Don't want to be.
I've got a flung show on seven hundred WLW. Frozen. That's how we are this morning. Frozen. Highways were astoundingly great this morning, at least for me. Anyway. I know there's some trouble spots out there still, but I mean, think about it. Ohio is something like, I think in excess of forty three thousand lane miles of roads forty three thousand, So that's like in two days they plowed almost two times around the globe. That's crazy. Matt Bruding is here from ODOT and he is the guy in
charge of all the plows. Mac, good morning.
How are you You are way overestimating my ability?
No, no, no, you're only in charge when the plows don't do their job, then we yell at Matt. He doesn't take credit when everything goes. It's seems like, are you guys all caught up?
Now?
I wouldn't say caught up. We're certainly dealing with a lot of blowing and drifting issues, but the highways are looking a lot better. There are a lot of spots that are looking a lot better, but we still have a long way to go to get everything back to perfect where we'd like it to be. So we still need people to be careful out there if they're driving around.
Yeah, we'd get calls obviously at the station and especially over in the newsroom, people saying, I don't know what you guys are saying. There's areas of the roads the highways that all of a sudden, it just looks like it hasn't been plowed at all. And then in prace what causes that all of a sudden the middle there's there's just a bunch of snow, do you guys miss that is that stuff that's falling off of vehicles?
What is it?
Probably stuff that's falling off of vehicles? And then again a lot of blowing and drifting from the piles on the side of the road that we're seeing. But yeah, I mean I drove down to Cincinnati from Chilicofee yesterday evening and counted dozens of cars that had you know, snow still on top of them that was blowing off and then with you know, scatter across the highway. And so we need people to you know, get that stuff off your Car's a visibility issue, but obviously it can
be a roadway issue. And with it being as cold as it is, that's not going to melt anytime soon, So we need people to do that, do their part. And then, yes, mother in nature, we see her to quit blowing the snow back across the road. That would be very helpful as well.
All right, so we are now in the Arctic deep freeze now for at least the next couple of weeks. What challenge does that pose to you, guys?
Well, the main weapon that we use to try to de ice roads is salt, and salt becomes less effective when temperatures get below twenty we're obviously well below that, and as you pointed out, we're going to stay below that for a while, so that is really going to hamper our ability to clear these roads off as quickly as we would like to if it were say in the mid twenties. One thing that will help us, though, is the sun. We got a lot of sun yesterday
and I think you're seeing the results of that. We're hopeful that that will continue today and we'll be able to get these roads even better. But we also just need the wind to calm down. You know, it doesn't take much wind to blow this powdery snow around, and that's what we're seeing as well in other areas. So if that's going to be a challenge and drivers are going to just have to be extra alerts because conditions can change very quickly when you're out there in these type of elements.
All right, so walk us through through Matt burning. What you guys, what odat did the response timeline? National Weather Service first issues a winter storm warning that went an effect on Thursday, if not Friday, and that first twenty four hours Saturday. Okay, we waited for some snow. May got a little bit of it, but the real stuff didn't start here in Cincinnati anyway until late afternoon on Sunday through late Sunday, So it just it started coming
down and buckets. At that point, what point do you shift from pre treatment to full snow snow removal operation.
Well, let me back the clock up even more. Every Monday afternoon we have a big call with the National Weather Service and our private weather vendor and all of our managers and folks across the state of Ohio. We do it every Monday afternoon, and so this particular last Monday afternoon, they were telling us like, look, there's going to be actually I guess it was Tuesday, because last Monday was Martin lusking to day. Yeah, but they were telling us, you know, this is going to be an
impactful storm coming later in the week. We had another call later in the week to kind of just reset everybody, to make sure we all had the latest information. And like you said, Saturday, we were out kind of trying to get ahead of it. In some areas of the state, we were pre treating roads, but in other areas of the state, you just have your crews out ahead of it.
That is the pre treatment. And so I know when I was looking at our plow tracking software in house, there were a lot of plows and I'm sure people saw this as well where they were driving around Saturday afternoon. Plous were staged along the road. They were on their route, ready to go when those first flakes started falling. And so we do that because we want to make sure we're out ahead of it. And then of course it's around the clock throughout the duration of the storm, and
they're still out there. They haven't stopped really since probably sometime either Friday night or Saturday morning, depending on the location.
All Right, so you guys are throwing down salt at what point, how many instanes before you drop the blade.
Oh, they'll drop the blade here, you know, right away, as soon as there's measurable snows to be pushed. They also don't drop a ton of salt when they're pushing that snow. And then we'll add in some things because those cold temperatures limit the ability of the salt to work. They'll use a variety of tools like calcium chloride. We use magnesium chloride. There's some products that use beat sugar beet derivatives to try to activate that salt at lower temperatures.
So all of those things are in the tool belt, and we're using everything to try to make sure we can stay ahead of this winter storm.
What do you guys use from a technology standpoint, Matt Breening. You know, here in Cincinnati we unveiled the GPS plowtrack app, which from all intensive purposes, we're pretty critical of them in the city, and that's not you guys at the City of Cincinnati. It looks like it worked really well and people are like, hey, my road getting plowed or it's not plowed yet, and it seems to work really really well. How long have you guys been on that technology.
So we've used that for what I've been an ODETT for almost eleven years, and I don't think it was too long after I got there that we did a research project with a I think it was the University of Akron. We did a research project on some kind of a plow tracking software that we built in house with them, and we continue to use that. It's really beneficial to our managers to kind of be able to see what conditions are like. It's not just a tracker.
It comes with the cameras that are in the dash of the vehicles, so we can see what those look like. And that's what I and my fellow public information officers use to show everybody in those conditions on social media posts.
Nice. So Cincinnati's only ten years Cincinnatial only ten years behind Columbus in the state.
Good. Well, there are a lot of communities that do those live tracking things. You know, it's an investment. I'm sure, I'm sure it's not. I don't know what it costs. I'm sure it's not cheap to do those kinds of things. So you have to look at those and weigh those. I mean, I know other states like Indiana, will they put that stuff on their five to one one websites. So there's just a variety of options for people out there.
It just depends on what level of investment you're willing to do and what you think the returnament investment is. We certainly think that there's a return on it for us to be able to manage those in house and be able to see what the conditions are in real time for our managers.
What about temperature censors, those embedded in the highway and how you have out there.
We have road weather information stations across the state. They're called ARWISK stations because of course at O DOOT we have to have an acronym for literally every absolutely actually, so that's an acronym, so yeah, in and of itself. So there are about two hundred of those across the state of Ohio and they will give us a lot of good data for pavement conditions, temperatures, you know, moisture content,
things like that. That's very helpful for arm An interest to decide what, you know, what kind of materials we're going to use to what level. You know, each of our plows are equipped with very high tech technology to be able to adjust exactly how much salt they need to be putting out per lane mile, so we can dial that in into you very precise with with the amount of material that we're putting down.
Yeah, gotcha. He's Matt Bruney with ODOT, our former colleague here at seven hundred w W and then he got smart started working for the stake making that big cash. Right now, he's the guy in charge all the snowplows and you know, always working to catch up of course with snow dress and everything else. But now we're facing two weeks of sub zero temperatures in regard to that too,
What changes relative that? What's your strategy like now with no snow forecast but rather these these bitterly cold temperatures as far as keeping the roadways free of black ice, and is that even possible?
It's an ongoing thing. I mean you just have to constantly stay on top of it. Same with that blowing and drifting. I mean we our folks know where those spots are that are you know that generally see that blowing and drifting snow, and of course it's just you know, trying to stay on top of it and keep making passes, keep treating and keep pushing any salt or any snow that accumulates on the roadway, keep putting the salt down. You just keep on it until the conditions improved to
the point where you don't have to. So I would imagine we will have plow and crews out on the road definitely throughout this week, maybe even into the weekend. We'll see probably not to the level obviously that we had on Sunday at the height of the storm, and even most of the day yesterday. We were at the height of the storm, about twelve hundred fift the crews out across the entire state of Ohio and that's pretty much an all call, and now we're down to about
one thousand. So in some areas we've been able to reduce the number of folks out on the road, but they'll stay out of twelve hour shifts around the clock until the job is completely done and we're confident that the roads are safe.
