Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas

and stuff all around the area. In the summertime, there's a bunch of local festivals that we usually go to, and those are more local, but when it comes to the fall, there's these fall festivals that are in different parts of the area and so on. Down in Augusta they have the Turning of the Leaves festival and then they have the Wolf Festival down in Falmouth, Kentucky and Sauerkraut festival up in Waynesville, and there's a little farm over in central Indiana. Take about two don't about two

hours to get there. It's if I can get this. Steam Cliff Farms supposedly one of the oldest farms in Indiana. And I had a fall festival and so on, and it's great to go to these and it's always interesting, and I looked at it from the standpoint of number one,

it's fun. But as I've talked about numerous times on the air, is that when you're doing talk shows and of course doing America's Truck and Network like I've been doing, and maybe aware of that, but if you're not, I am Tuesday through Friday twelve am to one am, and so either you're on the air or you're doing show prep and you're always looking around for something that's going to give you an idea or something, you know, kind of some sort of a trend that you're picking up

on when you go to a restaurant or something. All kinds of show topics out there, just you got to pay attention. And one of the things that I saw as a result of going to some of these festivals was kind of a getting an idea on the economy. Now, this past weekend we were going to go up to Circleville, Ohio to the Pumpkin Festival up there. Now this is odd because I have not been to the Pumpkin Festival, I want to say, in at least fifty years. So almost every year I say, you know, we're gonna go,

We're gonna go, We're gonna go, but something happens. And this year we said, all right, we're gonna go up and this is what's going to happen. Well, we got a phone call on Thursday and family was coming in and said, okay, you know, all right, so we'll put that off. But the weekend got kind of weird and so not weird, but we just couldn't get up there. But in going up to Waynesville and the Wolf Festival and some of these other festivals, it's interesting talking to

the vendors and hearing what they have to say. And in several instances in talking to these vendors, it was this is probably one of the worst years I've ever had at filling the Blank Festival. And I said, is there a particular reason? Is there? What do you think, and he goes, and he she whatever. Any of the vendors would say, it's the economy. People just do not have that extra money. And that extra money is what

they call discretionary income. You know, after you get your paycheck, after you've paid your bills, after you've done all the different obligations and so on, it's the money that's left over that you have for recreational use. Now the economy, since the pandemic, people were shut in, they were doing

a lot of home improvement. They were doing a lot of stuff around the house, which, on the bright side, if you want to look for a silver lining, I think a lot of people have much more appreciation for their homes. But they had to set aside a certain area for them to work because they're working from home. And then of course, having you know, you can't do anything else. So I guess I'll go work on the yard, I'll you know, build a deck, or I'll do something

along those lines. And we saw the home improvement business and the big box stores and so on doing very well. But because a lot of people either appliance wise or took some of that stimulus money and said, oh well, I've got an income interest rates are low. I not only have an income, but I have this, I have these stimulus checks. I'm going to upgrade a house and move to a new house. And so when they did that,

of course you've got to buy new equipment. You've got to buy new furniture fixtures, some new appliances, and so on. So a lot of that has been front loaded into that twenty twenty one ish, twenty twenty two and so on. And then of course with the supply chain issues and so on, people were having issues as far as some of the things they wanted to buy. We saw what happened to use car prices. Of course, in the trucking industry, the truck used truck prices went out of sight because

of the factories being shut down and so on. And so, once the plandemic ended and things started getting back to normal, people said, all right, we're gonna start enjoying ourselves. We're gonna get out. We're gonna go to restaurants, we're gonna bars, we're gonna go to football games. We're gonna go to baseball games. We're gonna go to plays, we're gonna go to movies. We're gonna travel, We're going to do, you know, all the fun stuff that we haven't been able to

do for the last couple of years. And so you've seen throughout the economic numbers where people's spending habits have kind of shifted more from the goods, the items, tangible items, to more fun items, which in tangible eating out and that type of thing. And in talking to these vendors, they say that, you know, a lot of people are maxed out, and we've seen this in the economy. We've seen this in the numbers. People are maxed out as

far as their credit cards are concerned. Their interest rates are higher if they've got credit card debt, then the interest rate on that with the higher interest rates that we've been experiencing record high, well at least the highest interest rates in the last twenty years or so. And then we're seeing inflation. Back in June of twenty twenty two, we saw inflation hit nine point one percent and now inflation is down around two percent, two point four to

two point five thereabouts. But what people forget or you know, it's the well, when you hear the spoon fed regurgitators in the mainstream media talk about it, it's like, oh, well, inflation is down. Inflation, you know, from the inflation from

last month to this month is level. There was no inflation. Well, that forgets the fact that when you have inflation one month that goes up to four percent, the following month goes up to five percent, when it goes up to five percent, it didn't drop down to zero and then hit five percent that month. It was four percent and

five percent on top of that. So when you have the cumulative effect of those inflationary pressures over the last three and a half years, all of a sudden, you're looking at stuff like eggs at forty seven percent higher, most grocery items at twenty one percent or more, and depending upon what you buy. As far as GRoWES are concerned, those are extremely high. When you look at the cost of eating out up twenty five percent and in some

cases forty percent. And these numbers that we're seeing from the federal government or when they do these issues in terms of what the inflation rate is, where the inflation is, and what certain items in that inflation have gone up, down, or whatever, I'm not so sure that those are one hundred percent accurate because when you go into the store and if I don't know if you're like me, but I being a numbers guy, recovering accountant and all I

pay attention to grocery items. I mentioned on this program before that my father was a food broker, which was a manufacturer's representative. He represented different companies and he'd go to these buyers at Kroger IgA and you know, the different wholesale distributors, and would pitch the products that he

was representing to get placement on their shelves. And he always did the grocery shopping, and so on Saturday, he'd go up to the Kroger store and just you know, not only do the grocery shopping, but also kind of pay attention to where his products were shelf placement or whatever, so that he could then talk to the wholesale people and see if he couldn't get either more facings or more better placement on the shelves, maybe eye level or

something which is the best. And so I used to go to the I used to go grocery shopping with him, and we talk about things, and we'd talk about, you know, how to look for lettuce and all those sort of things, which you know helps me out now. But I love grocery shopping. I think I'm one of the few guys and few people that love grocery shopping. I love seeing the stuff. And then of course I pay attention to

the prices. When we go to the grocery store. We're always trying to find the deals that are on sale. We'll try to you know, where we live. We can hit we can hit Aldi, we can hit Meyer, we can hit Walmart, we can hit Kroger, we can I think I Remke and a couple of others. So we've got a myriad of different places we can shop at.

And depending upon where we're heading, if we're heading north, south, east, or west, we put together our list and okase, if we're going to be down in that neighborhood, will stop in the grocery store and pick up these four or five items that are on sale. And then if we're at another location, we'll do that. And so when I look at what we save, and of course I pay attention to the prices and stuff. I mean when you look at just I'll just pull out an item Helman's mayonnaise.

Helman's mayonnaise. You used to be able to get that one. It was on sale for two ninety nine now that is on sale now it is three ninety nine, So that's gone up at least twenty five percent. But when you look at the normal retail price that used to be around three forty nine threes and it's up to six bucks for one of those things my coffee I drink folder's black silk that used to be around at nine dollars at one point, then it got up to eleven ninety nine, and I'd wait till it go on

sale at six ninety nine and stock up. Now that number instead of eleven ninety nine is up to thirteen ninety nine the everyday price. And so those prices, and depending upon what you're buying at the grocery store, may have gone up. Instead of the twenty one percent overall average that they're looking at, your prices, the items that you buy on a regular basis maybe twenty five thirty

percent higher than what they are. And of course this is what why this election is so important, and one of the things that they talk about how do you get inflation down? And one of the things that I've been paying attention to on America's Truck and Network is the fact of energy prices and we'll talk about that coming up. Phone number 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 tom Mus fifty five KR. See the talk station who voted five point twenty in the morning. Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas fifty five KR. See the talk station. Phone number is seven 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 your AT and T wireless phone.

