I'm right.
Six minutes after seven o'clock Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five krs the Talk station. If you check my Facebook page, you'll know that I have in this segment and Dickerson. She is the co founder and lead organizer for Indivisible of Northern Kentucky. Indivisible and welcome to the program.
Thank you, good morning, good morning.
I want to tell everybody that your name was given to me by Rand Paul's field rep. I don't know if I should say his name, but anyway, you have contacted him, and he suggested that maybe I talk to you to find out, you know, where you guys are coming from, what's on your mind. And we see these Indivisible popped up in the news all the time nationwide, and figured, well, what the heck, I'll find out though, what this is all about?
Uh kind of man, I don't know, Mix.
It up a little bit and see where you're coming from and where I'm coming from.
So here we go.
We talked about it, we talked, we talked about a couple of topics off air when we were setting up the interview, and uh, you know, we were talking about constitutional crisis. King chaos, economy, tariffs, hands off and so on. So, uh, I'll let you start and you tell me what you want to what is Uh I'm going to use Jen Saki's line because I absolutely hate it. But what is top of mind for you?
Oh? My goodness. First off, the person that you're talking about absolutely love. I could sit and talk to him for hours and hours. It's just we you know, a really good guy, get along very well as they had a very respectful relationship for years. Uh huh. So it was his suggestion to me to do this, not the other way around. I want to make that clear. And he just as he said, would you ever do something like that? And I said, sure, right, I will talk to.
Anyone didn't contact me, so.
Well, it's his you know. I think we have to be open to these conversations. I think that you know, in the history of politics anywhere, and if you're not talking to people, if you're not you know, able to have some kind of respectful dialogue, that's when everything breaks down and you have just this animosity, this hatred, this exactly just I think has gotten completely out of control. I mean, people have cut off family members and lifelong friends and you know, things of that nature.
It does make your Christmas card list a lot shorter, so it really postage now.
Well in travel too, you know, you cut down a lot of travel. I hate it for the impact emotionally the total has on a lot of people. I also understand it because it can be very hurtful. But you know, like I said, if some if you and I can sit down and have a conversation, or if I can sit down with you know, I've been in meetings in Mitch McConnell's office, in Ran Paul's office, in Thomas Mancy's office. It's over the course of since from twenty seventeen until now.
I'm always open to those conversations to see, you know, is there a common ground we can reach, Is there is there a middle option where both parties can you know, feel good. I don't believe we'll ever get there on everything,
but that doesn't mean there isn't there. Yeah, that doesn't mean there isn't a snooting point, right, So I would say to you, would you know when if you went to any of the hands off protests that were across the country, they were in last count that I saw, I forget how many hundreds there were, but there were protests in every single state. Their estimates are anywhere from three and a half to five million people out in
the streets at these various events. And you know it, the reason it was so generalized, this hands off was because everybody has a different thing that's their priority, right based on their your own life, your needs, whatever is
going on. And so you would see signs about, you know, hands off my social security, hands off my healthcare, hands off my education, my books, and then there were all there's always going to be called about, you know, following the constitution and hands off our traditional democratic you know, democratic republic institutions that have been around for you know, forever a number so I think all of these issues, depending on jud I'm going to determine what's their number one issue.
We know Ann Dickerson, who is the co founder and lead organizer for Individual Northern Kentucky. You know, when you talk about hands off social security, hands off Medicare, hands off healthcare, hands off, you know, a lot of that can be used by conservatives such as myself, to say I want your hands off my social security. In terms of taxing it, I don't think that that should count in terms of my income if I choose to earn any other income once.
I passed the age of sixty five.
I don't think the federal come on, I don't think the federal government should be messing around.
With our our medical information.
And the fact that you know this push years ago to put everything online. I don't know if you were listening in the previous half hour, but Dave Hatter, who is a cybersecurity expert, talks about how vulnerable all.
These things are.
So you go and you have you know, it's great that you can have your medical records and you can go to one doctor and then they can pull up your medical records through whatever service they have. But anytime you're transmitting that stuff, there are vulnerabilities and somebody getting
a hold of your medical records. I'm not sure that everything that you would want me to know, or would I want you to know what doctors I've seen for what reason, what medications I'm on, or any of that sort of stuff which can be used, as you've seen in the past, for other reasons. So when you're talking about hands off, it goes both ways.