Yeah, Matt Brooding, you know you'll be driving all of a sudden it's like the road's fine, then it's not. And that is because we've got this wonky thing between the state and between local municipalities and counties. Are that matter. I think that's confusing for a lot of drivers as who's response for what peaches a piece of roadway.
Yeah, and I'm glad you asked that. So, I mean ODT is responsible for all the state and US routes outside municipalities, and all of the interstates in Ohio except for the Ohio Turnpike. The Turnpike is a separate entity. They have their own crews. Your city streets are taken care of by your local municipality. They're also township roads and county roads that County Engineer's Office takes care of. Everybody has their network of roads that they maintain and
take care of. ODAD being one of those. Ours is about forty three thousand lane miles, as you said at the top of the show, and so it's an ongoing effort to take care of what we have to do. Sometimes you will see those, you know, changing conditions, and not just at municipal boundaries, but every plow has a
dedicated route that it goes on. And so if you're you know, going from one plow route where maybe the plow is been ahead of you about a half an hour and assault has started to activate and treat and you cross over to another plow route, where that plow might be on the other end of their route or
back of the garagery filling with salt. That plow route might be covered over where you are, depending on if it's spelling still, so you can see those changes not just at a county or a political municipality boundary, but even at a plow route boundary as well.
Now, yeah, so when it changed, like wow, they just decided to stop right here. No, it's because jurisdiction. Is there a lot of communication between you guys in local municipalities accounties.
There's not really too many opportunities for that. I mean, I think they do stay in touch in some regards, but I mean to be able to say, hey, I'm going to put a plow at this spot, you put your plow at that same spot at the same time. That is really hard to do because you know, again, they're they're constantly everybody's constantly going out there, and then of course you've got to come back and refill with fuel and salt, and so somebody's got to take a
bathroom break every once in a while. You're going to shift change. I mean, there's all kinds of reasons why it would be very hard to sync up every plow in the state of Ohio to make sure that you don't have any issues while you're driving. So that's why I should come to the front. Drivers pay extra attention
to these conditions. You know, things can change very quickly, and that's why I mean, you should never be not paying attention to the road, but in conditions like this, it's even more important that you do.
Yeah, because in a blank of an eye, right, you hit a little patch of icets, and it's not a guarantee that the roads are going to be completely clear. So just FYI, you still have to kind of pay attention to this stuff. So we have ten to twelve inches accumulations. We had that big storm late last year. Of course too, we're seeing ice build up, so we
talked about what the strategy is going to be. We've got another what two weeks roughly of sub freezing temperatures forecast, what's the stockpile status for the salt, the calcim covernate, all that stuff, and we're going to make it through the season.
So before this storm, we had about four hundred and thirty seven thousand tons of salt under roof at ODOP facilities across the state of Ohio. I don't have the new number yet for what we've been able to put down for this particular storm, but I'm sure we ate into that pretty well. The advantage that ODOT has maybe over other entities is the large storage capacity, you know, and the ability to move as resources around the state.
If we really really burnt a pinch, so we begin the winner with about eight hundred thousand tons, and then throughout the winner we're using that stockpile. Now we can get refilled with additional resource is if we need to. We've got some contracts that we can leverage to try to get some salt from other areas if we absolutely we're in a pinch. I don't think we're going to be in a situation where we're going to be you know, well, guys, we're out of salt. Sorry, I can't do anything about it.
Our folks in o DOT Central office that do the purchasing are really good at working with these suppliers to get things. But you know, we've got salt from Cleveland's Fairport. Those are the mines here in Ohio. We get salt from Ontario, we get salt from Louisiana. So we have options that we can leverage certainly if we need to.
Okay, that's good because you start hearing that going, wow, we're throwing a lot of salt done. Are we going to run out? Because we heard a couple of years ago there's a problem locally we had a municipality doing that and there couldn't treat the roads at all. So with all of this cold weather, all of the chemicals going down on the roadways, all the plot blades that are touching the forty three thousand miles plus the surfaces, are we going to have an especially bad pothole season
coming up? Do you know that? Matt? Can you tell us how bad the pothole season will be in just a couple short months.
Well, I can tell you. When you get these very cold temperatures and you've got a lot of moisture on the you know, you know, snow, rain, all that moisture and stuff on the roadways, and that seeps down in those cracks and it's freezing in all these conditions. We get a nice little warm up, all of that's going to contract and melt, and I guarantee you're going to see a lot of potholes popping when we get a
little bit of a warm up here. So yes, that's something that we're going to obviously need to be watching for. You know, pothole season for us is typically you know, February through about April or so. It's a little harder to address them because most of the asphalt plants that make the black top that we put down, they are not open in these colder temperatures, so you have to use a temporary patch to make those repairs, and those don't exactly last forever either, so it's a constant battle
to keep up with those. It's kind of like a game of whack a mole almost literally, but you know, so, yeah, I would expect if we see some warmer temperatures, we'll get a big round of potholes. It'll be popping up all over the state of Ohio and.
That we'll be complaining about that. Who's response for the breakdown? When when you see a vehicle on the side of the road, it's stranded, stuck whatever, you guys still have to plow. Who moves that stuff? Is it like a tow contractor you guys just push it all the way with a plow?
Yeah, so a lot of times we'll you know, we just wait for a tow truck to come and get back that we work with law enforcement to try to arrange those you know things. Obviously, law enforcement checks on those vehicles just to make sure it's not somebody that's in need of assistance. But yes, those would typically get towed off the side of the highway and not something we'd push around with the plow.
I think that would be the next step. I mean, in a snow emergency. Really, I think that'd be a good like for the for the men and women who you know, drive the plow is like, well, okay, if occasionally once in a while I get to push a cart of the way, that's pretty cool.
Well, I mean, I won't say it's probably never happened. I'm sure somewhere in a pinch that's happened. You know. We we've certainly used plows for emergency situations. I know you've probably seen the story today from over the weekend, our guy Joe Estes who was able to escort that ambulance Cincinnati Children's Hospital from over in Anderson Township, And what a great story that is. So yes, we have situations where certainly we get called into special duty.
Yeah, Joe ESEs making. I think that's the best feel good story of the bitterly cold and Snowmageddon that we just had. As Joe Esta, he's the plowd truck driver from Odd who paved the way for an ambulance to get from Anderson Township for a sick kid to Cincinnati children. How does that not warm you up on a cold day like this?
And what a humble guy too. I mean, look, he was, you know, and I think he is a hero. And I think a lot of people would agree with me, but I think all of our pod drivers are heroes. But Joe has a special spot, you know for just jumping right in Justin Kimp, who's our manager there into
Hamilton County Garage. He's right there with him. I think they're both heroes because when Justin got that phone call, he didn't as take He went straight to Joe and said, look, this is the mission we got to go and nobody, nobody blinked. They all just went and took action and got it done. And uh, that's that's just an emblematic of the amazing people that we have at the Higre Department.
Of transportation. Uh, they just want to get the job done, and not just because they care about you know, their families who drive on these roads, but they care about everybody who's out there. And so yeah, it's a great story. I'm super proud of everybody involved in that situation, and I'm really glad that the uh that the baby's going to be able to do well.
Yeah, who made that call? Was it Children's?
Was it?
How did that wind up?
Yes?
Yes, the way I understand it is, uh, Cincinnati Children's their their transport team was trying to figure out how they were going to get the ambulance over to the hospital in those awful conditions. They made a phone call and ended up getting looped into our Hamilton County garage and just made the ask. And our folks absolutely were right on it, and yep, absolutely when you need us,
where do you need us? Got it arranged. They were there in about twenty minutes from when I'm told, and met the ambulance and made the escort, picked up the child and brought it back to Cincinnati Children's Hospital where he's now getting some care. And it's a great story. I mean, you just be able to help out in situation like that, you know, had that not happened. Talking to the people of Cincinnati children, they certainly think they're you know, you know, who knows what the outcome they
have done in that situation. We don't want to think about that. We're just glad that it worked out well and that we were able to play a role in that.