I was so excited about talking about the weekend and what's been going on and getting into the show, I neglected to tell you what we have on tap today, you know, cart before the horse here. As you know, every time I'm on I usually put on Facebook what I'm gonna have in terms of guess wise and so on, and today is no different. And uh, pretty much between now and six twenty five, it's going to be you,

me and the phones. Uh what I like to refer to as news and views, And you know, I may offer an opinion or two depending upon the situation and so on. And so at six point thirty, I've got Phil Flynn. He is a senior market analyst with Price Futures Group, author of the Energy Report, and contributor to Fox Business Network. We'll discuss a wide range of political and energy issues. This guy, I got to tell you his Energy Report on a daily basis. I refer to

that on america'struck A Network. And it is amazing that you know, when you read something and you realize that, hey, this guy and I we think alike. And so I just picked up the phone and called him. And he's been a guest several times. But it's not just the energy markets. It's just not commodities. It's his insight into political things in terms of what's going on as far as the energy sector, but of course what's going on

in the Middle East and so on. So we'll be talking about that in the seven at seven to twelve, we're gonna be having a Christopher Smitherman with the smither Vent at eight twenty or eight h five. Rather, we're gonna be talking with Attorney Stephen Doane. We're gonna be he's an attorney and then also a Kentucky state representative. We'll discuss the Kentucky's Constitutional Amendment too. Now, I understand Brian talked about that with Jim Waters on Thursday of

last week, but I think Steve may have. And hopefully we'll come up with a couple of things, because in the people that I've talked to, there seems to be people that I would have thought that would have been for this. They're raising questions that I hadn't heard brought up before, and I think Brian covered a lot of those on Thursday. But there's a couple of things I need to ask this attorney, and of course he's a

state representative, so he'd be aware of that. And then of course at eight p forty we'll have somebody from the Cincinnati VA. So we've got all that on tap here now. In the previous segment I was talking about I was talking about the inflation and so on, and you know, you see these numbers and they see the inflation rate and they tell you what the inflation rate is.

And that's done using on a monthly basis and at the end of the month, and then the quarterly basis and so on, and then they revise those numbers and come up with the number, and of course the Federal Reserve looks at that, and of course they not only look at the consumer price index, but they also look at the personal consumption expenditures, which is more in line of the gauge that they look at to determine where inflation is. And you have you know, you've heard these

terms before. You've heard a consumer price index, and you've heard core consumer price index and generally just kind of give you a brief idea there. The core is if you pull out energy and food out of that inflation number to come up with inflation. Because in terms of the way accountants look at things, they want to see things on an even keel. They want to have a comparison from one month to another, one year to another, one quarter to another, and anything that's volatile in between.

You have to explain that in your financial statements and reporting. And so you want to keep all the extraordinary items to a minimum, but if they happen, you report those separately so that you can see a straight line or a little bit of increase here and there. As far as your income, your revenue, and then your expenses. You don't want to see them get out of whack and

so on. So when you look at those and the trend there, but because energy and gas prices are always volatile that and food is volatile depending upon the season, they pull those out and so you look at both of those numbers to see what's going on. Generally, what happens in the normal times, you will see the core inflation number be down, and because you throw back in energy and food, that pushes that inflation rate up. Now, with energy kind of coming down and food prices leveling out,

the other items are up. And when you look at the overall inflation number, when you strip out and get to the core, that number actually comes and goes up because of taking out the energy, because energy has been falling. And so the personal consumption expenditures is what the FED usually looks at, which kind of puts more in line of what you spend your money on on a daily basis, weekly basis, and so on. Because you don't always go out and buy a refrigerator, you don't always go out

and buy a computer. You're generally buying food. You're generally putting gas in your car or diesel in your truck, or clothing and normal staples. So when they look at what people are spending their money on, that's when they look at those numbers and say, all right, based on the personal consumption expend here's what that inflation number is.

And getting back to what I was talking about, as far as the individuals at these stores at these festivals are concerned, they're telling me that people just do not have that kind of disposable income anymore. They were talking about how you know, if you look at the food vendors there, they were, I mean a lot of places were selling out of the food that they had. People were enjoying that. If you had certain of like a honey booth, or you had small items and that type

of the little craft things, those were doing well. But anything that would what you would consider what I would consider, because you know, anything over one hundred bucks to me is kind of a luxury item if you're you know, buying an accessory or you're buying like an artwork thing at one of these festivals. I'm not talking about overall art work, but something at one of these festivals. Any time you spend more than one hundred bucks, to me,

that is a luxury item. And so a lot of the item that will quote luxury items that I will stop off their booth. Their sales were horrendous, So that kind of gives you a microcosm what's going on in this in the economy right now, and what is going on and why this election is so important, and of

course we'll talk about that coming up. Phone number seven four five one three seven four nine fifty five hundred one, eight hundred eighty two three talk one eight hundred eighty 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. Five point thirty one in the morning. Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas,

fifty five carosee the talk station. Let's look at some of the local headlines that we're following for you this morning. Since Hey. Police responded to a Walnut Hills High School Sunday evening following reports of shots fired during a pee wee football game. Are you serious? According to police on scene, two adult men got into an argument after the children's football game had ended. Police said that the two men began to fight before one man pulled out a gun

and started shooting. Police said that two adults were shot. One victim is in serious condition, while the other suffered a non life threatening injury. No children were harmed as a result of the shooting. Police are still searching for a suspect at this time. Well, I guess this guy won't be invited back. And what are we going to do? Install metal detectors at pee wee football games? Now for crying out loud, let's see. Water main break collapse is

part of s spring Grove Avenue. That's not gonna that's gonna leave a mark. Water main break on spring Grove Avenue in Camp Washington caused part of the roadway to collapse in on itself. According to the Police Department. The water main break happened around two am in the twenty four hundred block of Spring Grove Avenue at the intersection of Draper Street. The water main break collapse part of the street and partially shut down traffic to the Western

Hills Viaduct. As of Sunday afternoon, Cruise was still out working on the water main break. Traffic had been slowed to one lane in each direction on Spring Grove Avenue. So hopefully they'll get that fixed pretty soon, and of course they've been following this. Over the weekend, there was Indiana State Police shot and killed of somebody at the Hollywood Casino in Lawrenceburg. One man was shot and killed by a police officer early Saturday morning in the Hollywood

Casino in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. Indiana State Police said Lawrenceburg Police Department responded to the casino around one am for reports of a man threatening and chasing another person with a knife on the fourth floor of the casino hotel. I thought P. Diddy was in jail. I didn't think he

got work release or anything. Three let's see. The three officers then learned that the man had begun firing a gun on the fourth floor, and they located the man in the hallway in the na State Police said the officer told the man to drop the handgun, but the suspect began shooting instead. Officers returned fire and the suspect was struck at least once. The suspect died at the scene.

His identity has not been revealed yet. One person the suspect confronted with a knife sustained minor injuries before the officers arrived. All three officers involved in the shooting have been placed on administrative leave per Lawrenceburg Police protocol. ISP said the identities of the officers are being withheld at

this time. ISP said its investigation is ongoing. ISP has been assisted by the Lawrenceburg Fire Department or Police Department, Dearborn and Ohio County Prosecutor's Office, Dearborn County Corners Office, and Hollywood Casino Hotel and staff. Yeah, okay, yeah, I'm sure that a lot of these items, well, the shootings especially, I would guess that the Hollywood Casino, there are probably

some little bit of alcohol involved there. So anyway, coming up, we're going to be talking a little bit more about this inflation number and what's going on as far as the economy. Your phone calls take those as well. Eric Eric code five one three, seven four nine fifty five hundred one, eight hundred eighty two three talk one eight hundred eighty 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.

