Five minutes after five o'clock.
Good Friday morning to you, And of course, Good Friday in the Catholic calendar and especially the Christian calendar, is one of the most important days of Christianity. In fact, there are some that think that Christmas is the most important day. There are others that concentrate on the Crucifixion on Good Friday, and then there are others that say that Easter is.
The big day.
And they all have their place in Catholicism and Christianity and whatever. So we'll get into that later on towards the end of the show. But side note before we go on. You know, when you do the weather, Okay, first thing I do in the morning when I well, not the first thing when I come in here, I'll ask right before we go on, here, what temperature do
you have? And of course I go to my I phone and I look at my weather where I live down in Wilder, Kentucky, and this morning, right now, it says it's sixty one degrees and here at the station it says it's fifty eight.
Now.
It was kidding my.
Producer that, hey, because I guess I live further south. You know, the weather's always warmer down there, but we're talking a three degree swing in temperature, which got me to thinking, and of course this is off subject to what I was going to talk about initially this morning, is that where do they get the official weather for the day? Is it at the airport, is at someplace
around the area. And when you hear these people talking about global warming, climate change and so on, and temperature changes comparison from one year to the other, where are they getting those We have had the stories in the past that when you look back fifty sixty, seventy eighty years ago, where they had the thermometer out in the field somewhere, and that's where they were getting all their
readings as far as temperatures are concerned. Now tho, those thermometers in some places are in the middle of some asphalt jungle or in some parking lot somewhere. And of course, if you're out in the green fields, and if you are out in the area, you know that the temperature is going to be a lot cooler there than it is going to be above the asphalt on a given day. And so some of the discrepancies that we've been seeing and some of the numbers have been going into the
formula are part of that. I used to live along the river in Campbell County, Kentucky, and if you are familiar with the area, it's right across the river from Coney Island now up on the hill, which is where Route twenty seven is, that is up there up above the river, and it is amazing. When I would come home at night, and especially in the summer, I usually don't I hardly ever use my air conditioning, so I
always have the window open. And as you started coming down the hill down to Route eight at the time, you could tell a particular temperature drop just from basically the mile up on Arount twenty seven down to the river, and it was a significant anywhere from a five to seven degree drop. So again I talk about or I mentioned the fact that you can have these varying temperatures.
So I wonder where they get their information and wonder where they draw their numbers and if that is affecting what people are talking about in terms of climate change. So anyway, if you went to my Facebook page, you always know that when I'm in I will put something on Facebook as to who my guests are. And today is no different between now and six twenty five, we're gonna be doing news and views, and I'm maybe an opinion or two, because as you know, I have an opinion,
I'm not afraid to use it. Coming up at six point thirty, we're gonna be talking with Dave Hatter, cybersecurity expert, joins me for tech Friday. I always love having well, I love and hate having Dave Hatter on the air, simply because I don't call it, well, they call it tech Friday, but I call it Scare the hell out of your Friday because he always has this stuff. But he's going to give us some timely information and technology
tips and so on, just to keep you safe. At seven o'clock, folks, I'm going out on a limb today. I have as my guest Ann Dickerson. She is co founder and lead organizer of the Cincinnati chapter of Indivisible, will discuss their opposition to all things Trump. And I go on their website and it's like, well, you hear about them there been. They are the groups that are going around the country and they are organizing these rallies, the Hands Off rallies and the anti Nazi rallies and
all this sort of stuff. All over the country, and so I was told by well, I'll just mention it ran Paul's field guy. I don't know if I want to mention his name, but he told me that she is a very fairly reasonable person, somebody you can talk to. And I'm just kind of getting I just want to get an idea of what the hell is their opposition, what the hell is their beef. It all boils down, in my opinion a lot of times just Trump derangement
syndrome gone on steroids. Then, of course between seven thirty and about eight twenty five thereabouts, more news and views, and then at eight thirty five we're going to be talking with Lindy Zembrot. She is the executive director of Carinet Pregnancy Centers of Northern Kentucky. And you may recall that I've talked about her from time to time, had her on now. They have their annual banquet on May the eighth, and Carenet is an organization for crisis pregnancy.
They are there if somebody finds, you know, winds up pregnant, that it is a resource that you can go to to get help, to get information, to find out what services are available to you. And the whole direction there is in order to allow women to know that they have options so that they, in other words, don't go and have an abortion. So that's a great organization. I actually I was the MC of their banquet last year. I think Liz Bonus this year is going to be
the MC. So I guess we're going to be competing back and forth year after year as to who's going to be filling in there. But anyway, got all that going on, and of course a lot of stuff to talk about here, and so we'll get into it and see what we have. One of the things I want to talk about. Oh, by the way, let's not forget and this is one of the things I just absolutely love is the fact that let me see what do we have going on this week?
Tuesday?
Tuesday was tax Day, or as Hunter Biden says, Tuesday in April.
But that was tax Day.
And I got to tell you from the standpoint of being a recovering accountant. And I know a lot of people tired of hearing that. But you know a lot of people tune in for the first time and they don't.
Know that tax Day and the tax season I did it.
I did a lot of tax returns in my time and in the accounting firms that I work for a lot of them. Oh, you had small and medium sized businesses, but then you also had the individuals that you would do. And I got to tell you, there is just something about tax day itself that just I got to tell you,
It infuriates me. It bothers me to no end. I used to have clients that would have a part time job where they would have a side hustle what they call it now, but it was a side job at the time, trying to earn extra money for their family.
And generally, when somebody starts a business like that, they forget about the fact that every tax dollar they earn is at the highest rate of whatever their wages are or their combined income if their spouse works, and so they forget that they're at that higher tax rate from that dollar forward. Plus, you have the problem of self employment tax. You know, on your payroll, you get the FICA, you have the Social Security and the Medicare and so on.
The employer pays the other half. If you're self employed, and a lot of you out there are, and you know this, you pay both ends of that. And so when you figure that out the self employment tax. And when these people get to the end of the year, it's like they find themselves sometimes, well I'm talking about in the late seventies early eighties, finding themselves owing about two to three thousand dollars and it was just mind boggling to them that they could owe that amount of money.
And I know, and I'd see how these people would live. I know their background, I know what they do for a living, I know the area of town that they live in. And it's not like they're you know, got these you know, boats and campers and all this sort of stuff. They're just trying to make a little bit of extra money to put their kids through school, spend time with their kids and so on. And the way
they just absolutely get hammered. And every time I hear these comments about, you know, the rich need to pay more, the rich you need to pay this, and so on, the statistics just don't bear that out. And coming up, I'm going to be talking about some of the things that just and and again when you dig into this, how much it absolutely infuriates me what we have to
do in order to pay our taxes. Phone numbers five, one, three, seven, four, nine fifty five hundred one, eight hundred eighty two three talk one eight hundred eight two three eight two five five pound five point fifty AT and T wireless phone. Uh, coming up, We've got Dick. If you'll hang on the phone, I'll be with you. And of course you got that AT and T wireless phone. I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five KRC, the talk station.
Fifty five KRC dot com.
Do you have a massive irsy Donald J.
Trump?
And I approved this message.
Of course he does. Donald, you're up this time of the day. Give me a call. We'll get you on the air right away. But right now, let's go to the phones. Talk to Dick, Dick from Dayton. Dick, how are you?
My friend?
Hikevin? How are you?
I am fine? How you been well? U?
I don't know if you've heard from Dave from day Niece, a friend of Jerry Jeff's and he had a special surprise when I talked to Jerry Jeff's Saturday. And I never know, but I want to say I want to come back there. I heart radio on Montgomery Road is a beautiful building and I got to meet, you know, Willie and everybody, and uh oh, and I got to play here. It's a beautiful place and I thank everybody for Dave taking me. But it was nice, you know what I mean? Nice?
Yeah. Absolutely.
As a matter of fact, I think I got a message from I think it was Dave from Dayton Wall. I was down at the Mid American Trucking Show. He stopped by or sent me an email or something that I knew I was down there and said, howdy, So yeah, I thought that was interesting.
So have you got to meet Dave?
I don't.
I don't know. I don't know if he was down there. I do know that I talked to somebody that knew him and whatever. I there were so many people that stopped by the booth while we were down there that it was kind of Yeah. I tried to write as many notes as I could as to who I met and so on. But yes, it was a lot of fun, A lot of fun.
Yeah, it is, it really is. And you know, to know that it's a beautiful place there. But you were mentioned about what is it about taxes? I did mind late this year and I realized I had to go uh that morning for that day, I had to get up I had money, and they wouldn't do it. So I brought it back the next day. And I'm telling you, Kevin, it was two hours I waited. Well, I mean it was two hours. They had to do my tax They
they go through a review. Now I don't know about you know, they check everything out, but that it was interesting though, you know, I guess it must be new move new that they had that new procedure.
Yeah, it is. It is just mind boggling.
And and I've got statistics on the number of hours and how many man hours it takes and and that, and it's just mind boggling in terms of, you know, you work hard through the year, you do your job, you raise your family, you go to the soccer games, baseball games, football games, everything else. Ye, all this sort of stuff, and then at the end of the year you've got to spend money to do your tax return.
As a matter of fact, I think I heard one time somebody says, hey, I'm a PhD, I'm a mathematician, and I need help on my taxes. And it's it shouldn't be that hard. It should be fairly straightforward. They keep talking about reforming it. They're going to do this that and the other thing to adjust it. But again, it is the unaffected class that are that are ruling things, and we the affected class, have to pay the price of that. So it's just it's just nuts and it
is infuriating. And even as an account and you know, people will say to me, well, Kevin, you know you were in the accounting profession, what will we do with all the accou ountains?
What will we do that way?
And I'm thinking, well, you got all these brilliant tax attorneys, you got these brilliant tax accountants, and they are trying to figure out through the legal system how many loopholes you can have, and they come up with that. Imagine unleashing those people and that talent to try to figure out how companies can make even more money and be more profitable. How much better would that be for our economy rather than trying to figure out how to go through this loophole or do this in order to save
on taxes. If it was straight up, then you could release all these people and you'd still have need for the irs, not as many people as we found out. But again, I think it should be simplified, and it's it's it's it's infair. I actually, I really seriously, I mean, I get upset every time I talk about it.
But anyway, Oh yeah, N make you sometime.
That sounds good to me, my friend, okay, you too, take care. Take care.
Dick from Dayton or already always enjoy talking to him. He always puts a smile on my faith. Talking about statistics.
All right.
Individual tax return filing is the most consuming element.
Of the tax system.
But the average taxpayer spending thirteen hours to comply with Form ten forty thirteen hours?
Now?
Is that thirteen hours at your normal pay rate? Is that deductible?
Hell no?
For individuals with business income, the average amount of time it takes to file taxes is even higher, at twenty four hours. This estimate is a time spent doing the taxes, are based on surveys of individuals taxpayers. Compliance burdens includes various activities that eat up time, not just the filing of the two hundred and seventy million tax returns, but also record keeping, tax planning, gathering tax materials, and learning
about the goal of the law. Overall, it reportedly takes you, ready for this twelve billion hours annually to comply with federal government paperwork. Two thirds of that time is spent on tax related paperwork, twelve billion hours. Imagine how much more productive America could be and our taxpayers could be if they had that twelve billion hours back, or the time spent with family and to enjoy this country and
to enjoy your family. Now they keep talking about streamlining the process and getting this done, but it's never ever been done, and it's by and by time, and by God, it's time to do it. I've always said that one of the things that you ought to Well, I'll tell you what I'm going to tease this for the next session about what I think, in terms of one election day should be and what I think the way that people you want to get people fired up about taxes,
I have an answer for that. Phone numbers five one three, seven, four nine fifty five won three seven four nine fifty five hundred one, eight hundred eight two three talk one eight hundred eight two three eight two five five pound, five point fifty AT and T wireless phone. Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five KR See the talk station.
Five twenty nine in the morning.
Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas fifty five kr C, the talk station. You know, I mentioned about the the tax code, and I've been talking a little bit about that and and the thing that is is in well, I'd mentioned that I have an idea for an election day. I think election day should be moved. I don't think
it should be in November. I think election day should be April to sixteenth every year because after you pay your taxes on April fifteenth, that is when you're paying attention the most to what's going on, and that's the period of time when you're probably the most infuriated that you're not getting your bang from your buck from your state, city, county, or federal government. Also, I think one of the ways that get people fired up is we ought to go
back to a cash payroll system. Imagine you have to show up for work, and even to those people are some of you people that work from home. You have to go to the office and you at one table you get your cash, your gross pay, and then you have to walk down to the one next table that has the federal income tax.
Then you move down and pay.
Your Social Security tax, and then you go down to another time table pay your county tax, and go down to another table and pay your city taxes. See, most people only look at their net income. They look at their net pay and say, well, this is how much I make. But when you look at the percentage, when you look at your net pay versus your gross pay,
it is a stamp. And then you talk about I mentioned sales tax and all the other taxes that we pay during the year, and then throw on top of that some of these what they call fees, but it's actually more like a tax. You know, even the average taxpayer is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of forty percent to fifty percent of their pay is done in taxes. And if you start adding it up, sometimes look at your receipts from time to time. You can't even go
out to dinner without getting a sales tax. You can't go to the vet, or at least in Kentucky, you got to pay sales tax on services.
Now is it is appalling?
And then throw on top of that the fact that you also have to pay how much you pay in state and city or state and federal taxes on every gallon of gasoline that you buy. Look at that number sometime, I think in Kentucky, the number for the state is twenty seven cents. The federal government's share is eighteen cents. So now you're up to forty five cents of every gallon of gas that you pump is in the way of taxes. Okay, so when you start throwing all that
stuff in there, it is astounding. One time, I was on the air several years ago, and I probably still have it at home, and I printed out a list of every tax that we pay, and at every break, every time we came back from a break, I read probably about four or five of them, five six, seven of them. I did not read the entire list by the end of the show. That is how crazy the amount of taxes and the different ways that they come at us and reach into our pockets and take our money.
And it's one of those things, like I said this time of the year, I really, I mean, more than anything else, that really infuriates me knowing how hard people work, know how hard it is to go and do all the things that you do on a daily basis, and then taking care of your family, and then you have to worry about whether or not you're not so silent partner, how much of your hard earned money they get and
the other thing. When you start hearing these people talk about the rich don't pay enough and that we ought to get rid of this particular deduction, listen to what they're actually saying.
They're not saying that it's your money.
They actually believe, and don't doubt me on this, that there are people in the government that believe every penny you earn is theirs. We look at it in terms of our net pay. Is the amount of money that we have after we've paid all of our taxes. As far as some of these liberals are concerned, the money that you have is the money that they let you keep after they've confiscated as much. And they still want
to confiscate more. And if you look at the rhetoric, if you talk, if you listen terms of how they want to eliminate this deduction or they want to move this around, or they want to do this height is it is astounding of much how much they believe that everything you earn goes to them. And oh, by the way, wait till we start talking about tax freedom day. Yeah, five one, three, seven, four, nine fifty five eight hundred eight two three eight two five five pound, five point
fifty AT and T wireless phone. Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas fifty five krs the talk station.
Five thirty nine in the morning, Kevin Gordon in.
For Brian how must fifty five kr See the talk station phone numbers five one, three, seven, four nine, fifty, five hundred one, eight hundred eight two three talk one eight hundred eighty two three eight two five five pound five fifty AT and TR wireless phone. To the phones we go. Let's speak with William. William fifty five kr. See how are you this morning?
Oh good?
How you doing?
Good morning?
I'm doing fine. How about you?
Oh just fine?
Good good.
I don't sound like a downer or anything early in the morning. But I went through you know, a bolt land, put me a house on it, paid it all. But I'll tell you the worst sin in the world is property taxes because you really don't own it. Because what happens you don't pay property taxes, you're just really a janitor for the state. I mean, I've been through it, and I don't think if when your house is paid off, you should not pay property taxes on your own land that.
You already own or you don't own it.
Huh.
I mean, well, William, they will tell you, and this is this is beautiful because they'll tell you that, well, you use county services, you use the county roads, you use this, you use that, and it's a way of funding these projects. And of course a lot of that money, at least in Camell Country, at least in northern Kentucky, bulk of that money goes to the school districts. And even though you may not have, yeah, that's all built into your tax.
And so that's a bugaboo, all this money going to these uh public schools, man, and these kids can't even read and write.
Oh yeah, absolutely yeah.
And if you, as you say, if you don't pay your property taxes in a couple of years, they'll come and confiscate your house. If you can't come up with the money, they'll kick you out.
And and it's and and.
Basically whatever the price of there's no I mean, the property tax that they're probably as old if you don't pay them for a couple of years, is probably less than ten percent or less than ten percent of what your property is worth. And if they can come in and take that for a song, they'll do it in a heartbeat and I think that's totally unfair. I think you know, at least as a minimum, and I don't know how old you are, but if you are sixty five years, what sixty two, well in three years, make
sure you take advantage of that homestead exemption. A lot of people are not aware of that, but most states will allow somebody sixty five years or older take a homestead exemption which reduces the taxable value of your property. It doesn't affect the property value, it's just the taxable value, and you get a break that way. I think that at some point in time, maybe age seventy five or something like that, property taxes.
Should dissolve, should go away.
I would think that after you know, by the time you turn seventy five, you've paid enough taxes, it's time for you to rust and relax. So there should be at least some sort of a sunset clause on your property taxes.
I found it cheaper. I found it cheaper do my experience and what I went through. I owned my place down in time with seventeen years, nine months, in two weeks, and they come and took it and paid all six acres, beautiful place, brand new house.
It was a junk.
Yard and I find now, man, what I've went through, and it's just cheaper to rent. Yeah, I fouled a cheaper just to rent a lot have the same space.
Yeah, a lot of people feel that way. But you know, you know that the key is is to make sure that you know you're paying your taxes timely, and that comes same problem sometime. But yeah, I agree with you there is there needs to be something done with that. And you know these county administrators and so on, they need to really take a look at some of this and maybe maybe on the city, state, county level, maybe we start start doing some dozing there in terms of waste, fraud and abuse.
What do you think?
I agree with you. You take care and have a great Thank you, taking care of God bless.
All right, you two, let's try to squeeze in Linda here real quick. Linda fifty five krs. Thanks for calling this morning.
How are you?
Oh, I'm good. How are you? Gordon?
I am doing just fine.
Two things. One on checking on how our county and our cities and our states are spending our money. Absolutely, we should have somebody like a doge check all of that. Number two, the fifteenth Amendment of our Constitution says it's citizens who vote. I want to know, how does California get away with having so many illegals vote? And let's start a movement. If they're not going to follow the law, we don't count their electoral.
Votes exactly, exactly. Well, now, Linda, don't you realize that they allow them just to participate in city and county and state elections, they don't let them participate in the federal you know.
Oh, I didn't know that. I thought it was.
Well, that's what they say.
But you know, my tongue was was deeply planted into my cheek just then, so I gotcha. Yeah, but yeah, it's uh, it's just one more way. And of course, you know voter ID laws. You know, you don't have to show up and show an ID in order to vote. That is insanity at the most. And this whole idea of expanding having elections drag on for.
Three Do you realize that there what was the what state?
Was?
It?
Was it Wisconsin that they finally just now decided what the final vote count? And a supreme was it a supreme court some sort of election in the state of Wisconsin from back in November.
That is insanity.
And what California took what four weeks, five weeks, six weeks to count all their votes? Election day should be on election day, and maybe you could have early voting, in my opinion, no earlier than maybe Wednesday or Thursday of the before that Tuesday. Having this open for months on, you know, a month or two, and the saying that, oh, well, people have a difficult time getting to the polls and
all this sort of stuff. Why guarantee you that if the county were to or somebody were to stand there with one hundred dollar bill, not from a candidate, but one hundred dollars bill, I guarantee you people would show up the vote.
And so are you kidding just a five dollar bill with well.
That's true, that's true to anyway day you do the.
Same, Linda, Thank you so much for calling you.
That's a great point five one three seven four nine fifty five hundred one, eight hundred eighty two three talk one eight hundred eight two three eight two five five pound, five point fifty AT and T wireless phone. Kevin Gordon in for Ryan Thomas, fifty five KRC the talk station.
This is fifty five KRC and iHeartRadio station.
Do you have a massive IRS problem?
Five fifty one in the morning, Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five KR. See the talk station phone number is five one three seven four nine fifty five hundred one eight hundred eight two three talk one eight hundred eight two three eight two five five pound five point fifty on that AT and T wireless phone to the phones we go Mississippi James. How are you this morning, my friend?
Doing all right, mister Gordy, and thank you for filling the inn for Brian.
Now it's my pleasure, my pleasure entirely.
On what we're gonna call this fun Friday.
There you go. That'll work for me. That'll work.
Now, you know. Speaking of the school district, and I did a deep dive down in my hometown on Meridian, Mississippi and thirty three population of thirty three thousand, so I can pretty much wrap my arm around it all right. And up until the late nineties, Meridian was a federal Blue ribbon school district. Then you had a couple of things come in there, kicking off of when they went to some of the private prisons, and the private prison
they as we know, it's for profit. So you got to have a head in the bed, a head in the bed as they call it. And it almost as though they began to target quit teaching the kids because they changed so many formats, and they began to target the kids. You brought in zero tolerance, I mean, and the kids were sent to the juvenile center for many of your stuff because the school didn't mitigate anything. They
was actually calling the city police. Police would come out and put handcuffs on ten twelve fourteen year old kids, take them to the juvenile center. So you setting them up by the time they get sixteen. Oh you've been in here two three times. Yeah, you know, they give them, give them hard time exactly. So then you look at minor offenses, right, and then I talked to some of their kids in the streets.
You know.
Now that was old wit that probably lasted fifteen years. The Department of Justice came in there and made some sanction and told them what they had to do. Because all the records got locked down, the Department of Justice couldn't get any They used the hippo low to lock the records down. So the Department of Justice they did with their overreaching hand. They made some mandates that actually
empowered the kids, and they thought they was untouchable. Then, so that pendlum swung back and forth so fast, and then it came in where we talk about being gay, you know. And I was talking to some of the kids and they say, well, they didn't want to go to school because they thought they would either go to jail or they will be turned gate. And you have to listen at their reason. Now, we adults, we passed that stage, but they are vulnerable kids and stuff that
in their life. And when I did my deep dive into what do that mean? I understood what they were saying. So we put these kids in a peerless position, you know, it's just destroyed them. And then we're from there, not being able to read school and all this stuff. You poverty, you know, you just throw them into a.
Sub culture underclaimed exactly.
And then next thing they know, like spontaneous combustion, keep packing down, packing down, it explodes in whatever way. So now you see the guns and the drugs and we don't know where we're going.
Yeah, it's crazy, and this is something that needs to be looked at. I think the injustice system, you know, you hear that from time to time, and a lot of people will go, oh, well, you know, you don't get into the system unless you know you've done something. Oh no, not necessarily. And once you're in that system, it's almost like it's geared to keep you in that system.
I know some people that try to hire people that are in the system, and it is so difficult for them to try to hold a job with all their all the times that they have to go to court and everything on something after they serve their sentence, And it's the whole thing needs to be revamped and the whole idea of these schools that needs to be looked at as well. Mississippi gim I'm up against the clock here. I really appreciate the phone call, and uh, I'd look forward to talking to you next time.
I'm in.
Have a great day and have a great weekend coming up, We've got more fun and frivolity. I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas fifty five KR see the talk station five minutes after six on this good Friday. Hope you uh have some time today to spend a moment or two thinking about what the significance of this day is, and of course this being Holy week, to spend some time uh thinking about that and the whole you know, get back in touch with your religious roots and so on.
And of course to my Jewish friends out there, it's one of those times where Passover corresponds.
With the Easter season. It's usually a little bit.
Around the same time or so, but this is the Holy season or the Holy season for the Jewish community as well with Passover, and of course brings to mind this nut job that what was at last Saturday that tried to torch and burn down the governor's mansion there in Pennsylvania. And of course, you know, not as much has been made of that as probably should be made.