That's an awesome story too. They saved the life of a baby bike applowing the way for the ambulance to get him. It's like from some sort of Hallmark movie. You know, Marty Breneman as a statue of his dead ass in front of Great American Ballpark. He's never saved a baby's life. Why don't we get something like that together for Joe asties. Maybe I don't know, some sort of a picture, a sculpture, something, and put it next to the salt them. What about the joe Asty salt
them in Hamlin County. I'll get it named after him. Let's do that.
Yeah, I'm all for it to that. Joe's a great guy. He's a great guy, and he would be the first to tell you we would not want to have a salt now named after him. But Danny and I'm gonna. I'm gonna with that suggestion to some ears.
Will he wants to know if Joe Esty will plow the literally five hundred feet from his palatial estate here and ken Wood to the front door of the station so he can get to work on time.
Today, I will ask, But I don't know. I don't. I assume Willy doesn't live on a state or US RU outside of a municipality. Maybe he does. That's where we that's where we could pick him up.
Yeah, but that probably that probably would not dissuade Willy from trying to get you to do that. What your jurisdiction is now, Matt Bruning, our buddy over at O Doc, thanks so much for coming on the show this morning. I appreciate. I'm glad you do him well.
Back at you, sir.
There you go, my former colleague, the legendary Matt Bruning on the show this morning. Hopefull your questions. Answer. We're looking good right now, just cold, Scott Sloan seven hundred ww yeah, that's the numbers only with you seven hundred WL dominator. Hope you're staying warm now. The real fun beginnings right two weeks in this two weeks get on that Southwest flight with the new seat maps can get your butt down to where it's warm, that's for sure.
So dealing with the snow, our house got about thirteen inches, maybe a little bit more, I don't know, and we just moved to new house. So I'm ind this snowblower that I bought, it was a close out snowblowed torope back in the day. And I probably had this thing for fifteen years. And work's great, you know, gas fired up snow. But I'm not a big one. I think it's I don't even know. Was it twenty four inches whatever it might be. I don't know. Size doesn't matter.
It's the user. It's the user, not the snowblower. And so obviously I have, you know, trying to keep up on the mechanics of the thing. I'm not in admittle, not a small engine or big engine guy for that matter. You know, I deal with like wood and stuff and plumbing and electrical, but not not that. But you don't know if I can figure it out. And so it started running rough. I think it was. I hadn't use it last year. I don't think the year before. It was not firing up at all and said, okay, I
got to figure out what's going on here. And I found out it was okay, it needs a new carburetor. Oh man, how much does that cost? It was like twenty bucks online sending the kill carburetor. Like, I can figure this out, so you know, take the take all the thing apart to get in there. And you know it's a obviously it's a small engine. There's like a lot more or anything else. Like, I can figure this out. So I pleased myself. This is a couple months ago
when the weather was warmer. See I playing ahead. I put the new carburetor in, I gas, I fired the thing. It was working great. So I'm like, you know, lube everything up, check, make sure the belt's still good. All that all right? That's good. This is good. So I fired this thing up. I'm ready to go for the big snowstorm. And it worked great for the last snowstorm. By the way, did my driveway, did a neighbor's driveway? Did a relative driveway? I was a snow blowing fool.
So on Sunday, I get out there, fired this thing up. It's working great. Get about I don't know, four or five passes all of a sudden, the shoot the thing, you know, the thing on top where you turn it and it angles the snow away from the snowblower into a snow banker. If you don't like it, maybe your neighbor's driveway or the street or whatever. But you know it's got the shoot on top of it. The shoot just goes up in the air about a foot and
then falls off the screws that hold it in. Apparently I don't rust it or whatever, but it just it was gone, like, oh my god. So now it's a snowblower and it's got a I don't know the circle where the round thing at the top where the snow would come out, and then through the shoot where you were directed. It's now shooting. I now have a snowblower volcano. By the way, this thing is firing snow, and because it's so deep it was snow I fired, so it had to be thirty something feet in the air. It
was impressive. So instead of going, well it's broken, I can't do I figured out how do I use this to plow all that snow and angle it so that the wind whatever little breeze are espersonally was two when it's blowing it away from where I'm working, and I, after a couple I was able to figure that out. I was pretty proud of myself. So I will say, if you can take yours off, it throws a lot more snow. I will say that this thing was throwing
snow thirty thirty feet in the air. It was crazy like treetop level, and I just had to look impressive from far away. And it was eating through the snow down in the street. In the street, it was up to the top of the snow blier a little bit over and it was just chewing through the stuff like it was nothing like, this is great. I could do the whole world with this thing, except I can't control where it's going. So some areas I had to go back with a shovel and skim it because a little
light dub. But hey, you know, I got through it. I got through the snow stuff at the end of the driveway. I was rather happy about it. And then the second time I fired it up, the little primer ball if you know other thing you pushed three times to get the field to get the juice into the carburetor. That thing just disintegrate. So now I'm like, well, not, what am I gonna do? How am I going to
prime this? So I had to get it out of my hands and knees and blow into the little hole where the palmer bolt to get to blow the gas into the to the engine of the carboard to get it started. So now I've got this snow volcano and I'm giving this thing CPR. At some point you go, you know what, I've rebuilt this thing enough over fifteen years. Probably need to get a new snow thrower. And we don't use it all that often here and since and if it's a couple of inches, I'll shovel it by hand.
But you know, you get older, it's like, especially out of the driveway, it's nice to have. And so I was looking at the battery operated snow throwers, and I'm curious, if you have one of these things, does it work?
Now?
I have other battery operated tools obviously on my handheld tools for remodeling and construction stuff. Those things weren't great. But it's much smaller battery and the life's impressive. I'm guessing that it's probably the same. I'm just the delivery about a and I don't want the one that you plug into the wall and carry the quart around. I wouldn't do that with a lawnmarer. I'm sure as hell not doing that with a snow thrower. It's just it's it's a bad look. I do like the sound of
the gas engine firing up like a chainsaw. It's like, man, I feel like I'm doing something now, right, where's battery? It's just completely quiet. I've seen people. My neighbor has a battery powered lawnmarch. Seems to work really well. I don't know about a snowthrower though. I'm not sure if I'm ready for a battery operatition though, although the research I did online so far looking at them, they seem to work really well. Now, granted, this snowstorm we just had is a one off or maybe a side of
things to common. Wo knows, we had two big snowstorms so far this year. We normally don't get that. If that's the future, I want to be prepared. My only question is how long do those batteries work. I have no problem in the battery thing. I'm just worried about, you know, the longevity of them. That's all. So I don't want to croak in when I'm trying to get to the end of the driveway. You don't start at the end of the driveway. That's the last thing you do.