causing that? And you know, if you watch the debates, if you watch the vice presidential debates, and if you watch the presidential debate, or if you listen to any of the word salad interviews that Kamala Harris has had, one of the questions is is you know, what are you going to do about inflation? What are you going

to do about this? And all we hear about is price gouging, or price gauging as she calls it, which is BS because you may recall years ago when the Biden administration came into office and gas prices started going up, oil prices started going up, and they started talking about, oh, well, the oil companies last year made record profits and so on, and we're going to do a congressional investigation into that, because I'm sure that there is price fixing and gouging

and so on every time the US government does that. Every time a governmental agency looks at that, well, I'd say mostly ninety percent of the time or more. There is no price gouging. It's just a headline grabber to make the people think that you've got their back and

that you're looking into something. And what came out immediately the oil companies fired back and said, hey, you know, yeah, we made record profits last year because of the rise in oil prices, but did you look at our bottom line the previous two years when we lost that billions and billions of dollars and that when you look at that over a three year period of time, we're actually up only, like you know, less than ten percent in terms of not up ten percent, but our profit is

ten percent of what our sales are. And when you look at a company and you think of the investor investing in that, Okay, let's say you've got a pile of money and you can do whatever you want with that, and you think, oh, I think I'll go start a business. If you're going to go out and start a business, would you start a business with all the headaches, all the brick and mortar, the employee expenditures, the cost of the inventory, or whatever the business is, and get a

seven percent bottom line, a seven percent profit. You could take that money and put it in the stock market or a mutual fund, or buy real estate or do something that is less of a headache if you're only going to get a seven percent return on your investment. And so what you generally do if you're going to start a business, you're looking for something that is going to bring you a fairly decent return on your investment, and most people are looking for something in the minimum

of ten percent. A lot of people go in in these high risk certain things and go for maybe a fifteen to twenty five percent investment, but then a lot of times they'll lose money as well. But to go through all the headaches, when you look at the grocery stores, their bottom line is one point two to one point six percent margin that they're working on. Who's going to

go into a business like that. Now, granted, you make up a lot of that in volume and stuff, because one point six percent profit on this particular item or thereabouts. When somebody goes in there and buys ten, fifteen, twenty items, those numbers add up. But it's all based on a volume basis. Type of situation and not an individual item. And so this price gauging that the Kama keeps talking about is nuts. Where you need to do is start looking at the oil prices and the energy prices. And

I'll tell you what. Let's go to the phones here real quick, and let's talk to Dirk. Dirk fifty five. K see Dick. I'm sorry, Dick. How are you this morning?

as you're doing your concentrating on your music. You're going and getting auditing classes and getting education credits and so on, and learning different things. I mean, for crying out loud, go to a park, read a book for crying out loud. Don't be anybody. I'll tell you what. Anybody that says they're going to be bored in retirement is probably a boring person to begin with, because so many people that I know of have retired and they tell me after

a couple of months or so on, to go. I don't know how I was able to work with all the stuff that I've been doing now and all this stuff I'm doing, I couldn't have. I couldn't work because I'm too busy, which.

fifty on that at and T wireless phone. Now, well, we're talking about inflation, and when we're talking about that, I talked about going to these UH fall festivals and talking to some of the merchants, some of the people that run the boosts and UH items in these boosts that would go for say one hundred dollars or so, those were suffering. Anybody was selling what I would consider high end stuff. Now, one of the things I was looking at is I love, you know, you see these pens,

these wooden pens that people will make. They'll do all these exotic woods and make them into a pan. My particular pen I've got I bought years ago at the Appalachian Festival was actually two cartridges too, bullet casings that they made into a pen. And the unique materials that they're using for pens. Now, so I'm always attracted to

those booths. One I saw at let me see, we were over in Indiana at one of the festivals over there, and this one vendor had a pen and it had kind of a you know, I like a wider pan or a thicker pin type of thing. I'd give you an idea pretty much along the side of one of those pen sharpies, kind of like that thickness. And they had these pens that actually had a cigar band around it. So they take this cigar band and put it around the thing to make it look like, you know, basically

well the cigar band. And I was checking to see if they had one of the brands of cigars that I smoke, and they didn't, so I gave them my card and information and so on. But you know, I love these kinds of pens. I love these unique pens. And that's one of the vendors I talked to. In these pens, they will some of them will retell or they'll sell them for you know, in the seventy five to ninety dollars, but if you want something interesting like that, it can be as high as one hundred and sixty.

And that always makes me pause for a moment and say, gosh, how bad do I really want that? And a lot of times it's like, Okay, walk away, go look at some other things, Go eat a funnel cake, or go eat especially if you're the sauerkrawd festival, eat one of their what they call them ruben rolls or something like that up there. So you go, have you know, some food, and walk around a little bit and make determination where

you're gonna. I didn't go back and buy it. I did give him my card and I said, I'll probably check with him sometime around Christmas if I think But anyway, it's one of those things where I always think twice about whether I'm going to buy something. And when we look at inflation, and when you're talking about how to cut inflation, the first place you have to start is

with energy. You don't come into office like the Biden administration did and stop the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which threw up to ten thousand people or more out of work on that pipeline, many of those blue collar and union members constructing that pipeline. You don't cut off selling or drilling for oil in an war the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. You don't stop drilling on federal lands.

You don't start You don't stop selling leases, which is by law which you're supposed to do, and you don't stop drilling in the golf. Now, since that time, yes, we are drilling more oil, and we are a pumping record amount of oil, but we're also importing a lot more oil to the point where we are not technically energy independent. We were energy independent in twenty twenty for the first time since nineteen forty nine under the Trump administration,

the first time since nineteen forty nine. A barrel of oil at that time was at fifty dollars a barrel or lower, and today, as of Friday, what that business closed, then oil was selling for around seventy dollars West Texas Intermediate, which is one of the gauges, and Brent we're selling at seventy dollars and seventy seventy four dollars, respectively. When you have a twenty five percent increase like that, when you have the raw materials that go into these refineries

and then they pump out the gasoline. Although national average for gasoline as of Monday was three dollars and twenty cents, back in twenty twenty, gasoline was at two dollars and twenty four cents, so that is forty percent higher. So if you want to know where inflation starts, it starts with energy. Because energy goes across all sectors. We use energy here at the station, the electric for the lights, the power for everything around, and so if our energy

prices are up, it's going to cost more. We'll pick this up. We'll talk about some other things at the top of the hour. I'm Kevin Gordon, seven hundred seven fifty five KRC, the talk station.

So looking forward to that, and of course behind the microphone, it doesn't get any better for me if you went to my Facebook page. As you know, generally, not generally, every time I come in and I fill in, I always post on the Internet or post on my Facebook page who we have as guests, and today is no different from that. Coming up in six started, we're going to be talking to Phil Flynn. Here's a senior market analyst prices for the Price Futures Group, author of the

Energy Report and contributed to Fox News Network. We will be discussing a wide range of political and energy issues. Coming up at seven twenty, we'll be talking to Christopher Smitherman in the smither Event. Eight to five, we'll be talking Attorney Steve Don't and Kentucky. He's also a Kentucky

state representative. We'll discuss Kentucky Constitutional Amendment too. Now you may recall on Thursday Brian talked to Jim Waters from the Bluegrass Institute about that and a lot of good topics were brought up in a lot of good information, But in talking to a lot of people that I know, people that I thought or was a shoe in in terms of voting for this, have given me some information

or objections to this that I really didn't expect. And quite honestly, I think a little bit of misinterpretation of what this all is going to do or what is going to happen as a result of this constitutional amendment. So we'll try to clear up some of that as well. And then at eight forty we're going to be talking to the Cincinnati VA. So all that coming up for your listening pleasure now when we're talking about inflation and we're talking about the stakes of this election and so on.

I've mentioned in the past that energy goes across all sectors of the economy. I don't care if you work in a factory, if you drive a truck, are a salesman out on the road and driving from customer to customer, you're an attorney, whatever you are. Energy goes across every segment of our economy. It affects your house, It affects everything that you do. And if your energy prices are up, you just look at your gas and electric bill on

what that's done. If you're like me and you try to kind of pay attention to what is going on from what you spent one month to another, or just go back on your bank statements if you can, and look at what you were paying Duke Energy or whomever going back in twenty twenty versus what you're paying today. Look at your sanitation bill, look at your water bill,

look at all this stuff. You see what the prices are in the grocery store, and you know that there's inflation in the when you are paying forty right now, okay, right now, we are paying about something like ninety six cents more for a gallon of gasoline than we were back in twenty twenty. That's a forty two percent increase now that compared to even a year ago, we were

paying three sixty. So gas has come down forty forty cents a gallon, and it's still ninety six cents higher than what it was in twenty twenty, when, by the way, we were energy independent for the first time since nineteen forty nine under the Trump administration. Diesel prices a year ago were four forty six. Yeah, they're now down to three sixty a gallon, but they are still fifty two percent higher than what they were back in twenty twenty.

