Check you in off for what's developing.
Is it just developing out of the Middle East now? Right now, it's developing.
Fifty five KRC the Talk station to Shuy seven six here fifty five KR City Talk Station, looking forward to this segment all morning. Always enjoy hearing from our favorite Ken Blackwell. He really needs no introduction from my listening audience. By by way of background, former mayor of the City of Cincinnati, Ohio State Treasurer and Hio Secretary of State. He's an activist, he's an author, and he's with the American First Policy Institute as the chair of the Center
for Election Integrity. He is Ken Blackwell. Ken, thank you so much for green to spend some time with my listeners and me this morning.
Brian, it's always good to be with you.
Always a pleasure having you on and right out of the gate. Of course, you know what happened on early Saturday morning here in the city of Cincinnati, the beatdown experienced by two people. We don't know what led to the beatdown, but no one can justify it, and it doesn't seem to be that many people are trying to justify it, although some are how it could be justified. I have no idea. No one is deserving of that kind of treatment, most notably the woman who got punched
Kolcock right in the face by some guy. Your response, your reaction, and I know you've digested mayor aftab provols very late in the game, reaction to the incident. What's your take on this, Ken Blackwell, what my take is.
At the first obligation of local governments is to provide safe neighborhoods and safe streets. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that Cincinnati is experiencing a rise in street crime. Now there are those who would say, well, it's not valent crime. But one of the things that you, you know, if you've been around on the basis a little bit, is that if you reward or ignore bad behavior, or you're going to get this more bad behavior and
the escalation. So the first thing is that we we have to admit that we have a problem in terms of the situation itself. You know, no matter how you explain, if it started out as a fight between two people, that to fight between two people, but you know, unless you're going to us not to believe our lion eyes, what we what we saw is that what might have started us a fight between two people escalated into a mob action, a beatdown which can never be which can
never be justified. And the and the and the reality is is that if you start to excuse this, uh, it means that you ignore the fact that Cincinnati has a problem. And the first I mean local leaders should inspire, hope, create the opportunity, and bring people together. And there's been a failure in bringing people together in terms of respecting each other's human human dignity. We have a challenge, and if we try to downsize it in terms of how we define it and misdefine it, the problem is just
going to get worse. As I've told you on a number of casions, Brian, great cities are not the products of great governments, but rather the products of good people doing great things together. And that's a challenge in Cincinnati right.
Now well, and it seems to be driven at least over the last i'd say maybe ten years or so, the politics of division. Everyone. You're divided, you're divided. You're not in this group, you're not part of my group.
I hate you.
You you must agree with me.
Or you're not.
I mean that it's it's as if there is this concerted effort and I'm going to point to the left hand side of the ledger for stirring the pot of division. It doesn't matter on what subject matter. LGBTQ plus division. Division, you know, Donald Trump, evil Orange Man division, division, it's just division. And then of course there's this racial elements that stirred in there. Police are inherently racist. Division. You
like the police, then you're a racist. I mean, that's the mantra we've been hearing now for a long time.
Ken. It's it's it's it's a real problem, and it starts to reveal itself in numbers. I mean, there is a decline in our recruits of folks to serve as officers of the piece of of of police officers on on our on our street. Uh. There is a real declinient in the morale of those who are on board. Uh. How how many times can you here, you know, uh, kill the pigs, you know, defund the police. Uh and uh and time after time you you watch a judicial
system that is divided. Half of the judges, you know, use our apprehensions of criminals and our criminal justice system as a revolving door. Uh. Mechanism and and and so folks are arrested and put right back on a street, cause problems, human misery. Uh and you and you only have half of our judges that understand that it is in the in keeping with their responsibility to provide safe streets and safe neighborhoods.
And that seems to be where the biggest breakdown is and that results, you know, going back to law enforcement. If the police on the streets are the ones that you know, pick up the bad guys, whether they witness the crime or not. They're there to find the suspects. They present them to the prosecutor's office. And if you have a zealous prosecutor, that only goes so far. If they end up in front of a liberal judge, they're
out on no bond. And then of course if they get sentenced because they're convicted or and are a plea deal, they're let out on the streets with little or no penalty to pay. There's the bottom line. It's the judicial system.
Right and and it has a compounding effect. You know, I've worked with some of the nation's leading economic thinkers, and one of the simple things that you understand as a local leader that's concerned with the economic prosperity uh
and the safety of your community. Is that capital seeks the path of lease, resistance and greatest opportunity, and capital hates crime, yes, uh And so so what what happens is that when you have a lots of days ago left leaning, stupid approach to crime fighting and the creation of safe communities, there's no way that you're going to get the uh investment of capital uh to expand your economy, create jobs, put your people uh to work uh And and as a consequence, you just see things, you know,
getting worse and worse, and populations. You know, when you when you are at a time when you want to just arrest the client and and and uh outward flow of population uh, you find yourself being uh stuck with that that that's sort of that sort of decline and that's you know, that's what's so distressing about people who want to put on blinders uh and and and not tell people the challenge that we face when we see this sort of the vision uh and destructive uh, destructive
attitudes in play. You know, bring inspire hope, create opportunity, bring people together and understand the first responsibility of local government is to make sure that the people are safe.
Amen, Ken Blackwell, you know, and I've been struggling to understand why it is the city leaders. And this is something that Christopher smithm brings up regularly when he comes on my program, which is the deafening silence from the council members as well as the mayor about supporting outlaud out and advocating working with the police, not against them. That flies in the face of the whole police are terrible, defund the police movement. So that's a very far left attitude.