I need it to last the whole damn driveway, you know what I'm saying. Plus I like the idea of quite honestly, just pushing a button. Everything starts right up. It's just a you know, it's an electric motor as opposed to an engine, and engines take maintenance to take work. As I just pointed that out. So I do know DM me or something. Email me if you will let me know if you got one, if the thing works as can be expected. Otherwise I've gone back to gas
fired one. The good old days. Yeah, the good old days. I will say this. My wife's on those you know, the neighbor of the Facebook neighborhood groups in your neighborhood, you probably have one, and I normally don't read those because it's just it's kind of like we have a ring doorbell, and if you read some of the ring doorbell comments, there's a coyote in our yard. Does anyone know what this is? It's a person walking like we live in the age of paranoia right now. Someone give
it an order or knocked. Who do you think this is? I think it's a kid selling something. I'm pretty sure. I don't know. It could be a Jehovah's witness, short sert sleeve, white white dress shirt, short sleeves. The only people I see wear white shirts with short sleeves, white dress shirts. Was saying, our Jehoah's witnesses. It's the official uniform. Like no one else in business wears one of those. You see someone a man walking with a black tie
and a short sleeve dress shirt. Jehovah's witness, Jada right there, that's your guy, that's the pro, that's the man officer, the official uniform. Like, I'm pretty sure that's who it was. It was a coyote dressed as a Jehovah's witness. I don't know what to tell you, Like, quit freaking out. Somebody walked across my Yeah, it happens. You're living in a neighborhood. Imagine before when you didn't have a camera, stuff happened all the time. You had no idea. Ignorance
is bliss. Maybe that's just me, but it's is we look at this. I've done the conversation, the ring doorbells and electric snow throwers lovely. In the Facebook chat group, people are actually complaining that the plows left snow at the foot of the driveway, and someone wanted to know who they would call to have that remove Do I call? Do you call the city? The township? Where I like people are actually and I think it was a I saw something else because we're down a rabbit hole with this.
As someone that called nine one one demanding that something he'd done about the snow at the end of the day. The plow left all the snow at the end of my driveway. I've got to get the work called nine one one, like, what do you want to do? Come shoot it. I'm gonna taste the snow. What do we do with it?
Now?
It's up to you. And maybe it's just kind of the world we live. And I also, again I say this every time. I grew up in snow country, so kind of used to it. But yeah, when we get a foot or more snow, that's a lot of snow at the end of your driveway. The plow does not control the snow at the end of that's on you. They don't come and then go, oh, well, we left snow at the end of your driveway and then they
would never get the snow cleared. If that were the case, you are responsible for the snow at there in a driveway. I had to break this sad news to my daughter recently, said, well, Dad, could you come over the snowblower. Yeah, it's up snow volcano and I'm not bringing it over there, and I'm not blowing into it to do your You're young, you can shovel, so she said, well, I might have to, I might miss work because my snow. I'm like, just go shovel the snow. I don't have a shovel. There's
plenty of shovels in my workshop behind your house. Could just go grab one of those. Looking for me to come over and do the work. I ain't doing it. Hey, real quick on the electric snowblower thing ad in western hills. What do you got?
Yeah? For what is worthless? Snow? Driveway about maybe seventy five feet long? Okay, dummy, me didn't get out the well, didn't notice you watching things of the evening, didn't see any snow. I'm down. Well, next thing you know, wake up next morning. You got ten inches, so only forty Bold systems. You look at it looks like a toy, but you got half of it, you.
Know, so if you get one and you have that big a driveway, you should probably buy extra batteries.
Then.
Yeah, seventy five feet long, all right, maybe ten wide with ten inches snowing and handled half of it.
That's pretty good. I mean, you know, that's a lot of Normally we get you know, two four inches, no big deal, but eight inches eight to ten inches of snow and it's seventy five or seventy five.
That pretty good trick. Another trick, only take half a cut at the time, Okay, so you don't get all on it'll stall it out.
Oh really okay, it's also good enough. So it sounds like you're steering me towards just sticking with my gull old gas one.
Then well, gas is you know, as long as your fuel stable and fires up.
Yeah, that's sure. I've never had a PRIM put the stabilizer in. But hey, thanks for the call, man, I appreciate it. Yeah. But again, you know, when you're always working on the thing, it's like every you got to, you know, clean it out. It seems like with the electric one you just put the battery right, put the I M I think I go in. I want to say I'm not gonna buy it anytime soon. I'm getting through, to believe me. With you know, blowing into the hole.
Wait what that's a cut blowing into the primer ball that's missing. I can get a new primary ball. But at this point, it's throwing snow at the top of it's a it's a volcano mission snow volcano. And I got to give a CPR every time I started. That's my life. That's what I'm doing because I'm dumb that way. I'm dumb that way. News at about ten here on seven hundred W LW coming up at ten oh seven.
He is local civil rights attorney Rob Lindeman. And I don't know about you after yesterday's discussion, and we'll get into this later ten thirty five me and you about what we're seeing in Minnesota, and I have seen in Minnesota so far. It feels like maybe a tipping point has happened when it comes to public protests and the government. And I bring this up because I'm just gonnask a bunch of questions about civil rights, Like Okay, he's in
the only time. That's yesterday with my guest, and if you miss that, it was interesting conversation because she's very pro policing and basically said that the Ice did nothing wrong here, which I vehemently disagree with as someone who supports wholeheartedly law enforcement the military. And I don't have to give him my CV on that. If you listen to the show, I backed cops. But again, you got
to do it with a reason. You just can't say, well, they can do whatever they want, because if you do that, well, that's what happens in Minnesota. I disagree that said, I think things are starting to change here because the news today investigators are now reviewing the body worn camera video from the officer perspective for the fatal shooting of Alex Pretty. They had multiple angles, multiple officers, and of course the citizen video too. Will they'll seem that together come up
with a timeline and what went down. I think it's important too, because I think you will also get an idea what happened prior to the people on the streets recording. It seems like everyone's recording all the time out there, but you get differspective and I think, uh context more context, which is very much needed in this situation and situations
like it. I think you'll agree. So yesterday said I, from what I saw, I'm totally against what happened with the shooting and PRESTI are pretty rather that said, I'm open to seeing new information that may exonerate the officers. I would say, if they had an information at a body camp as quick as Christy Gnome was out there to say that, you know, this is a domestic terrorist who's going to shoot cops, and clearly that wasn't the case that and also they had images of the gun
that they took off the guy. Uh, I would I would say if this exonerated them in any way, shape or form, they would have already at leastaid video because they have already you know, we're gonna do an investigation. Why you already can't you already told us what the what the outcome is. It's like Terry Thigi all over again. Right, Yeah, we we've we uh we fired her.
Uh.
But now we're a new investigation to find out why it sounds like the same thing in Minnesota and so yeah, different angles and things. I'd like to see that, but we'll see. They're going to analyze it and break it down and all that and review everything. But the fact of the matter is okay, so we got body camera. I'm waiting for that to come out at this point.
But I think what's interesting, and this is a tipping point, as I mentioned, is you have a couple dozen Republican lawmakers now that are calling for investigations congressional testimony after this shooting. And I think early March they're going to bring Christy Noome in for a grilling on the Hill.
It's not a majority of lilt of John Thune is preparing for a fight, and this has to do with appropriation, spill and everything else as well, but a number of Republicans are stepping up, going, yeah, what we saw is egregious. We're going to investigate this, and that's what Congress needs to do. There needs to be oversight in this whole thing. We haven't seen that for the first year of Trump because Congress has really not done anything, very little other
than shut things down. So on March third, there's going to be a Judiciary committee, and that is I believe Chuck Grassley of Iowa is a guy who chairs that, and he is a Republican and so maybe we'll get some answers to this. But it feels like, especially too with Walls in Trump having a conversation, according to what he posted on truth Social that we had a good conversation.