And let's not forget back in June of June. As a matter of fact, June the fourteenth of twenty twenty two, regular unleaded gas hit a record high of national average of five dollars and two cents a gallon. Diesel hit a record on June the sixteenth of twenty twenty two, of five dollars and eighty two cents a gallon. And when you start pulling those numbers, and every day, every time you fill up your gas your car or your truck, and you're using diesel or using gas, ninety six cents

more per gallon on your car. Now, if you're like me, if you have a car that can go, it has eighteen gallons whatever you fill up. For every gallon that you're putting in that, if it's ten dollars, you're spending nine dollars and sixty more cents than you did four years ago. And when you go into the grocery store. And like I said, as a recovering accountant, I pay

attention to things. And one of the things I've done over the years, when my wife and I first got together and we started doing Thanksgiving at our home, I started looking at, okay, all the stuff that we were doing, as far as what we were buying and so on, and I kept the receipts and I said, okay, you know, the price of the turkey, the price of the cranberries, the price of the sugar, all on down the road. The jello, all the stuff for the stuffing, and it

is stuffing. It's not dressing, because we definitely put it in the bird. It tastes better, trust me. So I look at the spices, the ingredients and all the other stuff, and so I started doing a list in terms of what we went into that meal, and then I'd write down what the prices of that were that year. And when you do that over the year and see how things have increased, it is phenomenal in terms of when you look at just the difference in the last four

years what those prices have been. Now. Granted, around Thanksgiving, those prices come down. A lot of stuff goes on sale, and if you hit things at the right price, you can save a lot of money. But if you need that particular item right now, right here, right now, and that's not available or you can't wait for it, you have to have it. And if that item is not on sale, you're going to pay significantly more for that

than you did before. In the past. I would pride ourselves on just the two of us basically compared to how I eat and what I eat. We are basically about a family of three and a half. Because I have a big appetite and I eat a lot. So when you consider where we are and what we spend money on as far as our groceries are concerned, I always wanted to try to keep it to where we are saving about one hundred dollars a month in terms of our groceries and during the year I look at that.

You know, obviously in the month of September, you want to be able to save about nine hundred dollars or thereabouts. The way we have been shopping and the way that we make sure that we buy our groceries when things are on sale. So far this year, I'm proud to say that we have saved over sixteen hundred dollars in groceries simply by hitting things when they're on sale now.

In the past, if you know what we're seeing in the marketplace now, if somebody is used to buying hinds and that prices are, you know, for Ketchup or French As or whatever name brand you are are looking for. If those prices are fairly high, sometimes you go to a lesser brand, or you go to the store brand.

And in past, just to kind of compare and whatever I have purchased store brand stuff which quite honestly in some instances is actually has less crappy ingredients in it, artificial colors and that type of thing, or food dyes and so on. So sometimes the store brands, if you look at the label, are actually better than the main products sold and the taste is darned near good or even better. In fact, we prefer Kroger brand peanut butter just as an example to any of the other ones

out there. And so, but you can cut that way. But even if you're buying the name brand items and you wait till they go on sale and you buy those we, like I said, we've managed to save almost well over sixteen hundred dollars just and we're not even through the end of October. So you can do these things,

and you have to scale back. You see where people are trying to pinch pennies and they're doing certain things that may be downgrading where they're going to dinner at night or and used to be that you could, you know, if you're on a budget or you're trying to you know, you know, if you go out to eat a number of times during the week and instead of maybe going to an Applebee's or a Longhorn Steakhouse or something along those line, or Charlie's or something, and you say, well,

you know, we'll kind of scale back and maybe go to a Fish's or if we you know, if we're going to fishes a lot of times, maybe we'll kind of augment that and go to maybe McDonald's or something once during the week or something along those lines. But

even that has become extremely expensive. You can't get out of their cheap anymore either, and so it's been a struggle and you look at where you're you know, the old saying that my paycheck is is shorter than the month, which means that you know, obviously there's more bills and more things to pay for by the end of the

month because your dollar's not stretching as much. And so when you look at the economic numbers and you look at the way this economy is going and the fact that it was changed, it was changed by this administration

because of their energy policy. And then when you take into consideration some of the other things that they've been trying to push as far as ev mandates and some of these other government regulations that when you have government regulations, those boost up the cost of certain items because companies have to comply with that. It is time for a change, and yes, we need to turn the page. We need to turn the page back to an administration that knows

what the hell they're doing. Phone numbers seven 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 KRC the talk station only six twenty one in the morning. Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five K see

the talk stations. 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 on that AT and T wireless phone. I've been telling you a lot about, you know, inflation and stuff and what I've been experiencing and talking to vendors at these various UH Fall festivals that we've been

going to. And remember, this is the administration that kept telling us that inflation was transitory, which meant that it was just a blip on the screen. And that it was going to come down, which it didn't. And we see that on an ongoing basis, we had the Federal Reserve, which had been talking about that, oh well, we're going to raise interest rates, and they raised interest rates eleven times from what was it, March of twenty two until

July of twenty twenty three, eleven times. Now, when you raise interest rates or lower interest rates, I always thought that it would take oh maybe four or five six months before it would wind its way through the economy

and that you'd really see the effect of that. But over the last couple of years, as this has happened, I've been reading a lot more about that, and a lot of economists will tell you that it takes up to two years for an interest rate increase or an interest rate cut to find its way through the economy.

And so when we are seeing the bankruptcies that we've been seeing this year in twenty twenty four, when we start seeing you know, when you see these strikes and you see companies laying people off, and you see the unemployment rate kind of creeping up a little bit here and there, and when you see, well, go back to the individual bankruptcies, the number of companies, the number of

people that are underwater, and so on. This is two years now after the first interest rate increase, and we still have several more over that period of time, from March of twenty two, twenty two until July of twenty twenty three when those were stopped, and all during this period of time, we've heard the FED tell us that, well, we're battling inflation. We've got to get inflation down. Inflation until inflation gets down to two percent, we're not going

to be comfortable with that. And so when you had inflation up to nine point one percent in June of twenty twenty two and then it came down to six percent four percent, they kept calling, you know, doing victory laps and saying, oh, you know, our economy is working and so on. And then at the first of the year. I remember back in December they were talking about at their last FED meeting that we could possibly do four rate cuts during the year, and I said at the time,

I don't think it's going to happen. I don't think if you'd listen to what the Fed has to say. The fact that they want interest rates, they want inflation down around two percent and they need a cup of steady and definitive sustained growth down heading down to that two percent range, and it wasn't happening. They needed a couple of months worth of data. Well in December, you're not gonna if you're a couple of months worth of

data ain't gonna get you to March. When everybody was saying, oh, interest rates are going to be cut in March, I said in March, before March, it ain't gonna happen in March. And I said it ain't going to happen in June, and in fact, by August, I was saying, I don't think it's going to happen at all this year. And then lo and behold, we get this number from the

Labor Department, where we knew this number. I talked about this several times, where they had overinflated the jobs numbers from last year to the tune of about eight hundred thousand jobs. And then they finally released the report in August, and the crap hit the fan. The market took a downturn, and they were saying, oh, the Federal Reserve needs to have an emergency meeting and cut interest rates immediately, because oh,

the economy's going and a hell in a handbasket. And then after about oh five six days the dust settled on that. But when the Federal Reserve went in September and met, there was no reason based on their criteria of lower lower inflation rate down to two percent, it's still up around two point four. Then they shifted and said we want a strong Our two missions is lower interest or lower inflation rate, but also a strong job market.