So, oh, I agree with you, but I would I would say that the specific issues that you're talking about. You know, anybody that I know personally would probably agree with you that on that aspect of things. You know, I don't believe that Social Security should be taxed, and I don't believe our medical records should be privy to anyone. There's a reason that we have hippo laws and they need to be maintained.
But you also have you know this, you know, nailed.
Down even further. You have this issue across the country with laws being written and attempted to be passed to get the medical records specifically for women of child bearing age that go to gynecologist and wanting to know.
Issue on that issue. Okay, And I know where you're heading with that. I'm sure having to do with a pro choice and that.
But no, I really wasn't. I was just trying to say within what you were saying. You know, it can't be so many of these issues. You know, when I was grown up, there's a common phrase about because this is such a heavily German Catholic area, there was a there was a common phrase of somebody being a cafeteria Catholic where they would pick and choose as oppose to completely falling a faith, and I feel like that's a
lot of what's happening now as well. You know, whether you're talking about the Constitution, whether you're talking about the overreach that that you mentioned with healthcare. You know, we can't it's either all or nothing on these things. We can't just pick and choose. While everybody can have privacy for their healthcare, but not if you're a woman of child bearing age.
Wait a minute, Well know and that and that is important well to a certain extent. I can see where some of those records and some of that information is necessary, and there ought to be a way of having a specific number or a specific identifier that is not tied to a particular individual. And I don't know if it's some sort of a clearinghouse. When you go in, you're
randomly assigned a number. That number goes to somebody else who isn't connected with you know, uh, you know, you got an intermediary, You got a point A, the patient, and then point C where this information is gathered, and a clearinghouse point B where the individual act or the individual person's name is eliminated from that. Because that's where we get into people of child bearing age. How many miscarriages.
How many you know, what health factors there are when we start hearing about the infant mortality rate, when we start hearing about well them and in some cases that the first time they do anything in terms of going to see a doctor is right around the time when they are especially if they're pregnant, that they don't go
until the seventh month. And I just learned from a group that I'm associated with or familiar with that's a called care net and who talks about you know, stepping in and helping people that when they're in that crisis to know that there's other options that they said the insurance laws kick in to where you are actually covered for.
That's that's stupid.
I mean, if we're trying to make sure that the infant mortality rate is lower, we want to make sure that babies are a birth of healthy, the mothers are healthy. That should all begin at day one and not at
the seventh months. So those kinds of things. So, you know, the CDC used to come out with all these statistics about, oh, you know, how many kids drown in a five gallon bucket because you know, toddlers, because they're so top heavy, they fall in that and drown and to get all this facts and information so that we are more informed, I think is good. But where you don't protect the privacy rights, that's where we have a problem. And we need to take a break here real quick. So my
guest is Anne Dickerson. I appreciate you spending time with us, and we carry this through the break and Dickerson co founder and lead organizer for Individual Northern Kentucky. I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas fifty five KR see the talk station fifty five the talk station.
Coming up on seven to twenty in the morning.
Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five KRS the talk station and what appropriate bumper music for this segment. And I know that you've talked to some of your friends and you say, how dare you go on with that rabid right wing conservative nut job? And I know my people are saying the same thing. So we've got to cater a little bit to their needs because obviously, if we're agreeing on anything, they're gonna say, what the hell did you go on there for in the first place.
So that's so funny. Actually, everybody in my circles, like teering me on, saying, go, you know, just it wasn't good, I promise you, but it was more like, you know not. Not everybody is open to these kinds of conversations. So if you want to get into it, pick a topic and let's run with it.
And it's up to you. You're the guest. You're the guest.
Okay, all right, Okay, we gotta give we gotta give you.
We got to give your people and my people some red meat here, Okay.
Okay, So I'm gonna I'll jump into probably the one of the reddest meat areas that we have right now, because it's so hot in the news, which is what's going on with these immigration cases okay, and people not receiving due process, which violates the fifth and the fourteenth Amendments.
Okay.
You know, so it was so important to our founding fathers that they put habeas corpus write an article one. So you know, I'm real curious as to this this fever pitch that we've gotten to on immigration, because in fact, we are all products of immigration, right unless you have indigenous blood running through your veins of the native people that were here before we ever, you know, took over this land. How can you look back through history and complain about something that is very much a part of
the American dream. I mean when I grew up, you know, and I'm fifty seven, when I grew up, I grew up with the understanding that, you know, we had this self aggrandized belief that everybody comes to the United States because this is where you have freedom, and this is where anybody can become anything they want to be, and they can work themselves up. And now it's like, you know, not only are we wanting to push everybody out, we're wanting to lock ourselves in. All right, let's unpas.