We said and he agreed that they're going to pull down, and we're going to pull out the guy who's heading this thing up, and we're going to bring in our borders are and in addition to that, we're going to start pulling back some ICE agents from Minnesota. So it sounds like Trump does not want to raise the temperature further, which is unusual because normally he's like, Okay, I'm going to double down on this. Whether you think he's right
or not, He's going to do what he wants. And this seems to be like, maybe we went too for maybe she went too far with this thing. Interesting. Interesting and also showing that I guess the folks up there are trying to maybe bring the temperatures down a notch. The Minnesota National Guard is out there and they were tasked and handed out coffee and donuts to anti ice protesters in Saint Paul to show them it was a demonstration of safety and security. So the guardsmen. By the way,
we're reflective vests. Why well, because they wanted to make sure, Hey, you know, we're not Ice agents or we're not with these guys. I think that that's a lot going. Hey, we're gonna okay, we're National guardsman. It's a dangerous situation. How about we hand we can't have a bottle of water because it'd be frozen, but we're gonna have on hot coffee and donuts to the protesters. And we're also wearing different clothing than the ICE agents are, just to
let you know we're we're not with them. We're the good guys, but we're a good or good guy if you will interesting times in which we live. We'll talk civil rights with Rob Leman, the civil rights attorney, and how this supplies. I mean, you know, I don't plan on protesting anything anytime soon. I reserve my right to do that. But what we saw in what we think the laws are maybe different than what are what the
constitution says what we're allowed to do. Anyway, a lot of questions for not only just what pretty did, but also ICE agents as well. Will make sense of it. Next after a quick time out in news, traffic, weather, all that seconds away on the mother red seven hundred WW Cincinnati, We've gotta flown back on seven hundred w W. Of course, outside of these folding snow and now just the cold, the biggest story captivating us would be what's
happening in Minnesota. So Trump and Waltz Governor Walls are now working together to solve the chaos up there. The President is sending borders our Tom homan In and recalling Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino, saying it also looks like they're going to pull a bunch of ice agents out of the state as well. It feels like a tipping
point in this whole thing. And at the same time, I think it's tipping point because a couple dozen congressional Republicans have now called for investigations into the fatal shooting with Alex Pretty Dick Durbin. Senator Dick Durbin announced that Christine Omil appear before the Senate Judiciary coming up in March. Third answer tough questions. Pre you got protesters confronting ice,
ice kicking indoors. The question is in these things, not that you're going to be on the streets protesting stuff, but where do your rights in Where does law enforcements rights begin? These two vent diagrams have overlapped for some time, but we're seeing a lot of what are perceived constitutional violations. But then again, how far can law enforcement go? And acting? The homeland on that is Rob Linman, and Rob is a civil rights attorney. I just had him on the
show not long ago. He rerepped the family of Qwen Davier Hicks, who talked about that.
Rob.
Welcome back, Good to have you.
Good morning, Scott. Thanks, I'm happy to join you again.
Yeah, let's just jump in because you see this. We have spent a lot of time and we'll spend a lot of time talking about what we all saw versus what we're told by the government. I know what I saw. They're trying to tell me something different, Christy. No, let's just jump in because I think they're significant first, second and obviously fourteenth Amendment issues here, but the for relata to the first Amendment, the idea about recording government agents.
We debated this a lot yesterday. So Alex Pretty is holding his phone recording federal officers. The confetation begins. He's got his phone up, he's got his hand up, like, Hey, I'm not being dangerous here, I'm just recording you. Now, granted he's in the street, they're conducting an operation. What is your right in that situation? We know you have a right to record law enforcement, but where does that right end relative to their safety and securing a seat.
Well, I'll start by saying that I'm not licensed to practice law in Minnesota, so I can approach this only based on my experience attorneys.
Here in Cincinnati.
But I will say that the Cincinnati Police Department has a has a policy that they are trained on and that it governs their activities, which specifically say states that the department acknowledges that there is a First Amendment right to to record their activities when they are in public.
You know, the the right to record is considered protected by the First Amendment as a you know, fundamentally, it's you know, the court is set over and over that really the media doesn't have any special rights that any citizen doesn't have. So if you're in public, you can be recorded, and the police are are subject to that
same to that same protection. Now, where the line is, I think, is where the where a person where a person's activities somehow interfere with with law enforcement and some you know, and this case they were carrying out supposedly. I understand that the reason that that ice was there in the first place was that they were carry on and or they were looking for somebody specific, or they were trying to erect. So some departments have tried to
establish physical guidelines. Is that line. Do you have to be ten feet away? Do you have to be twenty feet away? Do you have to be twenty five? If you know, that's difficult the courts. Courts have struggled to come down with the right answer, a specific answer to what's the right distance. But so long as a person is not physically interfering with an officer carrying out whatever they're doing, then that that right to that right to record is considered protected under the First Amendment.
Based on what you saw, was mister pretty and violation of that too. I mean, you are on the street or conducting operation. Technically you're not allowed to be out on the street. But in a court, how would that apply? Who's right who's wrong?
There?
How far does that go? And were they in the right to push him back and out of the way.
Yeah, it surely would have been I mean, if if if I'd been asked to analyze the state by the by his family, I think surely take the position that nothing he was doing was interfering with the with law enforcements duty that it appears, it appears to me that the arrest is taking place somewhere down somewhere down the road from where he's sitting, so his I wondered about that several times when I when I've watched this, this this interaction of the videos of it, is, what is
that officer doing who comes back and engages with not just mister pretty, but there's another woman there, maybe two maybe two people who are there and they are behind a car there there. You know, he eventually gets them, pushes them, and he pushes the one woman down onto
the ground. So I you know, it's this I will tell you as a civil rights lawyer, if this interaction had ended there, nobody had been shot, and they had just been pushed and sprayed with pepper spray there, we would have considered that a very questionable use of course, because it's not clear what he's He's not attempting to arrest them, Apparently they're not resisting in arrest, and they are far enough away from the encounter that they can't be said to be interfering with with with that arrest.
So I would have been deeply concerned just then with with the with the fact that he chooses to use Papa spray on them.
Yeah, now there's a mitigating cubumstance. Of course, that's the body camera video, which have started earlier than the citizen video that you talked about, Rob Lindeman, And I think that's got to be putt in the context as well. What happened leading up to that, Had there been a group of people around them, did they feel like I'm being threatened? So again we're still waiting for that. There's gotta be some context there, correct.
I would I would agree, Yeah, sure, I'd love to I'd love to know that are is that video out? I have to see.
No, I know that body camp but they even released it. But that tells me that like if it, if it exonerated the officers, they would have already released it, kind of like you know, well they took the gun off them, but we don't know if he a second gun. Yeah, we do, because they would have said he had a second gun and shown that.
Yeah. Sure, and you know that's another that's that's another thing here that is always that that feels to me like a real miss step by the by the management, by the leadership at ice, which is that they've they've they've taken a bunch of positions, they've made a bunch of representations and provided descriptions about what what they think happened. It feels like they've told us what conclusion they're going
to come to before they have completed an investigation. And again, this is something that you know, most police departments have policies on this stuff. The Cincinnati Police Department has a specific provision in its in its Policy and Procedure Manual that says, in an officer involved shooting, no member of the investigation and no management is permitted to come out and give an opinion on what has happened before the before the people tasked with it are able to carry
out and complete the investigation. I mean it just you know, there's an intuitive common sense to it. Don't show me what conclusion you're going to reach before you right.
Right, And as I put out yesterday, it's like, if that happens a local jurisdiction normally go, hey, we can't investigate it. We are going to give it to Buera Criminal Investigation and ah BCI takes it over in Ohio and they investigate and say, okay, well there's almost a propriety there here. It's like, well, we're going to investigate it. After Christy Domes said that this was a domestic terrorist. So they're fighting for their lives. It sounds like you
already ruled, made a ruling before you investigated. So we're back to that again, kind of like the Teresa Thiji firing here in Cincinnati. Rob let me pivt. By the way, Rob Lindman on the show, he civil rights attorney, were talking about what the right, what citizen's rights are, particularly what's going on in Minnesota right there. Let me pivot to the Second Amendment here. So Preddy was a lawful
gun owner. He had a valid valid that carry permit Minnesota, had two magazines on him and the gun, and yet was shot by federal agents who claimed he resisted attempts to disarm him, despite the video showing you never brandished or reacher his weapon. What Second Amendment protections exist for lawful gun carriers when they encounter that.