And they were talking about the strong job market, that the market had seen a little bit of softening, and when they made that cut of a half a percentage point, I said at the time, and I still believe this, this was political a month before, two months before an election, because nothing had changed from what had been the prior month, the month before that, the month before that. If they thought that the job market was soft back then, then

they should have made that cut. But this close to an election was political, and it was nothing to do with finance. It was a It was just absolutely political. And one of the things that I've seen is that this interest rate cut hasn't quite done what they expected it to do. Coming up to the bottom of the hour, we were talking to Phil Flynn, He is a senior account executive and author of the Energy Report with Price Futures Group. I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas fifty

five krs the Talk station. I have a hard time recognizing. I want to welcome back to the program. Phil Flynn. He is a senior market analyst with Price Futures Group, author of the Energy Report, and contributed to Fox Business Network. He is one of the world's leading energy market analysts and a guy with a tremendous amount of common sense in terms of what the heck is going on in the Middle East and in our political climate right now. Phil, welcome back to the program.

talks about Israel's plans to attack Iran. So these plans have been leaked by someone, and that's terrible, and that means from Israel's point of view, they're going to have to go back to the drawing board to plan the attack all over again, because their plans have been out there and Iran knows what they are. So now, you know, I think, you know, the gloves are coming off, you know, especially after they attacked Prime Minister Benjamin nennan Yahoo's home over the weekend.

off for them. But I wonder if when Biden administration was saying don't attack the oil fields, and we got those reports last week that Israel was not going to attack the oil fields or the nuclear structure or their infrastructure that and then whatever battle plans they had, I wonder if they gave them the right battle plans just to test them to see if they were going to be leaked.

carry out a war. And on the flip side, if we have the United States leaking the battle plans of our allies to its enemies, I mean, that's a sad day for American history.

those numbers have been verified. We don't know, there's no independent source for that, and that could just be a lot of an awful lot of propaganda.

to protect you. You know. So you know, it's hard to know what is true, you know, But I mean, when you look at the situation here, you know, as Benjamin Nettiyahu said yesterday, all you have to do is lay down your arms, release the hostages, and this war could be over tomorrow. But you know, the leadership of hamas you know, refuses to do that well.

You have been very upfront talking about how this administration has absolutely raped and depleted that Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and I don't think people understand just exactly how dangerous that is given what's going on in the Middle East. If we do experience any type of disruption in terms of oil flow and whatever, can you kind of shed some light on that for us?

It caused prices to go higher by trying to tap the reserve to keep prices lower, so that would mask the fact that his policies are going to create longer

term shortages in the United States. And in the plan, you know, you and I Kevin know, they want to force everybody off of, you know, the internal combustion engine, and they want to take away or stole because they don't want a natural gas to you know, and this is radical thing in this energy transition, and it's all smoke and mirrors because everything that they're doing has not

done anything to add to greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, if you look at to build an electric car takes three times the amount of greenhouse gas emissions and it does to produce another car. We're using more coal in this country than ever before and around the world, you know, So this is really just more about trying to control people than it is about saving the environment exactly.

so we'll pick this up. My guest is Phil Flynn, Price Futures Group, author of the Energy Report. You gotta go online. You got to read this every day because there is such insights in there. It's fantastic. Coming up, we'll keep our conversation with Phil Flynn. Continuing our conversation with Phil Flynn fifty five care see the talk station My guest again is Phil Flynn. He is as an account executive, author of the Energy Report, and a frequent

contributor to Fox Business News. Is one of the world's leading energy market analysts and just an all around great guy and a tremendous amount of common sense. Phil, thank you so much for hanging with us through the break. Certainly appreciate it.

ready for prime time. And with the amount of money or the amount of energy that's being soaked up by this artificial intelligence and these information collection areas is just a major consumption of energy.

for your children and your grandchildren. And we've taken a huge step back under the Biden administration, you know, by spending billions of dollars on trying to build car chargers, for example, for cars that nobody wants to buy. And by the way, I think they've built three of them.

So with all those billions, you know, and trying to pick winners and losers, you know, based on your green aspirations, it's like, okay, you're a green energy company, We're going to give you billions of dollars, you know, to to to take a gamble. In the meantime, the rest of the world's getting prepared for what's coming here, you know.

I thought it was interesting that companies like Google and Amazon, you know, they're already moving towards nuclear little nuclear power stations to try to power you know, their economy because they see what's coming.

cars and stuff. Seems to be areas that are being overlooked, which tells me that somebody, some lobbyists and whatever are pushing this green news steel and making a boatload of money at that and not trying to solve a problem.

provide power. You know, you say, well what about wind and solar, Well, it takes a lot of energy to uh, you know build those wind turbines, and it takes a lot of energy right to to build you know, these solar panels and a lot of you know electric you know, rare earth minerals that you have to mind for and things like that. The key and the key number and key problem because when they're done, you got to throw them away.

it it drops off. How many times we hit supposedly going to hit peak oil?

these targets, you know, with renewable energy. So you know, on paper it's it might sound good, but people think these things out, really have to know, so you have to wonder, you know, the question becomes, you know, are the you know, are these global elites that are pushing this agenda. Are they just not smart and they don't think these things out? Or is there something more sinister behind it? And that's a question I'll leave up to the listeners.

about before, I just call it climmunism. And you brought up a great point about how in terms of this this energy cycle and where this is going when you look at what you brought up, the Paris Accord, Okay, And I had to laugh my butt off during the Olympics that here you have the Paris Accords and the par you know, you know, oh, you know everything, Paris, Paris, Paris. And then we come to find out that for the last hundred years you're not allowed to swim in the

same river. And they had to go through all billions of dollars to try to clean that up, and they still didn't do it. And a number of our athletes or a number of the athletes around the world got sick swimming in that. And here you have the Paris of course, and they can't even clean up their own mess.

private enterprise. It hasn't been the government, you know, putting a gun to their head picking winners and losers.

we've got a lot of stuff to talk about. And of course, if you have looked at my Facebook page, because I always put on Facebook, what guests I have Coming up seven twenty and a few minutes, we're going to be talking to Christopher Smitherman, the smither vent And then eight o'clock or eight oh five, we're going to be talking to an attorney in state Kentucky State Representative Steve Don Steven Don't when we talking about the Kentucky

Constitutional Amendment number two. And again I know Brian had Jim Waters from Bluegrass Institute on Thursday and a lot of great information in that. If you haven't heard that, you might want to check that podcast out. But there were some unanswered questions, or at least some of the people that I've talked to. They've raised some concerns about this,

which I was surprised that they brought up. But we'll try to cover some of those in an eight forty were when we're talking with folks from the Cincinntia v A. I saw this story the other day. Usually when I go into a convenience store here locally, and once in a while, when the jackpot gets up there and you know, start my my dream weaving and type of thing as far as lottery winnings and so on, I'll go and buy a lottery ticket or something. When the jackpot gets

up there pretty high. And this convenience store down the street from where we live, and right as you walk in the door, you got the Cincinni Inquirer there, And yeah, my goodness, I you know, I hadn't seen a you know, I've done the online version and been able to get that over the last few years and so on. But boy, I'll tell you what I never I did not. I mean, the last time I think I bought it since an Inquirer, it got up to like seventy five cents a copy

three forty nine or thereabouts for the newspaper. Now are they insane. But anyway, there's generally a stack of newspapers earon when I walk in. I'll look over and glance at the headlines to see if there's anything going on, because I still I still enjoy reading a newspaper. I'm not going to pay that much for it, but I would much prefer to have and get my fingers dirty, because if you're going through a newspaper, there are so

many other stories. As a matter of fact, I used to start off with the Inquirer or the Post when it was around, and sometimes start from the back and work my way forward because sometimes some of the key stories are buried on you know, the the page fifteen or something like that, where it's more impactful than what

they're throwing on the front page. But anyway, I looked over at the headlines and they were talking about lawsuit demands more study at brent spnz Bridge, and I'm thinking, dear God, I mean, anybody is listening to this program and know what I'm on. In the past, I've talked a lot about being part of the group. Back in twenty twelve when they were talking about that this no I'm sorry it was it twenty thirteen. I think it

was twenty thirty. Anyway, it was one of the legislative sessions, which was their short session because they do the anyway in the state of Kentucky. They were pushing this public private partnership and the Chamber of Commerce and all these people were saying, this has got to be done now, We've got to do this here, the Brnce Benz Bridge. It can't wait another day. It is so important that we build this bridge, and we got to do it right here, right now. You know, it's too expense, you know,

we got to do it. It's an emergency. And so on. Well, as soon as they started talking about tolling and a group of us got together, we were not going, you know, tolls or taxes in our opinion, and as you know, I was part of the group that we got that stopped.