Let's unpack that for a moment.
Okay, you do agree that the reason that you have a country is you have a country because of of borders and there is a certain process by which people are supposed to enter a particular country. I don't care what it is in terms of the legal way versus.
The illegal way way correct? Correct, all right?
And if there's a flawed immigration system that needs to be worked on and that needs to be fixed, but you can't tell me that a reasonable person would think that over the last previous four years that having millions of people flooding across our border in what I would refer to as an invasion. How many people in the military got kicked out because they wouldn't take the job. How many people lost their job because they wouldn't take the job. And yet we have millions of people in
this country. We don't know who they are. They weren't vetted, we don't have a proper identification for them, and they're not facts. We don't know what healthcare they have, and they're roaming our country. How do we consider ourselves a country if we are going to allow ourselves, quite honestly, in my term, to be invaded, I.
Would say that the numbers that you're using are grossly inmpleted. Number one, number two, I would say that the vast majority of immigrants have been maligned with these accusations of the kinds of people that they are. In fact, you know, undocumented people in this country. The most recent statistic I could find, you know, came from twenty twenty to put ninety six point seven billion dollars worth of taxes into the federal, state and local system.
You know, now, what are the numbers, what are the numbers that are pulled out of that system. Because you hear the numbers of sixty billion dollar deficit in the City of New York and the billions of dollars in California that are spent on housing illegal immigrants and putting them up in hotels and so on.
How do you offset that? What is the corresponding number?
So I don't know what you're looking for there, because.
Well, you've got it.
You got you've got you've got people that put into the system and you have people that take out of the system. So if you're saying that of the immigrants in this country, they put in ninety six billion dollars, well what is the immigrant population taking out the form of medical tuition, home and assistance from the Social Security system or whatever network there is out there.
See, but they're here's the thing. Undocumented individuals don't have Social Security numbers. They can't get a Social Security number. What they get in order to file taxes is a tax identification number. In fact, and everyday citizen can get a tax identification number and not use their sois Security number to file their taxes. So you know that's I think what you're what you're quoting is off in terms
of that. I'll use the common day, everyday term waste broad and abuse because you know, Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, all of those social safety nets programs that you're talking about and notorious really have very low rate of fraud. You know. Compare compare nine minutes, Yes, compare it to the one area in the government that OS is not touched yet, which is the Pentagon and the military industrial complex.
Which has sailed its last seven audits, the one.
Area of the government that we spend the most amount of money on and they haven't touched it.
And were the smallest chunks of the pie.
My guest, there's Anne Dickerson, co founder and the organizer of Indivisible Northern Kentucky. I'm going to go off script here. We were scheduled to the bottom of the hour. I'm going to carry you over past the news and we'll get into this even more. But uh again, before we go, I just want to I want to, you know, make the mention of the fact that yes, there is waste, fraud and abuse in the military industrial complex that has been talked about, and quite honestly, there isn't a single agency.
And again people are probably tired of hearing me say this, but you probably not heard it. I am a recovering accountant, So when you talk about there is not an agency, there is not a division of the federal government that could pass an audit, including the irs, and that to me is just astounding and criminal in my position. So anyway, we'll pick this up on the other side of the break. My guest again and Dickerson, co founder, lead organizer, well Lord,
lead organizer for Indivisible Northern Kentucky. I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five KRC, the talk station.
Fifty five KRC dot com. A Minute of Hope is brought to you by the Linder Center of Hope Lenders Center of Hope dot.
Seven thirty one in the morning. Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five k SEE the talk station, speaking with Ann Dickerson. She is co founder and lead lead organizer for Indivisible Northern Kentucky. And thank you so much for hanging with us through the break. Certainly appreciate it. So we were talking about doze and going in and looking at these different organiz different size of the government. I mean you you mentioned you no, you sat in
conversation with Rand Paul. You're probably familiar with Ran Paul's Festivust report on an annual basis where he goes through different departments of the government talks about waste, fraud and abuse and some of these areas that probably should be cut.