The last hour, I started talking about taxes, and I started talking about how infuriated I get as a matter of in terms of tax day and the fact that how many, how many hours we spend on an annual basis as an individual, for businesses and everybody in the United States. And you know, the numbers are just absolutely astounding when you really dig into them. And those are the things that you know, when you when you look at the actual tax burden. It's not just necessarily the
actual act of paying the taxes itself. But when you talk in terms of the amount of time I mentioned how many hours what was it seven point nine billion hours filing tax returns. If you add that all up at it and just using forty four dollars and fifty cents, which is kind of the average hourly rate if you average it out through the entire system, four hundred and thirteen billion dollars is spent as far as the man
hours just gathering the documents and whatnot. And then you have the out of pocket expenditures to where people have to file their tax returns and actually have them pay for that. That's another one hundred and thirty three billion dollars. You throw that into the mix. In terms of being able to have that money in your pocket, the number of hours away from your family complying with federal taxes
and so on, it's absolutely astounding. And let's not forget one of the things that we experienced this week also was on Wednesday was Tax Freedom Day, and I don't know if many people talk talked about that.
Now.
I would rather see that our elections be held on April the sixteenth every year, or when the calendar or when the elections are happening simply because that's when people are the most fired up and the people that are most paying attention. But Tax Freedom Day to give you a little idea that Tax Freedom Day was conceived in the nineteen forties to help people understand how much of their money all levels of American government taken taxes by
asking a simple question. If the average worker sent their entire paycheck every penny you earn, every penny that is in your tax, if you sent that to the government starting on January first, how many days would a person have to work before they got to keep any of their own money. How mind you spending taking every penny
you earn and sending it off to the government. Any guests out there, any guests April tenth, That means that you have worked the entire month of January, February, March, and almost half of more than half of April before you pay your federal and your tax obligation for the year. If you've sent every penny you earn, that to me,
that is just absolutely appalling. And when we start talking about living in a free society, if you're burdened by more than a quarter of your year, you are working for the government, Well, think of it in those terms. A quarter of the year you are an indentured service to the government in order to pay your taxes. Think
about that from that aspect, unbelievable. And then when I started hearing this stuff about the rich don't pay enough, that to me is just that is one of those things that you know, every you know, they talk about it from time to time, people bring it up, and it just seems to go in one year and out the other. But just kind of put this in perspective.
If you look at all the money that the federal government takes in in the way of taxes taxpayers reportedly nearly fourteen point eight trillion, and adjust the gross income the total amount of taxes that were paid during the year. Let me see, total taxes paid fell by fifty seven to two point one trillion dollars in the year of twenty Now, a lot of these numbers it takes them a couple of years to come up with them, But something in the neighborhood of two point one trillion dollars
that is paid in taxes. Who pays that The top one percent of earners in this country pay forty point four percent of that two point one billion dollars trillion dollars. Rather, if you add in the other four percent, so you have the top five percent, The top five percent account for sixty one percent of all taxes paid. The top ten percent. When you start expanding that out, they are responsible for adding up, you know, the top ten percent, which includes the top one, top five and so on,
seventy two percent of the taxes. And by the time you get to the twenty five percent, twenty five percent of the populations pay eighty seven point two percent of the taxes, and the bottom fifty percent pay only three percent. So when they say the rich don't pay enough, that we need to take more money from the rich, that they need to pay their fair share, folks, they're paying
their full share. And what I thought was very interesting the other day, I was watching a show I think it was on Fox News, and of course they were always big on doing this man on the street, and I forget where they were, I don't know if they were in New York or whatever, but they were talking to people and they were going up to them and asking them, do you think the rich pay too much or don't pay enough in taxes? And it was amazing how many people from all walks of life and a diverse community.
Said, hell, no, I hope to be.
Rich one day and I don't want to have to pay any more than when I have to. To me, that was astounding because we are told by the spoon fed regurgitators in the mainstream media that there are so many people out there that are envious to the rich, that they despise the rich, that they think that they don't pay enough, that they don't pay their way, and
it's just not there. And you know, when I start hearing and maybe I should explain when I talk about spoon fed regurgitators in the mainstream media, you know, I say that for a reason. I'm just not trying to be flip. But when you go overseas in England and in European Union, they don't call them news anchors. They call them news presenters. And when you see our local news people when they're talking, how many times you know
it used to be go back to the days. I'm aging myself here, But when you go back to the days of when Nick Clooney did the news, or you're talking about even Outshadowcottie, it was usually just a headshot
from almost about mid chest up. Now, if you notice that all of these cameras are backed up enough so you can actually see the quote anchors at the desk, and if you watch their hands, it is actually something in the neighborhood of where they extend their arms out when they're giving a story, when they're talking about a particular story, because they are presenting that to you, so they're not doing the hard digging into the individual story itself.
As a matter of fact, I've often wondered if you stood outside out on the street, and when they came out to go to their car, if you ask them what were the top ten stories that you did tonight, I wonder how many of them could actually mention them, because they're so used to seeing that teleprompter that I'm not sure that they even know what stories are covering.
All they're doing is presenting the news. And then when you take into consideration of what we've seen over the last several years in terms of the lies that we've heard as far as Russia Russia, Russia, COVID with the origins of COVID, where that came from the fact of some of the stories that were suppressed there the fact that the number of polling and the pulling information that we got last year in terms of who was ahead, who was that election was not anywhere close to what
they said it was. And the number of lies that we've had from our reporters over the years, the Hunter laptop, the whole scenario there, the spying on the Trump campaign in the first in twenty sixteen, all of these lies from the media, I'm surprised that they actually still have any credibility at all. And then when you couple that with the fact that all they are are basically a propaganda arm of the DNC, and they're basically handed the talking points from the DNC and then they regurgitate that
to us. That's why I call them the spoonful. They're fed the information from the propagandas and then they regurgitated to us and we're supposed to buy it hook line and sinker. So when you talk to these spoon hear these spoon fed regurgitators in the mainstream media, it always necessary to kind of step back and think, you know, are they really giving me the straight scoop on this?
And maybe I should do a little bit more digging phone numbers five one three seven four nine fifty five hundred one eight hundred two three talk one eight hundred eight two three eight two five five pound, five point fifty AT and T wireless phone. Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five KR See the talk station, fifty five KRC.
You don't think about it.
Six twenty in the morning.
Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five KRC, the talk station.
Stay tuned. Bottom of the hour.
We're going to have Dave Hatter And of course, as I refer it's supposed to be considered a cyber let me see tech Friday, but I kind of change the name to that to scare the hell out of your Friday because of so the information. He has great information, but I'm telling you what it is concerning sometimes some of the stuff that he comes up with. So looking forward to talking to him. He's a good guy. I've known him more. I even know him even before talking
to him on the radio. I've bumped in him a few times along the way, as far as in the circles I go in, as far as politics in northern Kentucky. So anyway, looking forward to talking to him. You know, one of the things that was shocking to me this week. And maybe I should have known this or whatever, but you know, they have this post office. You know that they've been in the news a lot and talking about privatizing that and some of the reforms that need to
be done with that. And I actually had to go buy a stamp the other day. You know, we do so much online anymore, it's kind of almost antiquated as somebody spend spending time to you know, nobody writes a letter anymore. Most people pay their bills online. Very few people, you know, send a check in, and so you know, we've kind of gotten away from that.
And I know that on you know.
Birthday cards and Christmas cards and stuff like that, we do send postage out. But we bought these forever stamps, and we bought we must have bought. I don't We're still working through the inventory of forever stamps that we bought, I think probably four or five years ago, so I'm not really sure, you know. Anyway, but the other day I needed a stamp, and so I went to the post office to have something mail, and my god, I was absolutely shocked. Seventy three cents for a stamp seventy
three cents. You go back to what was it January back in the twenty nineteen that was fifty five cents a stamp back then. You mean to tell me that it has gone up fifty percent in just a couple of years, that is insanity. And on a side note, I've lived where I've lived now for about eighteen years.
Actually we're going into our nineteenth year. And when we first moved in, there was a mailman that came by, and for some reason, it seemed that my schedule was such that it seemed that whenever he would come up, he would I would be there and or I'd run into him from time to time and we'd get to talking, and I started, you know, talking more more, and he realized or he recognized the fact that I had fill in from time to time here at Kris and on WLW, and so he was kind of shocked to meet me
and that sort of thing. So anyway, we got to talking and everything about different things, and he started telling me about some of the things in the post office in terms of the amount of layers of supervision that's there. And like most just like our schools, you go to some of these schools, there are more. There are almost
as many administrators as there are teachers. You go to colleges and universities, between the DEI office and this office and that office, there are more administrators in these colleges and universities then there are actually faculty members. And the reason for that is that when you have student loans and that is being paid for, and people are taking out these loans and that money is available, well, of
course they're going to expand their curriculum. They're going to not curriculum, but expand their footprint in terms of the number of people that they hire and nothing. And it's so true in other businesses. You'll see from time to time where a lot of companies will when good times, they'll hire people, and when times go bad, then they start going through and saying, you know, we've got an awful.
Lot of dead weight here.
We got to figure out some way of maybe reducing, maybe freezing hiring or giving buyout packages to people that are that are about to retire, and see if we can minimize that to a certain extent. And so you see this in corporations, but you never see that in federal government. You never see that. Well, until recently with doze and everything. But you don't see that in the post office. And they're one of the most inefficient. I mean, well, you know, they do pretty let me say they do
a good job of getting the mail there. Those are the mail carriers and the sorders and so on. But these supervisors, this guy used to tell me that there were actually supervisors. You know, it's not like we live in a high crime area. We live in a condo complex which is kind of not private. It's not gated or anything, but there's hardly any traffic on the street.
And if he got out of his truck and didn't turn the engine off and walk the twenty steps up and put the mail in the box, and he just let the car keep running, there were actually supervisors that would follow behind and then nail them and put them on suspension for not turning off the engine and taking the keys out of the cognition when they go the amount of time, you know, he would talk about, Hey, I can't spend time talking, he says, I'm running behind it.
I've been talking to a couple of people and I've got some you know, they time us now on how we do our routes and so on, and this is nuts.
I mean when you take.
Into consideration that these post office, these postal employees, they are the face of the post office. And if you have a good feeling about your carrier, which are very important to you and very friendly, then you have a better idea or a better feeling of the post office. But you take that away that you don't have as great a connection with the postal service. And it is something that needs to be dozed. It needs to be looked at, it needs to be reformed, and if it
requires it being privatized, it needs to be privatized. Coming up bottom of the air, we're gonna be talking to Dave Hatter, looking forward to that. I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five KRC DE.
Talk station fifty five KRC.
Six thirty in the.
Morning, Kevin Gordon and for Brian Thomas fifty five KR see.
The talk station.
And as always we've got Tech Friday with my good friend Dave Hatter, or as I like to call it, scare that hell out of here Friday.
Dave, how are you this morning?
I'm good, I'm good. Kevin.
How are you not bad at all? Not bad?
At all.
It's been a while since we've talked, which is a shame. That's not right.
So I hate that I'm always scaring people, but always good to Charlie and hopefully Kevin. We're doing some good out there.
Of course, it's always necessary to let people know what's going on, because I mean, there are so many people that are just how you hear these things from time to time, and it's just frightening as to all the scams and stuff that are there.
Well, and you know, this is what I do for a living in my day job, and you know a big part of what we try to do with Interust is help you defend against these things and then be resilient so if you get hit as a business with one of these, you can recover quickly with minimal impact. But unfortunately, unfortunately these scams are running rampant. These folks
are very smart. I mean I can easily spend this whole half hours just telling you real world stories that things I personally have seen our companies experience, and in some cases they're devastating. Some companies do not recover from these things.
I want to stop you for a second third, Dave Hatter, because you kind of minimize something there. You talk about your day job and this sort of thing. What I know about you is that you know, there are people, they're probably about four or five people that I know of that I've passed or that've met through business contacts and whatever, that really have a passion for what it is they do. They are a student of what they do.