Well with this infrastructure bill, there was a lot of money that was put aside and grant was passed or was applied for and honored, and that the brent S Benz Bridge or the companion to the brent S Benz Bridge was going to be built, maybe a little downsized from what it was done. As a result of our efforts with this group anyway. I won't go into the whole history of that, but we were told that, you know,

it had to be done right here, right now. And when that infrastructure bill was passed, they said that the that the construction phase could start by that November. That November came and went. Last November came and went, and we are going into another November that is going to come and go and not a shovel turn because the City of Cincinnati, just like they did years ago, can't figure out where the footprint's going to be over there,

where they're going to do their entrance ramp. Can they reconfigure this so we developed we've got more vacant space over there for development so that they can build more buildings and gouge and get more property taxes and so on, and so that's being held up. And then all of a sudden, these environmental groups and all these people are saying, well, we want to take a look at this, and we want to study this and whatever. Well, there was an

environmental impact study done back in twenty twelve. And let me tell you, you know, the game, the fish, the air quality and all that sort of thing. I would be willing to guess that if the birds and the fish and the animals living down there could tolerate what was going on back in twenty twelve, they sure as hell can tolerate that. Now they're down there trying to find some exotic bird or insect that is an endangered species so that they can stop this project. But where

are the people, Where is the chamber of commerce? Where is this intensity? Quite honestly, I thought that the Brent Spnce Bridge, if you again reconfigure some things. If one of the things, you know, the fact that that bridge is only congested at rush hour in the morning and the afternoon, if you do certain things in terms of maybe forcing trucks off of that and onto the outer belt, that would alleviate things. But according to their study, if

you take trucks off, that's only one vehicle. And how stupid is that anybody that's ever been on the road when you are we see trucks in traffic, and you see the gap because they it takes them a while to start or to speed up, and a time to stop, and so there's generally four or five car links between them and the next the car. The length of the

truck at itself is about four to five vehicles. And the estimates are that for every truck you take off a highway, it's the equivalent of taking anywhere from seven to ten cars off the freeway. So these studies where they say, well, you know, would only take you know, a thousand, one thousand vehicles off the Brent Spence Bridge every every day, Well, no, that's more like the equivalent of ten thousand vehicles off of that because of the size of the truck and the impact and how far

the distance between the starting and stopping is. But of course, you know, don't let facts get in the way. But now all of a sudden, there's this group that are now suing to force another environmental impact. You know, is is this ever going to get built down there? Is there ever going to be this emergency that they were

talking about. And the things that I learned as a result of digging into the numbers, digging into the traffic counts, how they came up with them and their forecast what you know, because when they first came out with their forecasters saying, you know, one hundred and seventy six thousand vehicles come across that bridge every day and by the year what twenty twenty five or whatever, there was going to be two hundred and thirty some thousand going across

that bridge. Well we're still at about one hundred and sixty six thousand vehicles going across that bridge on a daily basis. So the traffic counts that they came up with are false and didn't come true. But this business of a city of Cincinnati and this coalition is that the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for Transit and Sustainable Development, backed by the Davoo Good Project, Cincinnati Civic, Cincinnati Ride and coming to Queen City bike groups and all this sort

of stuff. For crying out loud, either this project or is important for this area or not. Quite Honestly, I would have preferred for them to do. What we talked about back then was the since Eastern Bypass, which was another bypass out and around taking traffic off of the brin Spence Bridge. But amazing that you know, even you know I talked about this before that back in the day. If any of you are old enough to remember Jim Bunning, Jim Bunning was a professional baseball player, Hall of Famer

and so on. He became a congressman and then became a Senator from the state of Kentucky when he was a congressman back in the early nineties or so before he went to the Senate, when they had ear marks. He got an ear mark for the construction of a new bridge down there next to the Brinspenz Bridge or

a replacement for the Brn Spence Bridge. Cincinnati could not get their act together in terms of where the landfall of that where the footprint of that bridge was going to come over into Cincinnati because they were concerned about they had plans for the banks, so they had plans for Paul Brown Stadium or a stadium or riverfront stand.

They couldn't figure out where that footprint was going to be, and those ear marks were going to be running out that bridge that we were supposed to get, and the money for this region was taken then down to Aberdeen and down to not Augusta, whatever the city is down there where they built a new bridge down there, And so what we were supposed to get here is now further down the road in Maysville, Kentucky, a brand new bridge there, a smaller version, but still the money that

was earmarked for Cincinnati was bypassed. Then now we are three years or what two and a half years into this this infrastructure bill, and we still have not turned a shovel bird of a bit of dirt. Unbelievable, this thing that was so so important immediately had to build our new bridge now and now all of a sudden, it's like delayed, delayed, delayed, del Phone numbers five one, three, seven, four nine, fifty eight hundred eight two three talk one

eight hundred day two three eight two fivey five. Coming up, We've got Chris Smitherman, Christopher Smitherman with the uh smither Event. I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five KR. See the talk station.

So on the surface, he was highlighting the fact that Vice President Kamala Harris had said, Hey, I worked out of McDonald's in my life, and I'm connected to the working people. McDonald's has not confirmed that she ever worked at a McDonald's. She hasn't been able to show any pictures or images that she worked at a McDonald's. And so what President former president Donald Trump has done here, he says, Listen, I'm gonna go I'm going to work

the friars. I'm going to spend fifteen minutes more than she's here, and I'm going to force her to say whether she was telling the truth about that. Now, that's that's on the surface. But the other side of this is right, The millions and millions of employees right right that have been connected to that to what McDonald's in their lifetime, meaning you as a kid who worked at the McDonald's, or somebody who's still working at McDonald's like my son, my oldest son in Wisconsin, Milwaukee, he works

for corporate McDonald's. My point is that there are lots of people that are connected to this brand and it's made them who they are. They're they're independents who owned locations. Corporate owns locations. They're one of the biggest land owners in the United States of America as far as owner.

So he was touching on so many different points, the brand of McDonald's, whether the vice president had been telling the truth, the working class man or woman who might have to work two or three jobs at McDonald's is one of those jobs that they have to work on and she's saying I worked here, but she really didn't

work there. I'm sharing with you. He hit on so many different points as a showman that if people just look at it, like oh man, he showed up and made some pride, they're really missing what happened yesterday.

And I kind of pride myself on this too. I feel like I could be plopped down in any environment and connect with just about anybody. And either you have that ability or not. If you're not comfortable in your own skin, if you think that certain people are below you or above you, or intimidated and all this sort

of stuff, then you're not going to fit in. But if you go in there and you are a person of the people, if you talk to people and ask them what their concerns are and get to know the people, that is where you can fit into almost any environment. And I think Donald Trump does that tremendously.

doing right here. He's saying I understand you, like you're saying, Kevin, I'm connected to you. I understand your plight. And if there's somebody out there mocking you, if there's somebody out there playing like, hey, I understand you. But they really didn't do this, They really didn't work at a McDonald's. They really aren't. I'm the middle class. It's a major blow. And I'm looking to see if the vice president's campaign respond to this, because all of those videos have gone viral.

It'll be out on social media. They're everywhere. And I just want to highlight that for the public that it's not just that he went there and did those frides. It's the message he was sending about the economy, the corporation, the working class person, and whether Kamala Harris herself had been telling the truth all.

the smither Event coming up. I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas fifty five care see the talk station.

lines this weekend were long. People were climbing. I'm going to like over mud coming from the hills of North Carolina to cast their votes. Now, if they can get out and vote. If they can get out and vote, my question is why can't other areas in our country do the same with that kind of vigor and so my hearts go out like yours, Kevin, to those people who lost everything, their house, some of them lost their family members, they lost their pets. They don't know how

they're going to rebuild. Some of them don't even have power. It's my understanding that the former president is going to be visiting North Carolina today again trying to show support and connect with the people of North Carolina. But I have just be amazed by watching how they are enthusiastic and making sure and FEMA, no matter what they say about misinformation, failed North Carolina, failed Georgia, and failed Florida. Kevin, that FEMA wasn't there. They weren't the ones leading the

charge organizing the relief. And if you're listening to my voice right now, right and you think that I'm exaggerating, right, you weren't there. You don't understand maybe what it feels like to have your house washed away and all your belongings, or you lose your grandparents or your child, or your wife, or your spouse or your pet. I'm telling you you don't have a heart. FEMA should have been the one leading it. And in the background, we're giving millions and

hundreds of millions of dollars away to other countries. And so the backdrop I think of what you're going to see in that voting, Kevin, is that people are going to come out and send a very strong message in North Carolina and in Georgia and in Florida. Thing that the poles are not going to pick up of people being frustrated with how the White House treated them when they needed them the most, while they were sending hundreds of millions of dollars overseas.

their own people. How can you help the people in Ukraine or help the people in Lebanon, And you can't help the people in the United States of America North Carolina, Georgia or Florida.

this illegal immigrants that are in this country. And you know this is not anti immigrant, this is coming into the You want people to come into your country legally and according to the law, not break the law, and accommodate them and assimilate into the population as opposed to this invasion that we've been seeing that okay, the borders secure for the last three and a half years, when we know it hasn't been.

to support. And so when they feel like, oh my goodness, we all knew the hurricane was coming, but they couldn't even mobilize the National Guard, or they could not mobilize federal assets, helicopters, whatever they needed to get supplies into the hills of North Carolina. As one of many examples, they're going to say, why would I promote you to the next level? These are just basic things that Americans are talking about. I want to pivot because I know I don't have a lot of time, and I want

to talk about the Catholic vote. Let me be clear, I am Catholic, my family Catholic.