And I think the last one that he did there was about one point was at one point one trillion dollars in cuts that could be done that nobody would even miss because some of this waste is there you gotta I mean, you mentioned the fact that even the I mentioned the fact that even they're in the department of the government. I don't care what department, cabinet members or whatever. I mean, cabinet departments cannot pass an audit. So number one, we as taxpayers ought to be demanding
that and to waste fraud and abuse. I mean, if you don't file your tax returns properly, if you tell the IRS, I can't pass an audit and just go away leave me alone.
That ain't gonna work.
So I think, oh yeah, I wish we as taxpayers could demand that of our government, and I think we could probably agree on that.
Now we'll probably dis and.
I will and I will tell you this as well, there is no one on any spectrum, regardless of party position or what have you, there is no one that thinks that making government more efficient less wasteful is a bad pity.
The bigger problem is the process right now that it's that things are happening as opposed to actually getting rid
of waste, bard and abuse. However, if you look at the first quarter numbers that came out compared to last year, you will find that the money that was spent in the same time period last year under different administration to now, while we've fired or laid off, I had lost count of the number of federal workers shut down buildings which shuts down you know, all the all the management, all the money that goes into managing a building and keeping it open and running and viable for people to use.
We've spent one hundred and eighty four billion more dollars this year than last year in the same time period.
Okay, so how are we How are we eliminating waste, broaden abuse?
If we're spending more money and yet we have left things that we're spending money on by already shutting all these things down and getting rid of all these.
People, then the question could be come to you? Is why all the protests? Then? You know, because if nothing has changed, if it was okay last year, what is the.
Big deal now? Now?
I will agree, Come on, you're being oversimplified and you about that. I've been I've been at these protests where I mean people. You know, I'm going to tell you one story in particular, a woman come up to me crummy, I mean, tears streaming down her face. Had never met her,
never seen her before anything else. And what it happened was we were actually out in front of Thomas Mancy's office on Buttermill Pike and her husband had picked up their child from school, was taking their child to an her school activity, and he called her at home and said, honey, they're out on Buttermilk Pike. And she immediately threw a bunch of stuff in her car and drove up to
meet us. And you know, because I was back and forth between people and everything, I had to kind of wait till the end of the protest to specifically go up to her. Once I you know, she joined us, I was like, are you okay, And once she was yes, I'm okay, I'm just this is so amazing, And I
was doing all my other stuff. I wanted to find out what her story was, and here come to find out she's a federal worker who lost her job, you know, and was so moved that people were concerned enough to be out there.
Did she get the buy out?
I don't know. I didn't ask about that. All I know is that she said that, you know, she lost her job.
All right, we got you know, as our producer said, we were on a timeline here. So coming up, we'll talk a little bit more about this and again talk more about this issue. My guest is Anne Dickerson, co founder, lead organized lead organ Why can't I say that right?
Lead organized lead organizer for Indivisible Northern Kentucky. I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five KRS, the talk station fifty five KRC, the talk station Spring is here, and that means why station you continue in our conversation with Anne Dickerson, co founder and lead organizer for Indivisible Northern Kentucky. Before the break, we talked about federal layoffs. You talked about this person that showed up one of the protests, and it was about a month and a
half ago. At was it Rand Paul's office, I believe, okay, and this federal worker came up and was in tears that she had lost her job. Now, on a weekly basis, there is on Thursday, there is the initial job claims report that comes out, the unemployment numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and whatever. And they keep saying week after week after week that the layoffs in the federal government aren't starting to show up in these numbers yet.
Number One, because in a lot of instances, if they do have that eight month severance package, they are still technically employed. They're getting a check on a periodic, you know, a normal paycheck until the eight months, which gives them plenty of time to go out and find another bit of employment. I've heard stories about people that are up at retirement age and they said, oh man, what a gift from heaven. I was getting ready to retire and
I get this buyout package. It gives me a paycheck for the next eight months, and how great is that?
So we have that, and so the federal lager.
Have you got to anybody that's actually started receiving it.
I don't know if they have or not, but that if they have not been receiving it, then they would qualify for filing for unemployment, and according to the numbers, that isn't showing up yet. Now I know that some of the federal workers, I don't know if all of them are in some sort of a separate system that it handles their unemployment. And the numbers from that are
that on a weekly basis, that's gone. I think one week it went up five hundred and thirty four versus another week where it was up two hundreds.