They tend to I mean, I mean, I've talked to you on a number of on a number of different issues. It's not like you're just you know, just as you know, blinders on single focus, but you are at actually a student of this. You enjoy it, you like it. There's a certain amount I can tell you know when we talk about you have a passion for this, and that
is rare. So it's not just a job to you, it's a passion and it's something that you totally are doing a service to people, and you enjoy what you do so well.
That is a very kind compliment, and I appreciate that. But you know, I'm pretty nerdy Kevin, so I do. I enjoy the technology, but I also feel a little guilty sometimes because you know, I spent almost twenty five years of my career as a software engineer building this sort of stuff for people. And that's partially how I got into the cybersecurity pieces. I kept seeing the same
mistakes being made. I kept seeing there there was not a focus on security, you know most of most of the time, that focus would be on can I make what you want work? Can I get it done on time and within budget, as opposed to one of the
downstream consequences. If this has a security breach of some sort, that's really kind of what got And then then when I started to see all these nation state actors get in the game, China and Russia ran North Korea, there's sort of the access of evil, if you will, in cybersecurity of the nation state actors. Keep in mind, you've got criminal gangs all around the world, you know, voting
these attacks on people, individuals, businesses. I'll tell you this is a true story, Kevin first hand knowledge of this Cincinnati based company referred to us to a partner and accounting company. They lost nine hundred and eighty three thousand dollars through account takeover that led to fraudulent invoices. And we see this sort of thing, wow all the time. Now, what company has a spare nine hundred and eighty three thousand dollars laying around.
I wish I did, but I don't.
Yeah, yeah, me too, brother. That would be you know, devastating, if not potentially catastrophic for many businesses to lose that kind of money.
Well, you know, and Dave, that's not just the nine hundred and some thousand dollars. I mean, yeah, okay, that's a that's a hole in the budget. But when you look from an accounting standpoint at that company and you look at what their revenue is and what their bottom line is, let's say it's ten percent, that ten percent would equate to in order to make that nine hundred
million dollars back. What is that something like nine billion in sales that you are nine hundred whatever the number is in sales, so that you can equal that profit to pay that nine hundred million dollars.
Yeah, it's you raise another very valid point that oftentimes is misunderstood out there in the world of business until something bad happens. And I totally understand that your average business person is trying to run their business. They're trying to make money.
They're trying to grow the business.
They got all kinds of worries and concerns and things that they want to do, things they're trying to do to be successful. I totally get that they don't want to have to know about all these things. They don't want to have to worry about this stuff. And what I often hear is, Oh, we're a small business. We don't have anything worth stealing, and your money is worth stealing, and if you make it easy, they will steal your money.
It's amazing how creative and deedious these folks are. And now we're throwing these generative AI tools, whether it's something like chats ept that can generate perfect English pros versus the broken English we would see in these attacks ten fifteen years ago, or all the way up to deep fake voice cloning. And I have people tell me all the time they don't believe it. Kevin, I'm here to tell you, and I may have told you this before. John Mattteriche and WCPO called me up. We did a
TV interview in less than one hour. I swear this is true, and you can look it up on their website. In less than one hour from the time he called me, I went out and found a free website that claimed to clone a voice. I'd never used it before. I'd never tried this before. I just knew it was a thing. Freesite, no experience. I get on there, I mess with a little bit. John shows up and in less than an hour you can see it in the interview I did
with him. We clone his voice. Now he had to read a sentence a couple of times to train the tool, and then you can watch me in the interview type in Hello, Gramma, this is John and needs your help. Hit a button and it comes out to speakers.
Now that was no.
Experience with a free tool two years ago. These things are way better. And then, Kevin, what I always get is, well, Dave, I'm not a celebrity, how would you get my voice? How would the average criminal get my voice? I'm the CEO of the company X, or the mayor of city Y or whatever. Do you have a voicemail greeting? If you do, I am you. I am you. In less than fifteen minutes, there, I encourage all of your listeners.
It is very frightening because most people don't know it's a thing, and even if they've heard of it, don't believe it could happen to them. Again, if you have a voicemail greeting, if your voice is out there somewhere in social media or anywhere that a criminal can get to, you can potentially be deep fake voice clone. I encourage all your listeners. This was well documented in the media.
The CEO of Ferrari had his voice clones and nearly fooled the CFO of Ferrari, the car people that they work with together all the time, nearly fooled them into making a financial transaction. It was only at the last minute, but the CFO started to get a weird vibe. Everything was very unusual about what the CEO was asking for, and the CEO asked me quote CEO a question that only the CEO could know. And at that point the
jig was up. He realized this was some kind of scam that is going to be a tsunami of crime and it is here today. I stress enough to people they just watched watch the interview John and I did. John WCPO website or find me on social media. You'll find it and you'll see how easy this is unbelievable.
Well, Dave, we need to step out real quick and we'll come back. I want to continue on with this, and I got a little story and last month I was down at the Mid America Trucking Show and some of the technology that's coming out there in the AI area is right along this line of what you're talking about. And I can see how that's great from their aspect, but how criminals can use that also, So we'll pick
this up. My guest is Dave Hatter, cybersecurity expert, the top cybersecurity expert in the Greater Cincinnati and in my opinion, anywhere. I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five krs, the.
Talk station, fifty five KARC.
So how do we create value?
This is great six.
Forty one in the morning.
Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five krs the talk station, continuing our conversation with Dave Hatter, cybersecurity expert, one of the premier cybersecurity experts in the area and
from my opinion, anywhere that I've found anyway. So Dave, I mentioned before the before the break that I had been down at the Mid America Trucking Show last month and one of the big people, or one of the big advertisers down there that was making a splash is this using this AI technology And he stopped by the booth and we had the interview and he talked about how this program that they have is geared towards the trucking industry and AI, I guess, is getting so specific
now that when you are doing like voice commands or voice that it kind of can translate not only you know, you can do a sentence in English, French and whatever, and it will combine that and give the translation to a specific individual or get that out. Also they are interpreting better what he called what he referred to as
blue collar English. And then it's specific because if you're in the trucking realm and this is a tool for the trucking realm, instead of misunderstanding, as I texted you before the show or before you came on, I voicemailed or voiced a text to you and the word came out completely bizarre. But because of the text of what
we're talking about, it would have corrected that. And I think you know, from the aspects of getting load boards and finding loads and negotiating of AI, negotiating all the business and stuff with your truck so you don't have to do it while you're driving is great. But then again, the way that can be used is what you were talking about. How that can be used, as you said with Ferrari, how you can really scam something is frightening.
Yeah, I agree with you, Kevin. This technology is rapidly progressed. Now, I want to be really honest and tell you, I don't think skynet is going to become aware anytime soon. We're not going to see terminators dropping out of the sky, wiping us all out or anything like that.
Now, I also say, you.
Know, I don't know what's in some lamp somewhere, Kevin, but I can just tell you if I'm working with the tools that are readily available today, things like.
Chat, CPT or ROCK which is Ex's.
Generative AI, or things like that. There's still a lot of limitations, and one of the concerns that many people bull rays on a regular basis is these things hallucinate. They just make things up. You know, maybe it's correct eighty percent of the time, and twenty percent of the time you don't know if what you've got is right or not. You know, that's one of the limitations. But to your point, you're also seeing more and this is not new, but it's come on rapidly and you're seeing
it's spreading a lot of fields. Purpose built AI things that are designed to do a specific type of task. You know, cats gpt is. It can't do everything, but it can do a lot of different things fairly well. But there are other.
Ais out there that have a specific type.
Of task they're trying to do, and many of them are, you know, pretty spectacular. I can tell you we use some AI internally of interest to do things like answer phone calls and rout them to the right people faster. So rather than have a human being kind of doing a routine, mundane, boring task all day long, they can focus on higher value things. They can focus on, you know, getting faster resolutions for our clients, that sort of stuff. But this this thing, and it's not just voice, right,
it's deep fake video as well. There are some documented examples in the media out there of people on i'll just call it a video conference for lack of a better description, where they think they're talking to a human being.
There has been a plethora of.
Stories hitting the news about deep fake AI being used for job interviews and that sort of thing. So I think It's never been more important, Kevin, for people to understand. The old adage of you know, if you see it, you can believe it kind of thing is no longer true because much of this technology is good enough now, especially if you're not aware this is a thing, especially if you're not thinking, am I actually talking to a
human being here? Or am I somehow? Am I talking to some sort of AI agent, whether it's a void sort of video or whatever. And I encourage people go learn as much about this as you can. I mean, you don't need to get into the business. Just go find some of these stories, read that CEO story.
There's got to be and there's got to be some way, and I'm sure that somebody could probably make a fortune at this, and maybe we should develop it ourselves, Dave, and then we can retire being able to buy the words that are used, the phrases that are used, or maybe questions that you can ask to find out whether in fact you're dealing with AI or a human being or something like that.
I don't know.
I don't know if that technology is out there yet, but that would certainly there are lots of.
Smart people working on that technology to try to you know whether it's watermark something or yeah, sometimes have a way to know that something is a deep SAKEI the problem as I see it, and also you know, I'm not I don't have deep, deep knowledge in that space, especially the space of people trying to help you determine whether something's legit or not. Is the technology is moving
very quickly, and the bad are super creative. Again, we could spend this entire segment, Kevin, I could probably talk to you for more than three hours.
We could actual stories.
We're heading in that direction, my friend.
The creativity of the bad guys. It's quite insane.
And what's even more insane, Dave Hatter, is the legislators trying to rain this in. They are at least what three years behind.
It's it's tough. I can tell you. I end up, you know, talking to legislators in Kentucky a lot on these technology topics, trying to, you know, give some insight and steer these conversations. I'm genuinely an anti regulation sort of guy. This is such a wild West out there, and it's it's moving so quickly, and I'm really concerned
both for business related fraud and individual fraud. I mean, people are losing their life saving businesses, are losing amounts of money of going out of business because of this stuff.
And it's one of those things and until it actually hits you, you just, oh, that's the other guy.
That's not going to happen to me. That's not going to happen to me. Exactly.
I fully understand how hard it is for people to believe this.
All right, we need to talk and we need to talk about because you presented this this what is it for Scouts twenty twenty five report. We got to bring that up before we get out of here. Could we've run up against the clock, but we'll step out here for a moment and we'll come back and hit that. My guest is Dave Hatter. He is a cybersecurity expert and love talking to him. I'm Kevin Gordon and for Brian Thomas fifty five KR see the.
Talk station fifty five KARC.
Six fifty two in the morning.
Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five KR see the talk station. Continue on our conversation with Dave Hatter and Dave, we're only about three minutes left and I guess we should probably talk about one of the topics you brought up and this is extremely important and I ought to post this on Facebook and maybe we can have the station do that on their station as well. But this four Scout has released the fifth annual Risk Is Connected Devices of twenty twenty five report.
Yeah, Kevin, I'll be honestly, I'm a lot more worried about the Internet of Things aka smart devices than I am AI. At this point, we are blindly adding all kinds of connected devices into our environment, whether it's your car, which is now basically a rolling computer on wheels. And if you want to see something really hair raising, look up Privacy Not Included. It's a website by Mozilla where they look at the privacy implications of these so called smart devices, and they did a big expose a on
car manufacturers at the end of twenty twenty three. It'll be quite hair raising for your listeners, I can assure you. But you know your your nest thermostat, your ring.
Doorbell, what again is that?
What was that Privacy Not Included Mozilla? But these so all smart devices. And I say that because I mostly despise all of this Internet and Things stuff, not because it's inherently bad, but because the market and incentives for them are wrong. They care about ease of use so consumers or businesses will use them. They care about speed to market, they care about market share. For the most part,
they do not care about your privacy and security. And if you do any research into this whatsoever, you will find example after example after example of just the most garbage products in the world. Most of this stuff comes from China. It's you know, controlled by the Chinese Communist Party and the PRC.
Once you have no idea what's embedded in that, And of course.
That's exactly right. And most people buy these things. They plug them in because they can be cool, and they can and they can bring a lot of convenience, especially in like an industrial or medical setting. I totally understand the appeal of these sort of devices, right, I need less people to do more work. I can capture more data, I can adjust I can save energy. There's all these
great reasons. But so much of this stuff is this total garbage, and it's every one of these you plug in, Kevin is a potential attack vector for the bad guys.
