Speaker 2: the older I guess over thirty crowd is spending money.
Speaker 2: But the college educated twenty some things, the kind of
Speaker 2: shoppers who traditionally have had the most spending power are
Speaker 2: taking a hit this year because I'm guessing student loan
Speaker 2: costs rising, restaurants, meals, groceries, all that stuff.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and I think some of it has to do
Speaker 10: with just general demographics and your upbringing and Christmas experiences
Speaker 10: and things like that. But another thing is going back
Speaker 10: to the labor market. You know, when we're talking about
Speaker 10: the labor force and the participation rate and things like that,
Speaker 10: for millennials and Gen Zers, it's still hard to find
Speaker 10: a job, it's still hard to find an entry level position,
Speaker 10: it's still hard to get your foot in the door.
Speaker 10: So there's a lot of uncertainty there. And I think,
Speaker 10: you know, with that demographic, who have surprisingly been shown
Speaker 10: to be pretty decent savers and fairly responsible with their finances,
Speaker 10: a lot of them are hesitant to start spending money
Speaker 10: when they're uncertainty within the labor market can be a
Speaker 10: challenge for them. And so it doesn't necessarily mean that
Speaker 10: they don't have the ability to earn a wage or
Speaker 10: that they don't have any savings. I think it's more
Speaker 10: of a cautious approach and one that I admire with
Speaker 10: that that demographic. And I think, you know, you know,
Speaker 10: and Christmases that I see with my clients. You know,
Speaker 10: I have clients that are in their sixties and seventies
Speaker 10: and they're spending all conds of money on Christmas. Well,
Speaker 10: their kids aren't really that much, you know, they might
Speaker 10: be the kids might be getting you know, full Christmases,
Speaker 10: and then the kids in turn, you know, get their
Speaker 10: parents so shovel and so that might be the extent
Speaker 10: of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean you kind of remember being younger
Speaker 2: than in twenties and you didn't have that much money
Speaker 2: to begin with, but especially our this generation. Uh and
Speaker 2: another element of this thing too, And I know if
Speaker 2: you saw this a new you know because credit card
Speaker 2: dat is is it an all time high? I don't know
Speaker 2: if it's Is it.
Speaker 3: All time now?
Speaker 5: And did I read that?
Speaker 2: I mean it's up there, it's it, It's not all
Speaker 2: the time, it's near there read out something called deferred Interesting.
Speaker 3: Familiar with this?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 2: Okay, so they're they're and this is kind of scary too.
Speaker 2: So the deal is is it's different interest. So typically
Speaker 2: what happens is you buy a big purchase and you
Speaker 2: do it on a sort of credit card. The retailer
Speaker 2: is going to charge no interest if you pay off
Speaker 2: the balance with the set timeframe. And of course what
Speaker 2: winds up happening they're banking on is at some point
Speaker 2: you can't make the payment or you can't pay the
Speaker 2: entire sum, the promotional clock runs out, and now you're
Speaker 2: on the hook for like a thirty percent APR.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, that's and that's more of you know, when
Speaker 10: you have these these lenders that are kind of sharking
Speaker 10: with these big interest rates and these layaway programs and
Speaker 10: things like that. There has to be something in it
Speaker 10: for the organization that's offering the zero percent interest, and
Speaker 10: they have a team of actuaries that are running the
Speaker 10: numbers and say, hey, the probability if somebody needs or
Speaker 10: is looking for that zero percent interest they always have
Speaker 10: in the back of their mind, well, I'll be able
Speaker 10: to pay it off. You know by the time that
Speaker 10: interest kicks in. Well, most of the time that never
Speaker 10: really happens. And that's been my experience with a lot
Speaker 10: of people where they say, you know, we were talking
Speaker 10: not too long ago about a fifty year mortgage, right,
Speaker 10: and so if you don't have the ability to afford
Speaker 10: that particular good, yes it might be an entry for
Speaker 10: you to have that particular product, but maybe you can't
Speaker 10: really afford it. And in a lot of times, you know,
Speaker 10: those rates will start to kick in, and those companies
Speaker 10: are backing on it because they're in the business of
Speaker 10: making money and rewarding their shareholders, not in providing favors
Speaker 10: for the consumer. So I would be very careful if
Speaker 10: you try to get in some type of agreement with that.
Speaker 10: That's new to me, but it doesn't surprise it. It
Speaker 10: doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 2: Now always looking for a new vehicle to try and
Speaker 2: buy stuff that they can't afford. Right, it's the America way,
Speaker 2: but even American, I mean, we have a we have
Speaker 2: a breaking point too. I noticed similarly that American car buyer,
Speaker 2: we're starting to draw the line on what we're going
Speaker 2: to pay for a new car. We've seen prime car
Speaker 2: prices since COVID certainly go through the roof literally, and
Speaker 2: now Americans are like, Okay, it's starting to cool off
Speaker 2: a little bit. And it's a signal to the Big
Speaker 2: three and of course global companies to start figuring out
Speaker 2: ways to get that cost down.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 10: And I think people are starting to realize is that
Speaker 10: the expensive items like cars is starting to become astronomical
Speaker 10: and maybe not even affordable. I had a call with
Speaker 10: one of my clients yesterday. She's in her late seventies
Speaker 10: and she's a widow, and she's had a Toyota Corolla
Speaker 10: for the last eight years and it only had eighty
Speaker 10: thousand miles on it. Well, she wanted to give that
Speaker 10: to her granddaughter. Their family had a hard time finding
Speaker 10: a car that was affordable for a teenager and so
Speaker 10: she said, you know, I think I'll go ahead and
Speaker 10: give her this car, and I'll go out and look
Speaker 10: for a new one for me, because I haven't had
Speaker 10: a new one in the bells and whistles, you know,
Speaker 10: might be nice. Well, you know, I had a conversation
Speaker 10: with her yesterday. She said, Andy, most cars are thirty
Speaker 10: thousand dollars or more. She's like, I'm not sure I'm
Speaker 10: prepared to be able to spend that kind of money
Speaker 10: on a new car. Now she can afford it. But
Speaker 10: I think the lesson here is that consumers, particularly mature consumers,
Speaker 10: are being a little bit more discreet and a little
Speaker 10: bit more frugal with their money and being smarter about
Speaker 10: what they spend their money on. And I see that
Speaker 10: a trend firsthand every day when I meet with my client.