So I don't know.
That's a that's a question that again, if we didn't have spoon fed regurgitators in the mainstream media, but people that would actually go out and do investigative news, we would know these things instead of you and I having to dig up these numbers ourselves.
Now I agree with you on that as well. I love independent media.
But anyway, we only got about three minutes left here, so I want to, you know, make sure that I want to say.
I do want to say too. You know, even though we have you know, met in these offices, we have protested in front of these offices and other places. I do like to give credit where credit is due, and tech did the person that connected US after ran Paull's speech on the floor where he stood up against the tariffs, and he stood up against the breakdown of the three coequal branches of government, stating also that he did not want to live in a place that was governed by
an emergency rule. And I think this is a very scary time for people because of all the chaos, because there was no plan. I mean, if I owned, if I was going to take over a business, of course, of course you would want to, you know, check each department, see who you were going to keep, who you were going to keep, you know, try to find out where the areas are that you could save money, where you could make things efficient, so on and so forth. But you don't take a sledgehammer to it with no plan.
And then you know, you fire people, get tired back, then you buy ore people again, you know, and the terriffs on again, off again, on again, off again. I don't even want to talk to my money manager I because it's going to put me in a state of anxiety that I may never come out of.
I mean, I will finish up with this. I'll finish up with this. And that you can go through corporate corporation after corporation. After corporation, you can go through the United Auto Workers, you can go through the people that were terminated on the Keystone XL pipeline. You can talk to people that got shown that will actually offer of a buyout from Cincinnati Bell when they merged and transferred
and whatever. You see all these different corporations, and there's always that several people I know some that were like, you know, eight weeks shy of that, fifteen years or whatever, so they're fully vested or whatever. And that happens in corporate business all the time, and it's not right there. But nobody's protest and whining I don't mean whining, but protesting about.
That you do, but you don't want to say that.
Well, I mean, again, you know these are kind of the terms that you know people will understand and so on. But again I rail at you know, the fact that you know, you go to some of these and they've they've gone through these offices in Washington and even in corporate America itself. You go into how many people are working from home? And I don't nobody's going to convince me that people that there are some, but there are not everybody that's more productive working at home than working
in an office. And the fact that you go into some of these federal buildings and six percent of the people are there, but if you discount all the maintenance people and everything, you're down to a three percent people that are actually working there.
I don't think that's right.
I mean, doctors have to go into the office, nurses have to go into the office, all the you know, the police and fire have to go into their office. I think the least taxpayers can do and workers can do is go into their office and.
Do the job that they were hired to do. So again, uh, I.
Don't know if we solve the world's issues here, but I would certainly like to talk to you a little bit more at some.
Point in time, and at any time.
I think if we can eliminate the idea that everybody on my side is a Nazi, that the fact that we should be, you know, taking and torching Tesla dealerships and calling for the assassination of Elon Mosk or Donald Trump, you gotta admit that's going a lot too far.
So well, I.
Do not advocate for violence in any way, shape or form when it comes to any of this. The same way that I was, you know, the same way that I was shocked when you know, uh people my kent and you know, and now you if I have not heard anything about what you just mentioned as far as calling for people to be killed, I would never agree with that, no matter who it was or what the circumstance was. I don't agree with that in any way, shape or form. What we do is protests. Everything we
do is well planned out. Everybody knows the rules, you know, knows the right way to behave in public settings. I'm a real stickler for that kind of stuff.
That's why we have a first. That's why we have the first.
It is agreed and we need to keep it instead of you know, now, we've got measures even here, hee. Just this past session they passed a bill limiting that. You know, they're trying to limit protests. They're trying to limit people's ability to exercise free speech.
Obviously, you've never gone to a city council meeting or a county commissioner meeting in any of the counties and you try to talk about some issues there. Yeah, there is now in Campbell County, the People's Republic of Campbell County, there is a Kevin Gordon rule where you're only allowed to speak for two minutes.
So I'm proud of that.
So anyway, and it's been interesting, and we've got to talk some more, and we're really late for a break, and I certainly appreciate your time, and sure we'll be in touch. And Dickerson, co founder and lead organizer for Indivisible Northern Kentucky. I'm Kevin Gordon in for Brian Thomas, fifty five KRC, The talk
Station fifty five KRC Best Rus