There is a search.
Engine called Showdam sho dam specifically designed to find these Internet of things connected devices. If you have a two year old thermostat and you didn't set it up right, you didn't change the fault password, or you're not updating the software in it, they can potentially find that. They'll
know what vulnerabilities it has. And as far fast as this may sound to people, yes, it is within the reble possibility for me to get to your wire's router, your doorbell, your thermostat, your coffee maker, your dryer, or whatever, and use that as a jumping off point to the other devices in your network and a home network. It might be a computer you use for work, which might
let me get into your work environment. In an industrial setting or a healthcare setting, or any sort of business where these devices exist, sometimes people will call it operational technology instead of it or industrial Internet of things skata ICs. If I can find these device and here's an example. Do you remember Kevin the Big I know we're at about time the Big Target hacked a few years ago.
Yes, yes, okay.
All this data was leaked from Target. The hackers did not actually attack Target. They hacked an HVAC contractor that was working for Target that had access to target systems.
Wow.
Packed the subcontractor, and that's how they got into Target and stole all the data so Internet of things that this forced count report. It's very insightful for any business who is interested in what risks they might have from operational technology. We really got to get serious about about protecting the Internet of Things and stop this willing nelly buying this cheap garbage and plugging it in. Disaster is coming if we do not do that.
Fantastic Dave, scare the hell out of your Friday. But it's all great stuff and well I love it. I mean, it is so important and we need to do and do a better job of this. I'll post this on Facebook. Hopefully we can get this up on the KRSE website. Dave, it's been a pleasure as always, have a great Easter weekend and enjoy your time with your family.
I certainly appreciate your time today.
My pleasure to Kevin.
Always good to chat with you. I appreciate and help they catch up with all.
Right, Dave Hatter, I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five krs the talk station. All right, six minutes after seven o'clock, Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas fifty five krs the talk station. If you check my Facebook page, you'll know that I have in this segment and Dickerson. She is the co founder and lead organizer for Indivisible of Northern Kentucky. Indivisible and welcome to the program.
Thank you, good morning.
Good morning. I want to tell everybody that your name was given to me by Rand Paul's field rep. I don't know if I should say his name, but anyway, you have contacted him, and he suggested that maybe I talk to you to find out, you know, where you
guys are coming from, what's on your mind. And we see these Indivisible popped up in the news all the time nationwide, and figured, well, what the heck, I'll find out what this is all about, and we'll kind of, I don't know, mix it up a little bit and see where you're coming from and where I'm coming from.
So here we go.
We talked about it, we talked, we talked about a couple of topics off air when we were setting up the interview, and you know, we're talking about constitutional crisis, king chaos, economy, tariffs, hands off, and so on. So I'll let you start and you tell me what you want to what is uh? I'm going to use Jen Saki's line because I absolutely hate it, but what is top of mind for you?
Oh?
My goodness. First off, the person that you're talking about absolutely love I could sit and talk to him for hours and hours just we you know, a really good guy, get along very well, had a very respectful relationship for years. So it was his suggestion to me to do this, not the other way around. I want to make that clear. And he just asked, he said, would you ever do something like that? And I said, sure, right, I will talk to anyone.
You didn't contact me, so.
Well, it's his you know. I think we have to be open to these conversations. I think that you know, in the history of politics anywhere, and if you're not talking to people, if you're not you know, able to have some kind of respectful dialogue, that's when everything breaks down and you have just this animosity, this hatred, this just I think has gotten completely out of control. I mean people have cut off family members and lifelong friends and you know, things of that nature.
It does make your Christmas card list a lot shorter, so it really postage now.
Well in travel too, you know, you cut down a lot of travel. I hate it for the impact emotionally the total has on a lot of people. I also understand it because it can be very hurtful. But you know, like I said, if some if you and I can sit down and have a conversation, or if I can sit down with you know, I've been in meetings in Mitch McConnell's office, in Ran Paul's office, in Thomas Mancy's office. It's over the course of since from twenty seventeen until now.
I'm always open to the there's conversations to see. You know, is there a common ground we can reach? Is there is there a middle option where both parties can you know, feel good. I don't believe we'll ever get there on everything, but that doesn't mean there isn't there. Yeah, that doesn't mean there isn't a snooting point, right, So I would say to you, would you know when if you went to any of the hands off protests that were across the country. They were in last count that I saw.
I forget how many hundreds there were, but there were protests in every single state.
Their estimates are anywhere.
From three and a half to five million people out in the streets at these various events, and you know it, the reason it was so generalized, this hands off was because everybody has a different thing that's their priority, right based on their your own you know, life, your needs, whatever is going on, and so you would see signs about, you know, hands off my social security, hands off my healthcare, hands off my education, my books, and then there were
all there's always going to be called about, you know, following the constitution and hands off our traditional democratic you know, democratic republic institutions that have been around for you know, forever a number So I think all of these issues, depending on to I'm going to determine what's their number one issue.
We know Ann Dickerson, who is the co founder and lead organizer for Individual Northern Kentucky. You know, when you talk about hands off social Security, hands off Medicare, hands off healthcare, hands off you know, a lot of that can be used by conservatives such as myself, to say, I want your hands off my social security. In terms of taxing it, I don't think that that should count in terms of my income. If I choose to earn any other income. Once I passed the age of sixty five,
I don't think the federals with you that. I don't think the federal government should be messing around.
With our our medical information.
And the fact that you know this push years ago to put everything online. I don't know if you were listening in the previous half hour, but Dave Hatter, who is a cybersecurity expert, talks about how vulnerable all.
These things are.
So you go and you have you know, it's great that you can have your medical records and you can go to one doctor and then they can pull up your medical records through whatever service they have, But anytime you're transmitting that stuff, there are vulnerabilities and somebody getting
a hold of your medical records. I'm not sure that everything that you would want me to know, or would I want you to know what doctors I've seen for what reason, what medications I'm on, or any of that sort of stuff which can be used, as you've seen in the past, for other reasons. So when you're talking about hands off, it goes both ways.
So, oh, I.
Agree with you, but I would I would say that the specific issues that you're talking about. You know, anybody that I know personally would probably agree with you that on that aspect of things. You know, I don't believe that social Security should be taxed, and I don't believe our medical records should be privy to anyone. There's a reason that we have hippo laws and they need to be maintained. But you also have you know, you know,
nailed down even further. You have this issue across the country with laws being written and attempted to be passed to get the medical records specifically for women of child bearing age that go to a gynecologist now and wanting to know.
Issue done on that issue. Okay, And I know where you're heading with that. I'm sure it's having to do with a pro choice and that.
But no, I really wasn't. I was just trying to say within what you were saying. You know, it can't be so many of these issues. You know, when I was grown up, there's a common phrase about because this is such a heavily German Catholic area, there was a there was a common phrase of somebody being a cafeteria Catholic where they would pick and choose as those to completely falling a faith. And I feel like that's a
lot of what's happening now as well. You know, whether you're talking about the constitution, whether you're talking about the overreach that you mentioned with healthcare. You know, we it's either all or nothing on these things. We can't just pick and choose. Well, everybody can have privacy for their healthcare, but not if you're a woman of child bearing age. Wait a minute, Well, you know, and.
That and that is important. Well to a certain extent. I can see where some of those records and some of that information is necessary.
And there ought to be a way of.
Having a specific number or a specific identifier that is not tied to a particular individual. And I don't know if it's some sort of a clearinghouse. When you go in you're randomly assigned a number. That number goes to somebody else who isn't connected with you know.
Uh, you know, you got an intermediary.
You got a point A, the patient, and then point C where this information is gathered, and a clearinghouse point B where the individual act or the individual person's name is eliminated from that. Because that's where we get into people of child bearing age. How many miscarriages? How many you know what health factors there are when we start
hearing about the infant mortality rate. When we start hearing about well women in some cases that the first time they do anything in terms of going to see a doctor is right around the time when they are especially if they're pregnant, that they don't go until the seventh month.
And I just learned from a group.
That I'm associated with or familiar with that's a called care net and who talks about you know, stepping in and helping people that when they're in that crisis to know that there's other options. That they said the insurance laws kick in to where you are actually covered for. That's that's stupid. I mean, if we're trying to make sure that the infant mortality rate is lower, we want to make sure that babies are a birth of healthy, the mothers are healthy. That should all begin at day
one and not at the seventh months. So those kinds of things. So you know, the CDC used to come out with all these statistics about, oh, you know, how many kids I drown in a five gallon bucket because you know, toddlers, because they're so top heavy, they fall in that and drown. And to get all this facts and information so that we are more informed, I think is good, but where you don't protect the privacy rights, that's where we have a problem. And we need to
take a break here real quick. So my guest is Anne Dickerson. I appreciate you spending time with us, and we'll carry this through the break and Dickerson, co founder and lead organizer for Individual Northern Kentucky. I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five KR see the talk station fifty five the talk station.
Coming up on seven twenty in the morning.
Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five krs, the talk station. What appropriate bumper music for this segment? And I know that you've talked to some of your friends and you say, how dare you go on with that rabid right wing conservative nut job? And I know my people are saying the same thing. So we've got to cater a little bit to their needs because obviously, if we're agreeing on anything, they're gonna say, what the hell did you go on there for in the first place.
So that's so funny. Actually, everybody in my circles like cheering me on, saying, go you.
Know, just do it.
Wasn't good thing, I promise you but it was more like, you know, not, not everybody is open to these kinds of conversations. So if you want to get into it, pick a topic and let's run with it.
And it's up to you. You're the guest. You're the guest.
Okay, all right, Okay, we gotta give you.
We gotta give you.
We gotta give your people and my people some red meat here, okay.
Okay, So I'll jump into probably the one of the reddest meat areas that we have right now because it's so hot in the news, which is what's going on with these immigration cases, okay, and people not receiving due process, which violates the fifth and the fourteenth Amendments.
Okay.
You know, so it was so important to our founding fathers that they put habeas corpus write an article one. So you know, I'm real curious as to this this fever pitch that we've gotten to on immigration.
Because in fact, we are all.
Products of immigration. Right unless you have indigenous blood running through your veins, of the native people that were here before we ever, you know, took over this land, how can you look back through history and complain about something that is very much a part of the American dream.
I mean when I grew up, you know, and I'm fifty seven, when I grew up, I grew up with the understanding that, you know, we had this self aggrandized belief that everybody comes to the United States because this is where you have freedom, and this is where anybody can become anything they want to be, and they can work themselves up. And now it's like, you know, not only are we wanting to push everybody out, we're wanting to lock ourselves in.
All right, let's unpacationist feel.
Let's unpack that for a moment. Okay, you do agree that the reason that you have a country is you have a country because of borders and there is a certain process by which people are supposed to enter a particular country. I don't care what it is in terms of the legal way versus the illegal way way correct?
Correct?
All right?
And if there's a flawed immigration system that needs to be worked on and that needs to be fixed, but you can't tell me that a reasonable person would think that over the last previous four years that having millions of people flooding across our border in what I would refer to as an invasion, how many people in the military got kicked out because they wouldn't take the job. How many people lost their job because they wouldn't take the job. And yet we have millions of people in
this country. We don't know who they are. They weren't vetted, we don't have a proper identification for them, and they're not facts. We don't know what healthcare they have, and they're roaming our country. How do we consider ourselves a country if we are going to allow ourselves, quite honestly, in my term, to be invaded, I would.
Say that the numbers that you're using are grossly infleted. Number one, Number two, I would say that the vast majority of immigrants have been maligned with these, you know, accusations of the kinds of people that they are in fact, you know, undocumented people in this country. The most recent statistic I could find, you know, came from twenty twenty two, put ninety six point seven billion dollars worth of taxes into the federal, state, and local system.
You know, now, I what are the numbers, what are the numbers that are pulled out of that system? Because you hear the numbers of sixty billion dollar deficit in the city of New York and the billions of dollars in California that are spent on housing illegal immigrants and putting them up in hotels and so on.