Speaker 10: So I think there's a lot of legs to that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, And that's again the consumers thing, because some
Speaker 2: consumer confidence taking a little bit of a hit, But
Speaker 2: in the end it's all balancing out. A lot of
Speaker 2: this of course, seeing even more chirp this week about
Speaker 2: artificial intelligence spending spree, and it's all over inflated, and
Speaker 2: but it's balancing out tariffs and sense that some are
Speaker 2: revising their growth predictions experts like yourself predicting upward trend
Speaker 2: as opposed to a negative one with the tariffs. So
Speaker 2: how much of that is driven by the AI?
Speaker 10: A lot of a lot of it. And I think
Speaker 10: you know, as we've discussed in the past, you know
Speaker 10: AR is here to stay. It's a revolution. I believe
Speaker 10: in it. I use it in my job. I think
Speaker 10: if you work for an organization that is not implementing it,
Speaker 10: you're going to get left in the dust. It's a
Speaker 10: part of everyday life. Most everybody uses it in some capacity.
Speaker 10: You might not even realize it. You know, when you're
Speaker 10: typing any email, when it finishes your sentence, that is
Speaker 10: a form of AI. And it's only going to start
Speaker 10: to get more and more profound, and it's going to
Speaker 10: be start to be more and more of our daily lives.
Speaker 10: And with any business, when you start a business, or
Speaker 10: if you get into some type of industry, a lot
Speaker 10: of time it can take a couple of years before
Speaker 10: you actually become profitable. So it's more about the guidance
Speaker 10: that we get from these companies and the outlook that
Speaker 10: we have for these companies. And not only you know,
Speaker 10: with a certain product, but with an entire revolution of
Speaker 10: a way that we go about life. I think most
Speaker 10: investors are smart to understand that, yes, the price is
Speaker 10: a little bit inflated. The value might not be there today,
Speaker 10: but future growth suggests that this is still a good
Speaker 10: investment because they will eventually start to have significant earnings
Speaker 10: on top of what they already have today. And so
Speaker 10: I'm still pro AI. I think you should have it
Speaker 10: as a part of your portfolio. A lot of times
Speaker 10: you do and don't even know it. Within your four
Speaker 10: to one K. It's probably a part of mutual funds.
Speaker 10: And that's why your accounts have really done so well
Speaker 10: over the last three years. A lot of it has
Speaker 10: to do with AI and technology.
Speaker 3: You know what.
Speaker 2: This week is the third anniversary of the rollout of
Speaker 2: chad GPT three years.
Speaker 3: Only been three years, it feels like it's been longer.
Speaker 5: It does.
Speaker 3: It feels like it's been around for ten yeares it does.
Speaker 3: That's incredible.
Speaker 10: It is incredible and and and we use that in
Speaker 10: our daily business. Most people do. My wife does uses
Speaker 10: it for work, and it helps you draw emails and
Speaker 10: it gives you a lot of good information. And now
Speaker 10: when you get on Google, you know, a lot of
Speaker 10: the information that you're searching comes up first with an
Speaker 10: AI summary, pulling from a number of different sites to
Speaker 10: try to summarize in a succinct way the information that
Speaker 10: you're looking for. So I see it even if I'm
Speaker 10: just searching something in Google about something that I watched
Speaker 10: on National Geographic Channel, And.
Speaker 3: So it's more intelligence is the thing that's right.
Speaker 10: And I'm and I'm fine with that. You know, we
Speaker 10: want to keep advancing, we want to become more efficient.
Speaker 10: We've had other industrial revolutions and technology revolutions where people
Speaker 10: felt that jobs were going to be lost and and
Speaker 10: maybe some more. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 10: it's going to create more opportunity. It's going to create
Speaker 10: more jobs and different industries for everybody throughout the United
Speaker 10: States and the rest of the world.
Speaker 2: All right, real quick, what do you got week ahead here?
Speaker 2: What indicators you're looking at?
Speaker 10: Yeah, there's a few, you know, for the most part
Speaker 10: where we're going to get some back data. The PCE
Speaker 10: is going to come out Friday. That's the FEDS Preferred
Speaker 10: Inflation measure, you know, So that's going to be interesting
Speaker 10: to see what we get from there. We're also going
Speaker 10: to get job as claims, payroll reports, the ism, manufacturing
Speaker 10: and service surveys. Those are always interesting, interesting because you know,
Speaker 10: those are reflections of supply managers and how they feel
Speaker 10: about their inventories and whether they feel it's you know,
Speaker 10: gaining momentum or losing momentum. And so those are the
Speaker 10: things that I'm looking at this week, and so we'll
Speaker 10: see how it goes, but I do expect that at
Speaker 10: this point we will probably see a rate cut in
Speaker 10: the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: Okay, Andy Schaeffer, Allworth Financial Simply Money is the show
Speaker 2: at airs at six o'clock tonight on fifty five. Care
Speaker 2: soe you appreciate Andrew, Okay, Seeliers, take care. I'll see
Speaker 2: you next week and Willie is on the way right
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