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