How do you offset that? What is the corresponding number?
So I don't know what you're looking for there, because I mean.
Well, you've got to you've got you've got to you've got people that put into the system, and you have people that take out of the system. So if you're saying we're that of the immigrants in this country they put in ninety six billion dollars, Well, what is the immigrant population taking out in the form of medical tuition, home and assistance from the Social Security system or whatever network there is out there?
See, but they're here's the thing. Undocumented individuals don't have Social Security numbers. They can't get a SOI of Security number. What they get in order to file taxes is a tax identification number. In fact, an everyday citizen can get a tax identification number and not use THEIRS as security number to file their taxes. So you know, that's I think what you're what you're quoting is off in terms
of that. I'll use the common day, everyday term waste fraud and abuse because you know, Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, all of those social safety nets programs that you're talking about and notorious really have very low rate of fraud. You know, compare compare in a minute, yes, compare it to the one area in the government that OS is not touched yet, which is the Pentagon and the military industrial complex.
Which has sailed its last seven audits. The one area of the government that we spend the most.
Amount of money on and they haven't touched it.
Were the smallest chunks.
Of the pie.
Co founder and organizer of of Indivisibal Northern Kentucky. I'm gonna go off ripped here. We were scheduled to the bottom of the hour. I'm going to carry you over past the news and we'll get into this even more. But uh again, before we go, I just want to, I want to, you know, make the mention of the fact that yes, there is waste, fraud and abuse in the military industrial complex that has been talked about, and
quite honestly, there isn't a single agency. And again, people are probably tired of hearing me say this, but you probably not heard it. I am a recovering accountant so when you talk about there is not there is not an agency, There is not a division of the federal government that could pass an audit, including the i RS, And that to me is just astounding and criminal in my position. So anyway, we'll pick this up on the
other side of the break. My guest again and Dickerson, co founder, lead organized well lord, lead organizer for Indivisible Northern Kentucky. I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five KR see the talk station.
Fifty five KRC dot com.
A Minute of Hope is brought to you by the Linder Center of Hope Linder's Center of Hope dot seven thirty one in the morning. Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas.
Fifty five KR see the talk station, speaking with Ann Dickerson. She is co founder and lead or lead organizer for Indivisible Northern Kentucky. And thank you so much for hanging with us through the break. Certainly appreciate it. So we were talking about DOZE and going in and looking at these different organ different size of the government. I mean you you mentioned you no, you sat in conversation with
Rand Paul. You're probably familiar with Rand Paul's Festivust report on an annual basis where he goes through different departments of the government talks about waste, fraud and abuse and some of these areas that probably should be cut. And I think the last one that he did there was a out one point was at one point one trillion dollars in cuts that could be done that nobody would
even miss because some of this waste is there. You've got to I mean, you mentioned the fact that even the I mentioned the fact that even they're in the department of the government. I don't care what department, cabinet members or whatever. I mean, cabinet departments cannot pass an audit. So number one, we as taxpayers ought to be demanding that.
And and to waste fraud and abuse. I mean, if you don't file your tax returns properly, if you tell the IRS, I can't pass an audit and just go away leave me alone.
That ain't gonna work.
So I think, oh yeah, I wish we as taxpayers could demand that of our government, and I think we could probably agree on that.
Now we'll probably diss and I will.
And I will tell you this as well. There is no one on any spectrum. Regardless of party position or what have you. There is no one that thinks that making government more efficient less wasteful is a bad pity. The bigger problem is the process right now, the way that it's that things are happening, as opposed to actually
getting rid of waste, bard and abuse. However, if you look at the first quarter numbers that came out compared to last year, you will find that the money that was spent in the same time period last year under different administration to now, while we've fired or laid off, I had lost count of the number of federal workers shut down buildings which shuts down you know, all the all the management, all the money that goes into managing a building and keeping it open and running and viable
for people to use. We've spent one hundred.
And eighty four billion more dollars this.
Year than last year in the same time period.
Okay, so how are.
We How are we eliminating waste bad abuse?
If we're spending more money and yet we have less things that we're spending money on by already shutting all these things down and getting rid of all these people, then.
The question could be come to you is why all the protests then, you know, because if nothing has changed, if it was okay last year, what is.
The big deal now? Now?
I will agree, Come on, you're being oversimplified and you don't know about that. I've been I've been at these protests where I mean people, you know, I'm gonna tell you one story in particular, a woman come up to me crumming, I mean, tears streaming down her face. Had never met her, never seen her before or anything else.
And what it happened was we were actually out in front of Thomas Mancy's office on Buttermilk Pike and her husband had picked up their child from school, was taking their child to an after school activity, and he called her at home and said, honey, they're out on Buttermilk Pike. And she immediately threw a bunch of stuff in her car and drove up to meet us. And you know, because I was back and forth between people and everything, I had to kind of wait till the end of
the protest to specifically go up to her. Once I you know, she joined us, I was like, are you okay, And once she was yes, I'm okay. I'm just this is so amazing. And I was doing all my other stuff. I wanted to find out what her story was, and here come to find out she's a federal worker who lost her job, you know, and was so moved that people were concerned enough to be out there.
Did she get the buy out?
I don't know. I did ask about that. All I know is that she said that, you know.
She lost her job.
All right, we got you know, as our producer said, we were on a timeline here. So coming up, we'll talk a little bit more about this and again talk more about this issue. My guest is Anne Dickerson, co founder, lead organized lead organ Why can't I say that right? Lead organized lead organizer for Indivisibal Northern Kentucky. I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas. Fifty five KRS, the talk station,
fifty five KRC, the talk station. Stay you continue our conversation with Anne Dickerson, co founder and lead organizer for Indivisible Northern Kentucky. Before the break, we talked about federal layoffs. You talked about this person that showed up one of the protests, and it was about a month and a half ago at was it Rand Paul's office?
I believe it was.
Okay, and this federal worker came up and was in tears that she had lost her job. Now, on a weekly basis, there is on Thursday, there is the initial job claims report that comes out, the unemployment numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and whatever. And they keep saying week after week after week that the layoffs in the federal government aren't starting to show up in these numbers yet. Number One, because in a lot of instances, if they do have that eight month severance package, they
are still technically employed. They're getting a check on a periodic, you know, a normal paycheck until the eight months, which gives them plenty of time to go out and find another bit of employment. I've heard stories about people that are up at retirement age and they said, oh man, what a gift from Heaven. I was getting ready to retire and I get this buyout package. It gives me a paycheck for the next eight months, and how great is that? So we have that, and so the federal label.
Have you got to anybody that's actually started receiving it.
I don't know if they have or not, but that if they have not been receiving it, then I would qualify for filing for unemployment, and according to the numbers, that isn't showing up yet. Now I know that some of the federal workers, I don't know if all of them are in some sort of a separate system that handles their unemployment. And the numbers from that are that on a weekly basis, that's gone. I think one week it went up five hundred and thirty four versus another
week where it was up two hundred. So I don't know. That's a question that again, if we didn't have spoon fed regurgitators in the mainstream media, but people that would actually go out and do investigative news, we would know these things instead of you and I having to dig up these numbers ourselves.
Now I agree with you on that as well. I love independent media.
But anyway, we only got about three minutes left here, so I want to, you know, make sure that I want to say.
I do want to say too. You know, even though we have you know, met in these offices, we have protested in front of these offices and other places. I do like to give credit where credit is due. And I texted the person that connected us after Rantall's speech on the floor where he stood up against the tariffs, and he stood up against the breakdown of the three coequal branches of government, stating also that he did not want to live in a place that was governed by
an emergency rule. And I think this is a very scary time for people because of all the chaos, because there was no plan. I mean, if I owned, if I was going to take over a business, of course, of course you would want to, you know, check each department, see who you were going to keep, who you weren't going to keep, you know, try to find out where the areas are that you could save money, where you could make things efficient, so on and so forth. But you don't take a sledgehammer to it.
With no plan.
And then you know, you fire people, you tire them back, then you fire people again, you know, and the tariffs on again, off again, on again, off again. I don't even want to talk to my money manager I because it's going to put me in a state of anxiety that I may never come out of.
I mean, I will finish up with this. I'll finish up with this.
And that you can go through corporate corporation after corporation, after corporation, you can go through the United Auto Workers. You can go through the people that were terminated on the Keystone XL pipeline. You can talk to people that got shown that well actually offer of a buyout from Cincinnati Bell when they merged and transferred and whatever. You see all these different corporations and there's always that several people I know some that were like, you know, eight
weeks shy of that, fifteen years or whatever. So they're fully vested or whatever. And that happens in corporate business all the time, and it's not right there. But nobody's protesting and whining I don't mean whining, but protesting about that you.
Do, but you don't want to say that.
Well, I mean, again, you know these are kind of the terms that you know people will understand and so on. But again I rail at you know, the fact that you know, you go to some of these and they've they've gone through these offices in Washington and even in corporate America itself. You go into how many people are working from home? And I don't nobody's going to convince
me that people are. That there are some, but they are not everybody that's more productive working at home than working in an office and the fact that you go into some of these federal buildings and six percent of the people are there, but if you discount all the maintenance people and everything, you're down to a three percent people that are actually working there. I don't think that's right.
I mean, doctors have to go into the office. Uh, nurses have to go into the office, all the you know, the police and fire have to go into their office. I think the least taxpayers can do and workers can do is go into their office and do the job that they were hired to do.
So again, UH, I don't know if.
We solve the world's issues here, but uh, I would certainly like to talk to you a little bit more at some.
Point in time and any time.
I think if we can eliminate the idea that everybody on my side is a Nazi, that the fact that we should be, you know, taking and torching Tesla dealerships and calling for the assassination of Elon Musk or Donald Trump.
You gotta admit that's going a lot too far.
So well, I.
Do not advocate for violence in any way, shape or form when it comes to any of this. The same way that I was, you know, the same way that. I was shocked when you know, uh people and.
You know and now you if I have not.
Heard anything about what you just mentioned as far as calling for people to be killed, I would never agree with that, no matter who it was or what the circumstance was, I don't agree with that in any way, shape or form. What we do is protests. Everything we do is well planned out. Everybody knows the rules, you know, knows the right way to behave in public settings. I'm a real stickler for that kind of stuff.
That's why we have a first That's why we have.
As it is agreed and we need to keep it instead of you know, now, we've got measures even here hee. Just this past session they passed a bill limiting that. You know, they're trying to limit protests. They're trying to limit people's ability to exercise free speech.
Obviously, you've never gone to a city council meeting or a county commissioner meeting in any of the counties and you try to talk about some issues there. Yeah, there is now in Campbell County, the People's Republic of Campbell County, there is a Kevin Gordon rule where you're only allowed to speak for two minutes, so.
I'm proud of that.
So anyway, and it's it's been interesting, and we've got to talk some more and we're really late for a break, and I certainly appreciate your time, and sure we'll be in touch. And Dickerson, co founder and lead organizer for Indivisible Northern Kentucky. I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas. Fifty five krs the talk.
Station, fifty five KRC.
Seven fifty two in the morning.
Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five krs the talk station. Phone numbers five one, three, seven, four nine, fifty five hundred one eight hundred eighty two three eight two five five pound five point fifty on your wireless phone.
Kevin.
Again, let's go to the phones and talk to Jay. Jay, how are you this morning?
Hey?
Doing good?
Kevin good.
I wanted to say that I used to work north of d C with the Defense Contractor and I worked with some of these federal workers and I'll tell you they were they were the type of people that are like your hardcore union that if you needed them to stay, and we were making an unmanned aircraft system that the army needed bad. If it was one minute after eight hours,
they were gone. And there, I know, and so crying, you know, the part that really I held in pretty strong, but I broke down and we went and wept when she said, I don't even want to talk to my money manager. I heard the same thing from so many Kentucky coal miners that were let go over the year.
Well, no, I.
Guess I didn't. I guess I didn't.
But they are just entitled, spoiled.
Uh.
They worked for an employer, the Federal Guard, that doesn't need to make.
A profit exactly.