I think he was the Minnesota has a statutory has a statutory scheme. You do have to have a permit. It's not an open or what we call a constitutional carry state like Ohio, but it is. It has a very simple permitting scheme, and it permits if you if
you have a permit. There's no reason why you can't carry a weapon, a concealed weapon, And there's no specific application to attending a protest that the statements that have come out which have attempted to link at put some limitation on on on the right to carry arms out of protest or I don't know the legal basis one, but let's put it that way. The Second Amendment applies, and in many over the years, lots of protesters have
made a point to carry weapons openly at protests. Yes, yeah, and and and that there's never been much of us much much of an argument that that right doesn't apply. There's no, there's no I'm not aware of any law that attempts to restrict it. And in Minnesota is really really not any different. I mean there that is even a that that is a somewhat tightly regulated state, certainly
compared to Ohio, and that regulation doesn't exist. So it strikes me this is another issue where the the leadership at ice and seems to have gotten out over their skis a little bit here. I mean, you have you have people like I mean the cash catel Is specifically said that car that people don't have the right to carry weapons to a protest. There's a there's a US attorney, an assistant US attorney out of California who made a
similar statement. And it strikes me that they are sending themselves up on a bought position that is just not legally supported, especially with this.
It doesn't know what the law is, doesn't know what the constitution says. And you know, I'd agree with you on this. And rub leniment is that no, We've seen how we had the protest after the Clan thing over seventy five in Lincoln Heights and protesters are out there counter protesters, I guess as well as clients. They had weapons on them and around law enforcement. That was fine.
We had the Black Lives Matter protests. People were doing that at the Capitol and they were armed when they were protesting, and you know, law enforcement didn't flinch because you're allowed to carry it under what CONSTI authority can the agents take a gun off of citizen who's lawfully and legally carrying it to permit, not brandishing the weapon, not threatening anyone with the weapon. We saw that in this video. Isn't that then a state of a de facto of prohibition on the Second Amendment?
Typically what you find was a police officer who has just conducting an otherwise reasonable stop has the right to ensure that everybody's safe. But the really, frankly, it's a this is an area of tension. The right to demonstrate versus the right of a police officer to be safe are sometimes thought to be in conflict. In fact, you see the police department and civil libertarians are often at odds on the issues of gun control, right even even
very you know, we consider police police population. You know, police officers themselves to typically be pretty conservative, but they are the ones often are not don't have views that are less conservative on the issue of gun control because of the issue of police safety. But I think you're right that there is not a police officer Lincoln and arrest.
There's very little questions that if if there's grounds for an arrest in the first place, that person can be can be disarmed into into that arrest or even you, or even one. I think the position that they would take here, that that ICE would take is that during the core of what might be a brief investigatory stop, the first question the officer is always going to ask you.
Is are you know?
Are you carrying any weapons? Are you do you carry any contraband? But that always requires a basic ground, the basic reason why the officers conducting the investigatory stop in the first place, and back to the year, back to where you started here. The fact that somebody assuming you is not grounds for it does not provide reasonable articulable grounds for a police officer to stop up site them to make a to do something in the first.
Place, because you're exercising a fundamental constitial right and that's one and two. At the same time, you're filming and exercise your Second Amendment right to carry. It's interesting we got some feedback on this. Yes're a pushback anyway from people who think that the ICE was responsible and it was the fall of pretty in this thing, which I disagree with. After you watch these videos, and again we will see what the bodycam video shows if and when
they release that. But I thought it interesting that that so you're saying, is that, well, pretty had a gun on him, you should tell law enforcement you have a
gune on you for their own safety and security. Yet I wonder how many the same people who believe that in the Predy case were vehemently supporting Ohio when we ruled that out when it came to the Second Amendment here in Ohio and saying no, you don't have to tell a police officer if you're pulled over, if you have a weapon on you, you can't argue forward and against it when it can when it's convenient for you.
I think i'd agree. Look, there's this is there are strange the sides are not clear here, It's not clear who would be on which side at the end of this. I mean, look, we go back to we go back to Kyle Rittenhouse and back in the being on the black and the Black Lives Matter Protestant people that that drew a lot of the same that raised a bunch of the same issues. I mean, Kyle Rittenhouse was I
think that he was underaged. He was He'd trust eight lines with a with a with a weapon, so one could argue that he didn't have a lawful A lot he wasn't allowed in the first place, but he was. It was. It was it was violating interstate carry loss for a mind or by showing up with a gun. But that that prohibition doesn't just doesn't enter here. This isn't This is an adult on the streets. And by the way, you know this is an area. I'm not really a gun I don't have a great field of
expertise and the handling of guns. But what I've what I've read is, you know, to carry an extra magazine or two even is standard can feel chara tactics, you know. And I would know that the most police officers, the cinematic police officers, when they leaves every day, they carry a hand gun and they carry a couple extra magazines. So the fact that he's carrying extra magazine says no particularly raise concerns for me about about his motives or now you have.
To ask him. But he's dead, So why are you carrying two magazine? And I don't know why that people would be upset with that, don't you know? I often don't if I care, I'm not carrying an extra mag But no idea. He was afraid of the things getting out of control and with rioting and wanted to get out of the protest and record, but want to get
out of there with his life. You don't blame the guy. Also, I you know, we mentioned the first second Amendment, but the fourteenth Amendment applies here, which as has to do with equal protection and due process when an agent kills the citizens we saw with Pratty and Minnesota, and then right away they characterize him as a domestic terrorist who is planning to inflict maximum damage and provide no evidence
despite what we saw or even independent investigation. Did Christinome kind of put her toe into a due process violation in that regard to because like you said, you know, she made her mind up before any evidence came out. Uh, And it seems like it's flying the frase of what we what what the facts might be in this particular case. Is that a do process violation?
Seems like well, I think I think it's simpler than that probably. I mean, the basics of you know, the state of Minnesota has original jurisdiction over any criminal conduct that happens in It's within its borders, right, and so they're the state of Minnesota, a prosecutor in Minnesota in that in Minneapolis will have jurisdiction to bring whatever criminal prosecution might apply here if the determination is made that this was an unlawful an unlawful killing of whatever of
whatever respect. There's the Minnesota there is no statute of limitation for a for a wrongful killing in the state of Minnesota, so that the I'm sure the prosecutors in Minnesota are looking hard at this, and that's one of the reasons why they would have wanted to participate in in the investigation here.
It's very it really not uh.
Well, the federal the federal government of course has its own right to investigate this more as soon. But usually you don't think of the of the federal government enforcing things like murder. That's that that is typically unless it's unless it's tied up in some kind of federal federal crime, which is which is typically an interstate crime that is crossing line that the government official responsible for imposing that law is the state. So that's that's where you would expect that to lie. Here.
This rob feels like a tipping point to me in that Trump is talking to Waltz and they agreed on some things. They're going to take some ICE agents out there, they're pulling the border. Bring the borders are in, get rid of the other guys getting out of there. You have Republican lawmakers by the dozens now defending pretty uh. And so I look at this going is this is this finally the turning point? Here we go? Okay with? This is a line too far? And if so, it's
a long time coming. So I don't know what all this means and what this means in the coming weeks. I don't know if this story goes away or not. I'm gonna guess not unless something else happened. But it feels like, okay with this isn't a tipping point, you.
Know, we can have we can only hope. So this is really posed. This this, this debate over over an immigration enforcement has posed a series of uh of conflict. They really haven't been explored deeply, you know. So maybe back to the Civil War, back to literally the you know, the state, the state actors seeing the law one way and seeing their rights to within their own jurisdiction is one way, whereas where the where the federal authorities are
coming in and attempting to do something different. The whole the entire question about who's what what limits there are on federal power on uh, really our posts sharply here, So I think you're right, I will be. I'm it's really a shame that that it came to this, that that it is this event that has brought those that has brought the party that that has maybe brought people together here to look at what is what is the what is the right compromise? Was the right balance there?
But I feel the same way you do that hopefully things have turned here.
Rob Lineman is a promised civil rights attorney here in Cincinnati. Thanks so much for laying it out for us and where your rights begin and end, although that's always in flux in this great country. Guars, Rob, all the best. Thanks are jumping on smart Go.
Thank you very much.