But they don't say anything. And I think one of the reasons is because they're trying to downplay the reality of crime in downtown Cincinnati for the reasons you point out. If you talk about crime, then people are going to get the perception of there's crime, and people are not going to want to move into or otherwise invest in the city of Cincinnati. But that just ignores the fact that the crime is there.
So stands Yeah, and and and you you try to spin when when people can see the sort of division is sort of mob action that we experienced this past weekend. Yeah, that that just creates a frustration of people who have a capability a movie.
Yes, sir, movie moving or not considering. I mean we've made national actually, we a global head lines with this. I mean I saw there's an article on there's violence in the Hindu Times of all places, so Fox News headlines,
it's on CNN. Everybody's talking about it. You know, Dan Well Ken Blackwell that there's maybe a business or some person out there that might have been considering Cincinnati as an option for investment or to move and they looked at that and it's like, no, I'm taking them off my list.
Yeah, and right, I'm seventy seven years old. I've lived in Cincinnati all of my life. I've just I've been a homeowner, a political leader, you know, you name it. But I realize that people vote with their feet. We are highly mobile. And what happens is that your city becomes poor and poor, smaller and smaller, you know, And that's the challenge of local leadership. And they cannot forget the capital seeks the path of least existence and greatest opportunity, and capital hates crime.
Well, it's pause. Bring Ken Ken Blackwell back. Got some of the topics to go over with Ken. It's seven sixteen right now fifty five KCD talk says real quick here USA insallation. If you had it in your home already, you would not be dealing with the struggles that your HVAC system is dealing with right now, which is that impossible sisyphian like challenge to keep your temperature where you want it in the face of one hundred plus degree heat index and the humidity out there. USA Phone, the
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K see the talk station seven twenty here fifty five K see the talk station Brian Thomas with the incomparable Ken Blackwell commenting on some of the issues, of course, went over the violence downtown. You mentioned capital seeking, the path of lease resistance. Ken, I couldn't agree with you more on that, and someone who knows all about that. A wildly successful entrepreneur and the next governor of the state of Ohio. I understand you were as much of a fan, perhaps as I am, of V. V Ramaswami,
according to polling and everything else I can see. I've talked to him many times. I've been impressed with him since I interviewed him after he wrote Woke Incorporated. A brilliant man he is. I think he's going to make an outstanding governor. He seems to have great ideas. Your comments on VV.
Let me tell you I've watched since he was a high schooler at the same Xavier uh only regretted that we couldn't get him over to Xavier University. Uh. Yeah, Uh, he will make a great governor. And his his his not only his worldview, but his understanding of the basics is is phenomenal. You know, he and I have talked on occasion in the past, Uh a basic understanding about the economic situation uh in Ohio. He he understands, as I've preached for a long time, that if you tax something,
you get less of it. If you, you know, subsidize something, you get more of it. The problem in America and and and the challenge in Ohio today is that we're taxing work, savings investment. Uh and and as a consequence, Uh, he understands the challenge. And I think he has a set of proposals that we will unleash, uh the talent in Ohio get us back on a on a path
of rapid growth. And I've been up on his response, uh and his comments on the sort of division and the sort of the crime that he saw on the streets of Cincinnati, and Uh, I think he's he's well positioned as a fundamental understanding of how to put us on a accelerate track of economic growth, prosperity, safety. Uh and and and he has a vision, uh to to to make Ohio not just one of the best states
in the United States, but the premier state. Uh and and I tell our buddy down in Florida, watch out, you know that is coming. That's great.
One of the things I'm really excited about. As a magnet for business and industry from the four corners of the world. We can make Ohio the leading power generator by greasing the skids and moving forward with the concept that I've been pushing for now for years, embracing the small modular nuclear reactors. They're small, tiny footprint, don't generate the ways they can make create massive amounts of power. If you build it, they will come. And he is all about.
That, Oh he really is. And one of the things I just I shad again. He has to he has to inspire hope uh and and and and he's and he's good at that. You know. He has to make people feel that no one is too small of an entity to be part not to be part of of this Ohio uh boom yeah and and and so I tell people you know who might think, you know, they're too small or they can't have impact because they are
individual I tell them all the time, Brian. You know, if you think you're too small to be effective, you've never been in the dark and dark room with a mosquito. That's good. Yeah, that that sort of inspiration I think is important. But again, it starts with having a vision of Ohio being not one of.
The best, but the best, the best, and that's what he is. He is aspiring to bring about from the state of Ohio. And you know, you can't say enough about that man, at least as far as you can't. You can't hear VV speak and not be enthused. He is one of those people that makes you feel uplifted, like you do have a possible future, like there is going to be something better down the road, and I think he's the man to deliver on it. I'm just going to encourage my listeners to follow you on Facebook,
Ken Blackwell. You make some outstanding comments, You do some terrific posts, stay on top of the issues, and I wish I could talk with you for the next three hours, but sadly, sadly, we're out of time. Can you know you are always welcome on my program. I appreciate what you do each and every day and God bless you.
Sir, right back gets you gotta bless you.
Buy take care Ken Blackwell seven twenty five. Coming up next to man, I think you're all gonna love Andre Ewing, another man you should be following on Facebook. Outspoken former retired police officer. He'll give you a word or two of his perception what's going on downtown. And I don't think he's gonna pull any punches. Stick around for him. Next, Chimneycare Fireplace and Stove, woodburning fireplace. Folks out there are free standing stoves. You burning wood? You got Kreoso build
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