Therefore they unionize. And when there's a collective bargaining, you think the federal government is going to dig in and try to do the best thing for shareholders that's us. Yeah, absolutely not. They just get whatever they want. So crime a River. Yeah, that there for the first time since they've ever been in their existence. I can tell you the story from now eight hours a day, no weekends, no stress.
Oh yeah, I can tell you a story. I can tell you a story. Jay.
Back in the late seventies early eighties, you may recall, with all of the oil problems and the embargoes and so on, the Department of Energy was formed, and they had a program where if you were using domestic oil, it would be a certain price, and if you were using foreign oil, it would be a different price. The Department of Energy was sent around to all these different oil companies and they were supposed to audit these items to make sure that they were recording the numbers properly.
They had been in business for almost two years, had not completed one audit in the office that I was assigned to. The company I worked for was an accounting firm. We got the Department of Energy audit contract and we're sent to these different places to do these energy audits for them. Now, in this particular office, there was a secretary, a manager, and three or four different employees. Had not completed one audit in a two and a half year period of time, and we wound up having to do
it in like a six week period of time. And if you'd asked them something can you give me, and this one we're talking about before computers, you're talking about can you do this spreadsheet for me of this information? And you ask them that at two thirty in the afternoon, Well, you know, we quit at for and I really don't want to get started on that. I'll start on that first thing in the morning. What are you going to
do for the next hour and a half? I mean, it was absolutely insane, Jay, working with these Department of Energy auditors.
It was I feel your pain.
I know exactly what you're talking about, and anybody that's ever had any contact with them knows what we're talking about. All right, anyway, Jay, I certainly appreciate it. Coming up, we're gonna be uh well, open lines, and so let me see who we got, Bobby, Jay, I think coming up next. We'll get to you right after the break
or after the top of the hour. I'm Kevin by the way, phone numbers five one, three, seven, four nine fifty, five hundred one, eight hundred eight two three talk one eight hundred eight two three eight two five five pound, five point fifty AT and T wireless phone. Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas fifty five K see the talk station.
If you are being safe out there this morning, and I hope you spend some time today reflecting on the importance of Good Friday, and especially if it's one of the most important days or one of the most important events in the Christian calendar and of course Catholicism. You know there you got the three big ones. You specifically have Chris, and then you have a good Friday, and then you have Easter, and so I hope you take
time to do that. By the way, phone numbers five one, three, seven, four, nine fifty five, D one, eight hundred, day two three talk one eight hundred day two three eight two five five pound, five point fifty AT and T wireless phone.
Let's go to the phones right now. Let's talk to Bobby.
Thank you for having Bobby Jay, I think, thank you very much for hanging with us through the break.
Certainly appreciate it. How are you this morning?
Doing great? My brand, Thank you for carrying that torture freedom and shining the dark. The light in the.
Dark's people like you that give me the encouragement, my friend, I certainly appreciate it.
Well.
Talking about the Parol employees, it's real simple. We'll just go out and anywhere in the country they understand.
What calling the herd is.
Yeah, got to get rid of them, yeah, exactly. And you know, in any organization, when you have a bloated bureaucracy, it's necessary once in a while to go through and and as you said, call the herd. Now, you know, on a monthly basis, they come up with these statistics as far as jobs created in a particular month, and then they have the on Thursday. Every Thursday they have the initial jobless report or the job you know, people
who are filing their initial claims. And it's amazing that looking at that over the last year and a half or so or longer, every time they come up with these jobs reports, it's like, okay, there's you know, twenty thousand added in manufacturing, twenty thousand added in the service sector or whatever some there weren't. You know, the numbers are down, but almost on a consistent basis.
The number one.
Added jobs in a particular month for the last year and a half or so has been government jobs. Now, of course that could be city, state, county, federal, whatever, but fifty thousand jobs added every month, forty thousand added. I mean, all you got to do is, you know when they when they say that, you know, you have these snow days and it's the emergencies and only the non essential employees stay home. Well, there's a good starting
point right there, I would say. But for the government to be hiring a government overall hiring the largest single gainer of jobs.
Now that's not.
To say these guys don't These people don't go out and spend money, but they don't produce anything. They don't manufacture anything. All they do is produce misery for us in the form of regulations and audits and stuff like that. So again it's a bloated bureaucracy that needs to be called.
As you say, well, one other thing.
Also, their narrative will change here with that, you know, after the first one hundred days or after the twentieth this month, you know, their narrative always changes in about weeks to ten days. But the militarization of the southern border, that'll be the next one.
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
It's almost like they are in search of something that is going to take hold to get them noticed by the general public. But up to this point they are on the you know, you have issues that are eighty twenty. They have chosen to take their flag in the twenty percent category and that is just odd to say the least. So anyway, Bobby Jay, appreciate my brother. I appreciate the phone call. You take care. Well, let's see, well we've
got somebody coming up here shortly. But yeah, I mean when you look at the number of federal jobs and the fact that not a single federal agency can actually pass an audit, that is absolutely incredible. And one of the things that I think would be very necessary is you've heard me talk about this several times. There is a bill before Congress. It's been there since two thousand and seven. It's passed in the House, it's gone on to the Senate, it's died in the Senate, it's never
made its way to the President. And there's a bill called the Reins Act, And what it basically says is that any government agency that comes up with a regulation that would cost the taxpayers more than one hundred million dollars, that has to be voted on by Congress. Now, why would Congress, you know, we start hearing all this, you know, we've been hearing all this crap about constitutional crisis, that there's been a king installed, that we don't have a
country that's done by a king. We don't have We're not a dictatorship, and this stuff shouldn't be done. Well, why in the hell has our legislators over the years allowed the regulation process that winds up costing us money that they're not stepping in and doing their job to oversee these departments to make sure that these regulations that they're putting in makes sense before they basically in effect
tax us through regulations. And so there has been so much as far as the federal government is concerned, that they've pushed this back off to these agencies, whether it be the EPA or the FDA and say, oh, you know, we don't want to get involved in this. You guys, go ahead and regulate that. We'll just give you a
blank check. That is ridiculous. You see that on the county level, you see where in the past, all the things that went on in the county, whether it's the roads, whether it's libraries, whether it was parks, whether it was any of this sort of stuff that was done by
the individual county and county commissioners. Well, because you have the schools that are, you know, constantly needing more and more and more money, what you do is you set up a school board and put that outside the county commissioner's purview, and then it's up to them to handle their budget and put the tax amount onto the real estate bill. And so if that goes up and people complain about it. Then the county commissioners can say, oh, you know, that's the school board, we got nothing to
do with that. Well what about the library, Oh no, that's library commission.
They do that.
And it's just all this passing the buck instead of stepping up and saying what's the best for taxpayers. And when you go into some of these governmental agencies and you start looking at some of the stuff that is being done. You know, Thomas Massey was judge executive and I've got a bone to pick with him, and I might get to that by the end of the show,
but I've been trying to hold off on it. But anyway, he started out as judge executive in Lewis County and when he was elected, he started going through the budget and saying, well, what's this number, what's this number, what's this number?
What is this?
You know we're paying for this, what is this? In the first year, I believe in the first year of him being judge executive down Lewis County, he saved as much money and cut they were getting billed for traff or a street lamp, or electricity for a building that they had sold four or five years before that, and they were just you know, every month, paying the bill, paying the bill, paying the bill, you know, and he wound up saving in the first year of him being
at Lewis County his salary. And you know, there's where you get somebody that comes in and rolls up the sleeves and looks at what's going on as far as the budgets are concerned. That's where you find these numbers. And if we had people in all levels of government that cared about those kinds of things, you would have this eliminated.
Now.
I have said in the past and from my workings with my individual city, my county, my state, I would say that there isn't a city out there that can't go through their budget and find probably about ten percent waste, fraud, and abuse. And it may be just waste, it may just be ineffective contracts that they've signed with people.
Ten percent.
You can go to the county level and that number probably goes up to fifteen, maybe twenty percent. By the time you get to the government of the state government that can be as high as forty And I wouldn't doubt that in our federal government there is probably close to a fifty percent amount that could be cut out
of the budget and nobody would miss it. You've seen all the stories about Doze, some of the money that we've been spending money on, and you know, it is incredible how they can come up with these experiments, and we're gonna We're gonna run this, We're gonna figure out how to what the effect of is transitioning rats.
I mean that stuff is nuts.
You know Sesame Street and you know you heard about this stuff all the time, you know, Sesame Street funding, Sesame Street over in Iraq. I mean all this stuff, and I wonder, you know, why are we paying so much in terms of foreign aid to all these countries.
And then when you start when I start hearing all this crap about the tariffs, and they say, oh, well, you know, tariffs have their place because when you're a developing country, you need to have these tariffs so that you can prevent you know, goods coming in, you know, so that you can build up your country and build up your manufacturing to the point where you can now have a good economy. Why is China still considered a
developing country? Yes, they are still wto considered when they joined wto World Trade Organization back in the early two thousands, two thousand and during the what was it Clinton past, I put that through. Okay, so they are a developing country, folks. They have a nuke, they have one of the largest standing armies. They're building their navy like crazy. They're not a developing country. And another side note, why in the
hell are they spending or doing the manufacturing. We saw that during COVID the pandemic, when you saw the amount of medicines that they're building that they're manufa over there, the PPE, the personal protection equipment, and all the goods that we were buying or that we were getting from China through their slave labor, their slave labor camps.
And you know, you go back to the Cold War.
We didn't have factories, we didn't offshore our manufacturing to the USSR, we didn't offshore our stuff to the communist countries. No, they were enemies of ours in the Cold War, and yet now we've got probably one of the biggest security threats China. They're not they're not a friend of ours. They're an adversary. And when you look at the technology that they steal and so on, why are they still
considered a developing country. Unbelievable, and I kind of questioned any of our so called business leaders that thought, hey, this is a great idea. We'll offshore this manufacturing to this country that hates us, but hey, we can shave some money off this product and make more money.
Unbelievable.
Five one three, seven four nine fifty five hundred one eight hundred day two three talk one eight hundred day two three eight two five five pound five point fifty AT and T wireless phone. Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five KRC the talk station.
Fifty five KRC.
Eight twenty two.
In the morning, Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five kr C the talk station phone number seven five one three, seven four nine fifty five hundred one eight hundred day two three talk one eight hundred eight two three eight two five five pound five point fifty on that AT and T wireless phone. I kind of almost hesitate to bring this up, but I'm gonna do it anyway because it was on channel Channel Twelves News and
it's on their website. Instead of holding a traditional Good Friday, a local church of Good Friday services a local church is giving out free gas cards. Serve Pastor Serve Church pastor Victor Philip told Local twelve that he has an opportunity for him to make his ministry out, take his ministry outside the walls of his church in Northside. I think quote from him, I think there's a lot that our nation has experienced. There's a lot to complain about,
a lot of uncertainty. I think one thing that need to see is that someone is thinking about their neighbor and that's what this is all about. Free gas giveaway is Friday at six pm at the BP Gas station located at two forty nine West Mitchell Avenue. Now, I will say that if you are going to show up for that, maybe do thank him for doing that and maybe consider a donation, possibly to the church, or maybe at least a pat on the back to the guy
for doing this. I think this is one of those things where you know, it's an opportunity for him to reach out to other people and to show that, as he mentioned, people that care. But again it would be best if we return the favor to him as well. So anyway, that's my two cents worth on that. Now you know we don't have time to get into this, but all this nonsense about tariffs and what we're seeing as far as the economy and whatever, now I am convinced.