I know exactly what you're talking about. And I've got seventeen years of Catholic education, So yeah, exactly.

need to go somewhere else. This is you know, when they're when they're when they're literally shouting out the name of Jesus these and then when they did that, Kevin, the audience turned on those two young men, push them out, put their hands on them. I thought that was an assault on them. But my point is that there just seems to be this drum beat about Catholics, and I think it is a major mistake for this campaign alienating

Catholic voters. Now they're going to be Catholic voters, as you know, Kevin, who are going to vote for vote for Democrats, they're going to vote for Independents, they're going to vote for Republicans. I'm just saying they're giving a reason for Catholics, meaning my family were Catholic, to say no to them based on how they're showing respect or no respect for the Catholic faith.

But it seems like the Jewish faith and the Catholic faith, it's open season no matter what time of day it is, what time of the year it is, and that should give some pause to people in both religions to say, just exactly who do we support and why do we support them?

really big races out there. Is my point that I think people should really hone in on. And one of the mistakes that people make, Kevin, is they go in and they vote for the president only and then walk out they vote down the entire ticket. And so I bring this up saying, there are a lot of good

people that are out here running for office. Please don't make the mistake of going in and just voting for the national ticket whoever you're supporting, and then not voting down the rest of the great Americans who are running for office in your area. Because bottom line, Kevin, as you know, politics are local. Don't miss those big elections. They affect your life on a daily basis.

They are doing a one to one interview. They are coming to you and asking you for one of the most precious things that you have and that's your vote. And what you should do is go in with the idea of Okay, here is what's important to me. Here are the top two or three or four issues. And when you talk to that candidate, you ask them where do you stand on this issue? Where do you stand on this issue? And where do you stand on this issue?

And it depending upon those answers. That is who you give your vote to, not necessarily the party, but the person that is going to stand up for you with the values that you have.

those unlikely voters. So you get yourself out of the way so that they already know you voted, they can go knock on those doors and get those people out that haven't voting. The voting early is just a part of the game now, I meaning people are saying, man, I'm a traditionalist. I'm only going to vote on election day. Look the game and the rules that change, you've got

to change with it. And by voting early, it allows those campaigns to go to those houses where people have not shown up and spend their money on getting those voters out and not you because you've already banked your vote.

matter in this country. And my ex account or Twitter account, whatever people call it, is at vote Smitherman and that's where people can follow me until next time on Monday.

get on the radar screen for jury duty. If you've got a driver's license, if you pay property taxes, if you pay income taxes, if you have any connection with any type of governmental agency anyway, you are on that list as far as potential jurors. So uh, don't let your don't let the idea of voting stand in your

way of expressing your opinion. And this is your government, this is what you want, and it's up to you to express that 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 fifty AT and T wireless phone. Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five five K. See the talk

station Man B nine. First warning weather forecast Today in the morning rush hour, we're gonna see clear sky's patche fog is possible in a lower forty six. Later on today we're gonna have sunshine bit warmer high seventy six lower forty eight, clear skys throughout most of the day. Tomorrow we're gonna have mostly sunny skies and clear sky's highest seventy seven low of fifty five Right now fifty five degrees fifty five kr. See the talk station Chuck Ingram. How is that traffic from.

have been bringing up to me. So we'll be talking about that one thing. A quick story here about some things that I'm seeing. I talked about the economy earlier where people are kind of pulling back and so on. Well, this story last week saw, you know, when it doesn't absolutely positively have to get there tomorrow. More people are switching to slower delivery options to save money and profits.

At FedEx Corp. And ups are starting to get squeezed as a result of that, because you know, people instead of getting this next day delivery where you're paying extra money for that, people are backing off of that and saying, you know, I really don't need it tomorrow. I don't need it. You know, we'll just do whatever the normal process is. And what I've noticed is that, especially online shopping and stuff, sometimes if you just go the regular way, it gets there just as fast as if you ordered

it overnight. And so a way of economizing people pulling back. These are kind of some of the extras that people when they start squeezing their own bottom line when they look at their paycheck, when they see that their paycheck isn't lasting as long as the month is, this is where those some of those areas where you economize. We've talked about how other things, and that would be whoo of you to kind of take a look at where you're spending your money. You know, is this really all

that necessary? Do I really need that defensive cup of coffee? Why don't I try something, you know, a regular brew or something that you like that looks interesting at home? The cost of brewing your own coffee at home is a heck of a lot cheaper than going to one of these overpriced stores. And you know who I'm talking about. And when you start looking at that in terms of where you can spend your money and how you can squeeze a dollar here and there, goes a long way

to extend that paycheck of yours. So just a little bit of stuff there, it's kind of I found that interesting. People actually starting to save Gosh, do I really need this tomorrow? Maybe not coming up again. We've got Stephen Dunnan when we talk about Constitutional Amendment number two. I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas. Fifty five KRC, the talk station.

flow outside of the system of common schools? And so what we're looking at here, what we're trying to accomplish here is to have a conversation down in Frankfurt to see if we can get some of these educational choice opportunities throughout our commonwealth.

As Stata below, it is proposed that the new section be added to the Constitution General Assembly may provide financial support for the education of students outside the system of common schools. General Assembly may exercise this authority by law, and then they indicate the individual sections of the Constitution that have to be changed by that. So basically it says that you know, I guess more than anything else, it's an opportunity of school choice. Now I have heard some people

selling this as well. Originally this is for people who are of a lower means as an opportunity for them to get their kids into public schools. There's really no plan right now, or there's no format for this as to how the money or how this is going to be done or implemented. At this point. It's just giving the state legislature and the ability to put something into place. Correct, So there's.

We have to have a further conversation among the you know, folks in rural Kentucky where they have a lot of power and say over this issue. What you can do, though, is you can look at the past. You can look at some of the things we've done in the past and how we got here. There were educational opportunity accounts, which were basically just tax credits that you could use sending your child to a private institution or just any institution outside of the common schools, and you would just

get money back on your taxes. You get your tax dollars back to go towards your child's education. And what happened was the Supreme Court found that to be unconstitutional based on some of those sections that are mentioned there and that ballot proposal. And so what we've got to do now is if we want to have these types of programs in Kentucky, which you know, forty eight states have these types of programs, It's not like it's a novel thing. We've got to have this constitutional amendment now.

shortage or improve our public schools. I think those, quite honestly, are probably some scare tactics, because this does nothing at this point other than opening the door to allow some sort of format of school choice.

to some of these folks. When you look at on average public school funding in Kentucky, we spend about eighteen thousand dollars per student, and so you're seeing you're seeing outcomes in the private sector that you're not seeing in the public sector much better outcomes in the private sector than the public And you know, the scare tactics of not having money in our schools is kind of and

it's exactly what it is, the scare tactic. The private schools are outperforming the public schools and they have far less money.

the amount of administrators versus teachers did. I read that the increase in the number of money spent towards administrators, principles, et cetera in these schools has jumped by ninety three percent in the last few years, and yet the amount of teachers and so on has only increased by like forty I don't know if that number is accurate or whatever.