Take care. We'll do news update one return and we'll talk this one out just me and you. This morning. You heard all this stuff going uh as I was maybe more evidence, but I think the lack of new evidence coming out is pretty telling myself. We'll talk about that coming up. And also in the context of something that is something we saw that usher Trump in office the last two terms is missing and it's a flag. Do you know a flag? I'm talking about, and I
think it applies here. We'll get into that right after news here seven hundred WW. There we go, there we go, there we go. We got something, we got something working. So cold the microphone stuff work, it's crazy. Hey, sloany here, this is seven hundred wl W. Thanks so much for checking on my show. I appreciate you. And if you miss part, portions of it or some else you want here, don't forget. We podcast right afterwards. That'll be up in
all full three hours. Of course. We go where you go, bring the earbuds with you, man, woman, and if you're in something in the vehicle you're driving, you take us with you. It's all good. Just switch over to the stream. That's how we roll here, That's how we roll. I was just talking to a Robert linemann Esquire. He's a civil rights attorney in town. And what prosecutors Aaron prosecute, what protesters and the ice slash police are led to
do and can't do. I think it's a good check up on our civil rights or constitutional amendments, and specifically the Bill rights. On top of my hat, I thought of one, two, and fourteen would be the big ones here. And you know, I was thinking of this driving in this morning because we had great conversations yesterday morning about this is I'm just curious for and I was just,
you know, safe to say. I think most people who will listening to the show or listening to radio station probably voted or support Trump and Republicans right, And I like to play not both sides against the middle. But I my personal view political view is I'm more libertarian, and I don't fully identify as libertarian because there's some
issues I have. I am an enigma. I guess in my own sense, and I know what I see and I know what I like, and I know I care for and I want less government in my life because I've seen it both ways. And you know, the government gets involved in something, it just makes things worse. And I know that's kind of old school, you know, old neo con kind of stuff, but there's I think there's
truth to that and we're seeing it. And I asked this question of you, if you're a huge MAGA or Trump supporter, and I'm just curious, and this isn't just Minnesota's everything else, would you be defending these policies if Kamala Harris won the election. You going, well, this is different. They wouldn't be slowan, you're so stupid. They wouldn't be
out there doing this, they'd be supporting ice protest. No, no, no, no no. The concern prior to this last election was, and we hear it every time that you know, democratic candidate comes along kind of like you hear from liberal liberal progressives about how, oh my god, you know so and so fill in the blank, Republican equals Nazi, and
it's simply not true. The other side, you hear from conservatives, conservative Republicans says, well, this present of this candidate Kamala Harris, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, they're building a police state and ultimately what's going to happen is they're going to wage war against Christian conservatives. They're going to go after gun owners. They're taking our guns away. Of course that's not true.
I mean, yeah that liberals tend to want to push more gun legislations the fact, but no one's rounding the I remember when you know, Bamba was Toad, there was the rumor spreading about, you know, there was a bullet shortage because of this stuff, and you know he didn't he didn't ban bullets. I prefer a conservative in office when it comes to my Second Amendment rights, that's for sure. But I look at this thing and go, okay, well,
if Kamala Harris, what would be different? So you know, they would she be going at when we see protests in the streets because she's going after Christian conservatives and gun owners. And if you were taking up arms against the government against tyranny. Isn't this what we're seeing right now? Or at least that's the perception of the people in Minnesota. I guess the best way to look at it is prior to the twenty twenty election, and prior to this election. You know, we saw a lot of it. I don't
see much of them anymore. And if you had one, I'm come curious to know where is it. And I'm talking about the Gadsden flag that don't tread on me flag. You saw a lot of that at the rallies and you know Trump's speaking and don't tread on me and the shirts I saw bumper stickat. I don't see many tread on don't tread on me flags anymore. I know, because it's cold, maybe you put them away. I'm not
quite sure, but here's the problem. You're right, and I'm trying to be consistent if you believe that in the whole idea of the Gadsden flag and don't treat on me is hey, listen, civil liberties. You know what I want a limited government, And of course under Biden we saw an expanded government. But under Trump we've also seen
an expanded government. You know, top of my hat, I can go, well, it's not just the Minnesota thing, but you know, the idea that you can force Intel to sell shares the government government controlled companies is literally the definition of socialism. Is it different that Trump's doing it instead of Kamala Harris or Joe Biden, because we shouldn't be looking at it going, oh, that's a great thing. No, it's not in the scope of it too. We're talking
about captain credit card interest rates. But if Kamala Harris did that or the two thousand dollars dividend check, Biden did that with student loans and we were all pissed off about that more subsidy. But wait a minute, we're taking the tear iff money that's costing it. We're paying for more because of terrorists. And now we're going to get the money back in a sub so our farmers for that matter, it's more the same thing. And I look at it going if the other side we're doing this,
would it be different? And I have to say, no, it wouldn't it be the same thing. And I know what's troubling now, especially in Minnesota is and I had a lady on yesterday, Betsy Brentner Smith front of the show, she is with the National Police Association on at nine o'clock and we went head to head on this thing, and she said, you know, basically what they're doing is okay. I'm like, I don't know if I agree with that. Man,
I mean, I don't listen. Then that's probably pretty scary to think that someone would listen to Christy Nomes press conference about how this is a domestic terrorist and was there to kill cops and believe that and then if you saw the video you went, yeah, that's what was happening. We've lost our ability, I think, to be to make our own minds up. I think we would rather follow the lead. And it's true. It's like, you know, I
mentioned that politics has become like religion. You know, you may have questions about your faith, your religion, and that's why I got out of the business being Catholic. Well, largely it had to do with a bunch of things, and the least of which, of course, is the abuse stuff that they kept covering up. I said, I can't that's not religion to me, that's a cult. If you fully believe that. Oh no, no, no, people are just making this up and be no. It's like you have
to be a little bit skeptical and judgmental. It doesn't mean you can't support your religion, but when you just simply turn your eye to atrocities, I can't support that. That just me my personal abuse. The same thing here. It's like, I know what I saw, and I'm willing to change my view on it if and when we see the video from the body cans and what this guy, this pretty guy did or said or what his actions were, and maybe we didn't see it in the citizen video.
I don't know. I want to hear more of it. But if I were to make my matter right now, I'm looking at this going, this is bad. There's no reason to shoot this guy. Well, he had a gun on him, yeah, but he wasn't brandishing the gun. He wasn't reaching for the gun. As a matter of fact, before they took him down, he had a cell phone, his camera out and his hand up like, hey, I'm not a threat to you. I don't have my hand in my pocket or anything like that. There's no reason
to do that. And then you know, the pumbling started. Pull somebody pulls a gun off and then he gets shot. Like well, he might have had a second gun. Yeah, I think if he had a second gun, they already would have shown it. They showed the first gun. Whether they're going to wait to drop the second gun tomorrow, Like no, they would have said he had another gun on and was going to shoot an officer. Which if you're doing that and you're trying to reach out your weapon,
you deserve to get shot. That's where got you haven't gun on you and you try to reach short when a cop is or in this case, an ice agent, you're gonna get shot. But that didn't happen in this case. And I think we just just kind of got to be consistent in this whole thing. And there's a lot of consistency out there, so you know, curious and I'm sure no one's going to admit this, but if you and all that, hey, don't tread on me. I want
the government on. I want less government. Well this feels like it's like the same, if not morning level governm To be honest with you, I mentioned some of the non Minnesota things, but this latest example is, yeah, when you got ICE agents not granted, you know there are people out there that are here illegally. I think if you're here illegally and you're committing crimes. Now, the guy that they were rounding up, he had it coming. He was what a domestic abuser, I believe not a high crime,
and mismeet against the state was a conspiracy. But still, you know you're beating the hell out of people are here illegally, even i'd be showing the door. I support that in turning it around on the protesters, like everyone there, everyone ICE is rounding up, you're trying to stop them from doing it. Well, what if it's a person who, if you left unchecked, would go and rape your daughter or your wife or I don't know, go and he's
an arsonist, right, burn your house down. Well that's different. No, it's the same thing. Like I think you also got to look at it going. Are they getting people? Are there picking up people who should be arrested.