I'm more and more convinced when I look at retail sales up, when I look at the job market is strong, steady, when I look at unemployment rate is down, when I look at housing starts. The only thing that I have seen recently that has been a downturn is manufacturing in terms of their index is concerned and they're put through and so on. But everything else in this economy is
doing rather well. And as a matter of fact, I'm seeing stuff on reports as far as the retail sales numbers actually blew us away because it was unexpected unexpectedly high. What I'm seeing in the spoon fed regurgitators in the mainstream media, in my opinion, is what they are trying to do is manufacture a recession. The recession numbers aren't there, and let's not forget over the previous four years. They would bite their tongue off before they even admitted anything
or even said the R word. We had two back to back quarters in twenty twenty two, where the first quarter in the second quarter were negative economic growth by all, the definition of a recession has always been two or more or at least two quarters of negative economic growth. We had that in twenty twenty two, but we had them telling us at the time that, no, you've got
to look at employment. You got to look at the stock market, you got to look at this, you got to look at this, you got to look at all these things in terms of wages, you got to look at hours, productivity, all this stuff. And then after a couple of months, you look at that and then make the determination that, oh, maybe we went into a recession a month or two ago. Well, no, you go back to the definition of back to back quarters. We have not even gotten to the first end, the end of
the first quarter of the Trump administration. That doesn't happen until the end. We won't see those numbers. We're into the second quarter. I realized that March was the first quarter, but we don't see the numbers from that from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Commerce Department. We don't see the GDP numbers until the end of this month and the end of this month and the first part of next month. And so when we look at these numbers and we then have an idea whether or not
there was negative growth or not. I've seen numbers all over the place. In the beginning of the year, they were talking about a three point one percent GDP, then they brought it down to two point five. Now they're talking about a possibility of negative growth, and then I'm seeing other numbers, So it's all over the board. We won't know those things, and then even if there is negative growth in the first quarter, we won't know whether or not we're truly in a recession until the second quarter.
And all this stuff in terms of I'm seeing numbers as far as the the it was a home builders association. They were talking about seeing rising prices because of tariffs. Well, the tariffs didn't go into effect until April to second and the numbers that were collected for these statistics going into the home builders Association was through March. So looking at a calendar, if I'm not mistaken, April comes after March. So if something goes into effect in April, that sure
as hell isn't going to affect anything in March. So what I'm guessing is that there's some people getting ahead of this and saying, oh, we think prices are going to go up, and take advantage of that and raising their prices in anticipation, which I think is wrong because either you're paying a higher price for that or you're not, and when you're trying to pass that along to the consumer,
that's not fair anyway. Coming up the bottom of the hour, we're going to be talking to Lindy Zimbroch, she is the executive director of care Net and talk about their great services and their banquet on May the eighth, and I hope that you attend that. I think they still have some openings. I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five KRC, the Talk Station.
This is fifty five KRC and iHeartRadio station.
Eight thirty two in the morning. Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five KRC, the Talk Station. I want to welcome to the program Lindy Zimbroch. She is the executive director of car Net Northern Kentucky and I had an opportunity this past Monday to tour their cold Spring
facility and what a great organization. I'm glad that I've found you over the years from a mutual friend of ours, and I truly believe this is an organization is doing great work in the area for anybody that is finding in a what they refer to as a pregnancy or well anyway, let me you explain better than I do about your organization.
Well, we're a christ centered organization that meets people where they are when they're facing pregnancy. We offer support before, during, and after that unplanned pregnancy, and during that time we uplift the sanctity of human life. Then we have three
centers in northern Kentucky. We offer a pregnancy test, an ultrasound, and then we provide any of the services that they would need beyond that, such as parenting education classes, great relationships classes, looking at adoption, or even helping them to plan, you know, for the new for the new baby they bring into into this world.
And the thing is, and that is call it crisis pregnancy centers.
But this is when somebody is pregnant and.
They are in I guess a panic situation for lack of a better term, there are the options for them. There are too many people that want to push the one particular option, and that is abortion. But they don't realize that how many people out their care as you just described all the services that you provide and how many things that you can do not only through the pregnancy, but after the pregnancy and follow up and making sure
even to the extent of adoption and so on. And the fact that some of these organizations, like Planned Parenthood, they take people in the most vulnerable period of time and just give them one option and try to force something down their throat where years later or months later, weeks later, they may say, what the hell did I do? That was the worst decision I ever made. And to take somebody who's vulnerable and prey upon that vulnerability, I think, well is criminal.
In my opinion, yes, it is.
And the fact that they don't help and helping them pick the pieces up or provide healing for that situation. They just deny that there would be any emotional turmoil after choosing to end the life of your own child. We do provide a post abortion healing and we work with women who have you know, undergone and experienced abortion
and we help provide healing to them. And we're very compassionate because we know many of these women often find themselves they've had an abortion, now they wish to carry a pregnancy, and when they begin to look at the fetal development during their pregnancy, then they're hit, you know, right in the face with the fact that they've ended the life of their child because they did not they weren't provided that information. The word they are to offer
them all of the information about their options. And what we see is when we provide that information to them, they will choose life ninety percent of the time.
Yes, and we need to take a quick break here, but I just do want to mention this is the fact that you know when somebody you know, I don't.
I don't know how somebody wouldn't have a situation that if they end a pregnancy, that they know when the possible due date was, or at least approximately when they see newborns, when they see a one year old, a two year old, a three year old, four year old after their abortion, How that can't affect them at some point in time, whether it's immediate or whether it's down the road. There's got to be some mental problems with that,
or some guilt or whatever. And the one thing I would stress more than anything else that anybody that has had an abortion, if you are thinking in terms of this. If you are being stressed by this, if you are feeling depressed about this, speak to somebody, Go out find the compassion. And people like karenet to speak to because they are not going to judge, they are there to help. And of course my guest is Lindy Zimbroch. She is the executive director here in Northern Kentucky. We'll pick this
up on the other side of the break. I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five krs the talk station, eight forty.
One in the morning.
Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five krs the talk station, speaking.
With her on the phone.
And my guess, Lindy Zimbroch is zembro She is executive director of Northern Kentucky and Caronet. And again during the facility there on Monday, was a big pleasure learning about all the services that you provide. And thanks for hanging with us. Certainly appreciate it.
Thank you, Kevin.
You've got a banquet coming up on May the eighth. There's still some availability or open spots possible.
Yeah, we have a few spots. We're down to the last minute planning. But if we have cancelations. We're able to work people in. So someone's interested in attending the banquet, they just contact us online at carnetnky dot org and they can submit, you know, a request. We have a waiting list right now, but we have over eight hundred. Yeah, we have over eight hundred guests that attend. It is
to sit down dinner. It is a fundraiser and we will be hearing from one of our clients that evening that's experienced care Net who is now an employee at care net and works with us.
Very good.
We're so glad to have her. She's bilingual and she's able to help us with German, also Spanish. But we're going to feature her because you know, she's she's a single mom and she's experienced it on both ends and now she's there to help other people. But we do have some spots and this, like I said, this is a fundraiser and if you can't get in, go to carenet nky dot org and help us with some of
the things on our wish list. All of our programs are incentivized, so after someone makes a decision to carry a pregnancy and they weren't expecting of course to carry a pregnancy. There's a lot of work that needs to be done to help them be ready to welcome a child into their home, everything from teaching them about their pregnancy. For fathers, we also have a fatherhood program, but we want to walk alongside of them. They're assigned a mentor.
It's a mentoring program and they earn items as they go through the program. They'll earn diapers, they are a safety item, which is a car seat in a baby bed. So you know, these programs can be costly, and what's really great is the community of people step up because they want to see people succeed and overcome and be
able to provide for their children. And what we do is try to help establish a family unit that's very stable and then from there, you know, we help the workforce too, so you know, it's just a win win for everyone. We don't want to see people continue to be poverty stricken, so we're there to cheer lead them for higher education, for trade school and just you know,
job placement. But we also we want to be there to provide the nurturing and the bonding that they need to learn how to initiate to their children.
Absolutely now one of the things you mentioned when I was there on Monday that you mentioned that you have people that are fluent in Spanish, and you said that there is a need in your organization for people that speak French that could possibly volunteer some time a volunteer.
We actually have one paid position open to Okay, yeah, for our French speaking we need some help with some translation. And also you know, it's just a great way to help the populations that we see within a.
Certainly certainly a call out to anybody that you know has some time and that could possibly either volunteer or looking for a paid position to do some of this translation, because we certainly want to get that position filled. But if anybody is interested in donating or at least learning about the organization and learning about what you do, the website would be again.
Care net nky dot org.
Yes, and I would encourage anybody that at any stage, if you have, if you have kids, learn about this organization. Let your kids be familiar with this organization, because you never know when you might need this organization, and it certainly beats the alternative. And when you talk about I mean, I just heard a comment the other day when they're talking about this immigration and people being deported and so on.
Somebody made the comment that, well, just think somebody that was deported that may be the person that becomes the scientist that cures cancer or that has this. Oh really, well, what about the number of children that have been boarded since nineteen seventy three? How about how many of those were scientists and possibly could have been productive. How many
of them would have been productive members of society. So I don't want you know, it's just ah, all this stuff and I just it just infuriates me.
Well, we know that through our ultrasound program, we know that we've been able to rescue over two thousand and seventy six children from the hands of abortion, and we know that the parents that had those children were invited and equipped to be the best parents possible or to make an adoption plan.
Absolutely, and I think one of the biggest and the best tools that you have is somebody coming in there and doing the ultrasound, because when you look at the at the graphic, when you see the ultrasound and realize that as early as seven weeks there is a heartbeat, well that.
We can actually see that at six weeks, in five days thereabouts. Yeah, so we can bring those women in early for that ultrasound and providing that type of service also connects them into that early ob care so that they're actually getting you know, getting the care that they need health wise, so that they're getting their crenadal vitamins early. Will start them out with our prenadal vitamins. Fantastic to really help them with that pregnancy.
Lendy, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
I hope well, I know, I'll see you at the banquet on the eighth May eighth, it's a Thursday, and looking forward to seeing you and seeing all the great projects and the other people that are there and the other services that are available. It's a wealth of knowledge and I think it's well worth everybody's attention to attend and to get more information about your organization.
So thank you for.
Kevin, have a blessed, have a blessed good Friday.
You do the same, our guest, Lindy's umbrote executive director Karen net Northern Kentucky phone numbers five, one, three, seven four, and I will probably try to squeeze in a few phone calls before the top of the hour. I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five KRS.
The talk station fifty five KRC iib or fifty.
Four tomorrow scattered showers and storms, mostly cloudy and greasy. High of seventy five and a low of fifty six Right now sixty one degrees. Fifty five KRC DE talk station. Our final check of traffic from our friend Chuck in.
Run from the UCL Traffic Center.
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Eight fifty two.
In the morning, Kevin Bardon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five KRC Talk Station.
We have had a busy day today.
Talked about a little bit about Tax Day, tax Freedom Day, the cost that takes the American public to time, energy, and money file their tax returns. Tax Freedom Day, which was April to sixteenth, talked about the post office and some of the inefficiencies there. We also talked to Dave Hatter about tech on our Tech Friday, or as I like to call it, Scare the hell out of your Friday, which is probably is very necessary because a lot of
great information from him always. We spoke with Ann Dickerson, co founder and lead organizer of the Cincinnati chapter of Indivisible, talking about all their protests, all things Trump that they've been protesting throughout the country.
And then Lindy Zumbrot.
We just finished having a conversation with her, executive director of Carinet Pregnancy Centers of Northern Kentucky and talking about their banquet and all the great services that they provide. Now, as far as today being Good Friday, to you know, take a moment and talk a little bit about that and make sure that you know today when you you know, when you hear when you have certain holidays, it's all
especially good Friday. Where we have like a Memorial Day or something like that, it's not a celebration, it's a commemoration. It's an honoring the fact. You know, Good Friday also known as Holy Friday, Great Friday, Great and Holy Friday, Friday of the Passion. It's a solemn Christian Holy day commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus and his death at Calvary or as they called it, Golgatha, and is observed in
the Holy Week as part of the Pascal Tritium. Now imagine and if you think of nothing else but look back at the Barbary of the Romans at the time of crucifixion, of how being nailed to a cross and
the horrific death that that would be. And take a moment today between new and three o'clock and just kind of commemorate that idea, whether you're Christian or not, but just think about the day itself and what it means, and possibly spend some time, possibly in prayer, attending some services, or at least acknowledging the fact in your mind of what this day is all about, and of course the Easter season itself. Folks, that does it for us. Stay tuned for Glenn Beck coming up at the top of
the hour. I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas fifty five kr SE, the talk station.
Covering Trump's first one hundred days.
Every day we stand on the verge of the four greatest years in American history.
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