We don't know what we're going to do yet, it would cost the public schools one point one nine billion dollars and as a result, they said they would have to cut nine thousand, eight hundred and sixty nine jobs. When you do the math, that's one hundred and twenty thousand dollars per job. They're not talking about teachers, frontline teachers that they're going to have to cut. They're talking about those high price school administrators that they're going to have to cut.

haven't been updated. And you realize that the number of students in that classroom at twenty twenty two or whatever time is the amount of money per student. You're like, where in the hell is this money going to. It's certainly not going to the infrastructure. It's not going to

the obviously the teachers. It's going someplace. And then going to the books and so on, you got to figure it's going to the administrators and so on, and it's appalling, especially when you look at the test scores and proficiency and so on. It's just a mind boggling.

you make good grades, you'll get Keys money. We have Keys money, and you can take that Keys money to any Kentucky university and we'll literally pay you to go to school, and you can take that money to private university. So it's not like it's a novel thing that we're doing or allowing folks to take money out of their system to go to, you know, a more efficient school school district.

based on home values within a district. And it's a complicated formula, and you know, you spit out a number. And basically we had raised to seek formula in the last legislative session, and I think it's about forty two hundred dollars per student that the state kicks in. The rest of that money I mentioned that eighteen thousand dollars number earlier. The rest of that is your local property tax money coming in and funding the school districts. And so one of the proposals that's out there is to

just allow that seek money to follow the student. So we're talking about forty two hundred dollars, which would leave there about you know, fourteen fifteen thousand dollars in those public schools with no student mind you, you know that money would flow out and so you could actually do things like pay teachers more, or you know, fit to the broken tiles you were talking about, or you know, update the desks with that extra money.

anything that would try to improve that. And that almost seems like where the opposition to this is coming from.

And so if you even look at how some of the gout down their vote, they vote against an amendment like this, despite them being some of the more conservative members. And so that fight is still yet to be had.

You know, we've got to make sure that we are still protecting our public schools and making sure that they run efficiently and do good, but at the same time allow people an opportunity that want to get out of that system and can't otherwise get out because they just don't have the finances for it, to take their tax dollars somewhere else and go get that education they want for their children.

I appreciate Stephen done. He's an attorney, a family law attorney in northern Kentucky and also a state representative giving us some clarity and some talking about this constitutional amendment. You know, a lot of the stuff that is being said about this is not You got to do your own homework. You've got to do a little bit of investigation. You've got to look at some of the pros and

cons and make your own determination. I got to tell you in the Gordon household, initially, when it comes to school choice and what I see as far as the education system, I'm all for school choice and letting parents decide where they want to send their children, and I believe that the money should follow the children. My wife, on the other hand, said, well, I don't know about this. I'm not sure that I like that because it's going to be pulling money away from the public schools and

could create problems there. Well, you know, basically, if you look at the public schools right now, for any parent that is sending their kids to a private school, they are basically I mean, let's face it, if you're paying property taxes and you're not using the system, the system is kind of freeloading off of you, and for you to be able to take some of that money and send your kids where you want to send them to get the best possible education. I see this more as

a competition type of thing more than anything else. And if the public schools are so great and so wonderful, and again this is not a knock against the teachers, I think the teachers are kind of up against it in terms of the administrators and some of the curriculum that these school boards allow. And so when you are handcuffed that way, I'm not so sure that they have as much flexibility and freedom, because you know, it's kind of like one of those things where you talk about

your state representative. They say, well, why, you know, overall Congress is hated and Congress isn't liked and all this sort of stuff, But everybody seems to like their own congressman. And so I think teachers overall get a bad rap. Now, obviously there are good teachers, there are great teachers, and then there are really bad teachers. But overall, teachers are an important component of the education system. And I think a healthy competition there. As far as the education and

what's available to the parents is great. Now in terms of pulling money away from the public schools and stuff like that, that is yet to be determined. They don't know about this, And I think more than anything else, the thing that I would hang my hat on and the most is the fact that this allows a certain amount of competition, and competition is always good. So anyway, I've got to do your own homework on this and

kind of come up with your own decision. Coming up, Well, we'll do some headlines to the bottom of the AAR. I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five krs the Talk station.

final victim, has been recovered from the residence remnants. Police have not identified any of the four victims pulled out of the home later identified to the Kentucky Medical Examiner's Office. They did say that a three year old child standing near the homes back door was rescued and was in the hospital and recovering. Yeah two people are hospitalized after an overnight bar shooting. Newport Police say that the shooting

took place at the bar Sunday morning. It happened approximately one seven am in the area the West eighth Street and Isabella Street. Police say to the group of individuals leaving a bar near the intersection were involved in an altercation which led to a suspect firing a gun and hitting two people. The business that the incident is alleged

to have taken place at was not named by the police. However, the only commercial business of any located in the immediate vicinity is Sena's Cafe, which advertises itself as a bar online and it's listing on Google Maps. Now, you know this is interesting because a lot of times the liquor license is determined by this, and sometimes when an altercation or something happens near a bar or near a facility,

that is the location that is tagged with this. Whether or not those patrons were or those people were at the bar to begin with, it'll be interesting. But they do say in here that people were leaving the bar, so again you can imagine that probably alcohol was involved. Injuries sustained by the two victims are reported, but again

this is not a reflection sometimes the bar itself. It's just more of a reflection again the individual responsibility of the people involved and that would actually get involved here. The injury sustained by the two victims are reported by police being non life threatening. Police said the suspect fled the scene prior to officers arrival and remains at large. Police department says the incident is believed to be an isolated case and that further danger is not believed to

remain imminent to the community by the suspect. Those with information about the shooting are encouraged to call Newport Police at eight five nine two six ' one eight four seven seven. Police department said that those seeking to remain anonymous are permitted to do so, and that is certainly good.

And you know, when you and I can't emphasize enough that when you have an incident at a particular location, because there have been times when I know that in Newport where a fight will start one place and then the people are go down the road, down the street about you know, maybe a block or so, and then get into a bigger altercation in front of another business, and then that business gets tagged with that incident happening at their premises, whereas the incident actually happened up the

street at another location. And so to make sure or to be fair to these bars and restaurants that they don't get tagged with a bad reputation, they need to make clarity as to what is involved in who these people were, where they were patronizing, and whether or not this occurred inside the building and just spilled out into the street. So that's just my two cents worth of it. Coming up, we're going to be talking to VA and talking about some of the stuff that they've got going on.

I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian. My guess will be Carrie Hagen from a Fisher House I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five krs, the talk station, the Socialists who want to move Height thirty nine in the morning. Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five krs the Talk Station. It's my pleasure to introduced since a VA Fisher House manager Carrie Hagen. Welcome to the program.

Senior during a dedication ceremony. The Fishers entered into a public private partnership with the government, allowing Fisher House to construct these homes on government owned land. Subsequently, these homes were gifted to the military or the VA to operate. Their aim is to provide families with a home away from home, enabling to be part of the healing process. While their loved ones admitted. The Cincinnati Via Fisher House opened up in two thousand and one and is located

on the VIA premises. The house is beautifully decorated. It has sixteen private suites, completely a common kitchen, laundry facilities, spacious dining room, and living room area for families to gather and offer each other support and friendship while their loved ones are receiving treatment at the Cincinnati BA Medical Center. It's a wonderful place.

You know, in respect of our other fellow guests that are in the house and the veterans may stay as long as they have a caregiver that can accompany them at all times. While at the Fisher House.

particular hospital. And then of course, as you said, some of these people live forty to fifty miles away and it's very difficult for them to be there and to be with their loved one who's in the medical facility. And so an opportunity like this, especially with our veterans, to be able to either have their family nearby, because again I think one of the big points is is that if you know your loved ones are there and they are there as a support to you, that can't hurt.

I mean, that has to help tremendously the healing process.

last thing on their mind. But because of how they are built, how they are constructed, and the type of personality they have, they are concerned about their family members and to be able to have this facility for their families should be a big sign of comfort for them.

They are very comfortable and that's when they can go over and you know, enjoy take care of their healing process to make them get better and well to go home. Absolutely very good.

but we strive to accommodate all requests for lodging. We have the sixteen room, so each family is allowed one private guest suite to share with a maximum occupancy of three people.

This is something that your family member have earned by putting their life on the line for this country, and it's the least we can do and to provide this. So don't feel as though that you're taking something that would you know, push somebody else out. This is to make sure that your loved one gets the best care possible and that you can provide the support for them. Is that a thing that has to be overcome or do you see that at all?

this house. And you know, not only that because of donations, I'm able to if I'm fool here, I'm able to lodge at a local hotel. So we we've got them covered, you know, as long as they meet the eligibility and we take care of them completely so that they're here one hundred percent for their loved ones.

Or to find out how you can support the military and veterans families of the Cincinnai Fisherhouse, you can call us at five one three four seven five six five seven one and we'll be happy to help you.