Yes.
The problem though, of course, is that some of the people they are and I don't know what the percentages aren't. I mean, if you're just doing this and kicking doors in with no warrant, by the way, just to simply get someone who's in this country illegally, that is that that seems to be an an extreme use of force, Like that's what this isn't about. We're told, hey, when we do this, we're going after the really bad people, the criminals, you know, MS thirteen, all the other the
gang members. Okay, great, but now it's like, all right, guy at home depot who's been here in the country for ten or fifteen years, making money, paying taxes as a family, like, you know, snatching him up and deporting that doesn't make a lot of sense kids and everything else.
So you know, it's like, if you just did this in the context of what we've told us, I think a lot of people would be And to my point, if you look at the numbers on immigration and enforcement, that Trump Trump was killing everybody and that was like one of the high one of the very few things he wasn't upside down on the polling, and now he's even lost him on that. So I think it goes show most people are most people are moderate in their
views and go listen. I get what you're doing, but you can't go too far, you know, not having a warrant and knocking a door and you're an agency, you're not. You don't have a you don't have a court order for this. You can't simply do that.
Now.
If you're chasing somebody down the street, and maybe there's probable cause, it's one thing, but I don't know, smashing down doors, that's that' civil rights, you know, And it doesn't make you soft on immigration and saying well you just want that, you just want these illegals here. Yeah, you just simply can't round them up that way. We had horrible policies relative to immigration for the history of
this country up until it's become an issue now. I'll remember when I think the first Bush was president and I was down in southern Texas and people are literally just walking across the border. I mean that was pretty conservative President George W. Bush Bush forty one. So, I mean, what's changed. We realize that there's drugs and crime and everything else coming in this country, and we've got to do something to make sure that we close the borders off. Okay, great,
we were doing that. It's working really well, even without a wall, which I thought was a bad idea. So the policies are working, but it seems a lot of cases punching down. So the idea here that you know, you're allowed to be according to the civil right, you're allowed to be out in the street, you're allowed to video. If that leads to this shooting of pretty I just I look, I have a hard time going wow, that
was a good shoot. That was justified. And I would say that most all the cases, whether it's ice or regular old police, I see him and I go, well, that's kind of what you get. You know, you had it coming because you're resisting, or you're showing force, or you're not showing your hands, and the officer's worried about his safety.
That this was not that.
You know, you instantly had five guys on him, and you know, instead of de escalating, you walked down and you shoved the guy. Now you know they's say he assaulted the officer. I mean he put his hand up because he's falling backwards, and then that woman you got pepper spray and a whole bunch of other stuff. I've never been pepper sprayed. I'm trying to go through life without being pepper sprayed or taste. And I go through
life and go, yeah, I imagine that sucks. And you're probably grasping for things because you can't see, and then you're being shoved back at the same time. So like, I don't know, it's like that wasn't the escalation. That was escalation, and he had a bunch officers on him instantly, and you know, they pull a gun out and then shoot the guy. It was up to that point like, okay, you could probably solve this in court, but once you shoot someone and kill them, there's no solving that in court.
And I think most Americans are now, even Republicans are. A couple dozen Republicans are saying, hey, we got to investigate this. Good, it's about time would say this. I think that this, sadly, the death of this man, Alex pretty is a turning point for this whole thing. It's like, maybe we do start paying attention to going, hey, listen, just because it's the team I support doesn't mean they're always right. And I don't know why that's a bad thing. I don't know why we can't say that. I don't
know why we can't admit and listen. I support him because they have good ideas and forcing law, whole bunch of stuff. But some stuff goes over the line, and this is one of the things that went over the line. In my opinion. Doesn't throw everything out that happens as good as a way. But you know, you've got to draw a line somewhere. You just simply can't like religion or sports going I my team winner. Hell, we're more critical of sports. Look what we do with the Bengals.
We want the Bengals to win and go to the Super Bowl. Yeah, but look how we tear them apart when they lose. We don't do that with our politicians. And these people work for us, and especially so much so if you voted for them. Just saying we got a news update here in just minutes on seven hundred WLW, we are heading into a new area here. We had the heavy snowfall and now we have the very cool temperatures, meaning we are inside for the duration, and so we're
inside more we're in dry environments. What does that mean cold flu RSV rates start to spread, maybe even COVID a little bit too.
Well.
Check in with doctor Stephen Vegan's doctor. Stephen is the director of Hamlet. He's a medical director for Hamlin count the Health Department, and we'll talk about the local flu outlook and so much more coming up at eleven oh seven right after news update, and then we close things out with Andy Shaffer from all Worth and how this is impact in the markets, which are looking pretty good today. I think we're up, Nastac's up a couple hundred points today,
so it's definitely a good starting. Despite what we hear about all these problems in America and the tariffs and everything else, you know, buy and large, the markets have figured this out like, Okay, it's just noise. Every day there's going to be something new and we just won't pay attention to it. We probably need to be more like Wall Street in that sense as you look at it, go, yeah, are they freaking out over stuff?
No?
Okay, should we be freaking out?
Yah?
Probably not, because they they're not fedist. You know, they're not paying attention to the steady diet of doom, scrolling headlines and you know, cable news all that other stuff we pay attention to and thinking it's worse than it really is. We've got problems for sure, but you know, buying large economies someone along at this point, and I think we had to take some solace in that, quite honestly. Anyway, let me get a news update in and more follow
at eleven oh seven. Here we talk a little flu and I guess it's gone down now, but it's going to start picking back up, is what I heard, starting next month, and probably because we're all stuck inside for sure. Scott's Flown Show on the Home of the Reds, seven hundred WLW, Cincinnati. Scott Flown Show on seven hundred W LW. Yeah, we got the cold, we got the ice, we've got the storm. Everything hopefully is behind us at this point.
We'll see where we move from here. I do know this though, with everyone stuck inside, we're starting to see an increase see number of people presenting in emergency rooms and the like who are sick. Ohio's experience a high intensity flu outbreak right now. Also RSV respiratory virus season. This year, things have kind of staibled a little bit that way, but we're going to get a big surge again, I guess in February, so literally in a few days.
Here it is in fluenza AA super flu strain that is out there right now, and right now we've been hospitalizations are nearly double what we saw at this time last year, and about to get worse. Doctor Stephen Fagin's is the medical director for Hamlin County. Stephen, welcome, Harry, doctor.
Thanks got good morning, happy cold cold morning.
Yeah, no kidding, right, I mean that's the other element here too, with these sub zero temperatures. You know, what do you guys? You know at the Hamlin County Health Department, most people had the last couple of days off anyways because of the ice and the snow and all that stuff. But what do you go deal with when we had a weather emergency like that.
It is so cold on just a few minutes outside, especially doing things like shoveling snow, which can be the most dangerous thing you do for your part and for other things. Always take a few breaks the time and things like that. But so far, not a lot of hypothermia, thankfully people have been inside. But a big issue is people can't leave the hospital.
Yeah you got you gotta get them out right, and we're all stuck inside now, which also further complicates the issue of cold and flu on ours v right.
Can it can? And certainly you know those people that you're stuck in around.
Out for a while, so they're not new people giving you stuff.
But you know, you talk about the influenza, which really really skyrocketed sort of like in sort of early February, and because of the news training actually coming down here in southwest Ohio and starting around the state. And so we peaked, you know, right at sort of Christmas or this Christmas holiday, probably three and a half times the peak that we've seen before. We're still above, we're still above the highest people. We we came down very quickly.
And that's what kind of what you'll see for something that a community is not accustomed to. Thankfully, the two mutations occurred on the part that makes it infectious rather than part that makes it you know, virulent.
Are really bad.
So the deaths and things like that not not as much, but it is coming down. In my own hostile there were tons of flu.
Now now not so much.
Are we going to accord that the what I said was from the CDC about that we're expecting it to trend back upwards next month, literally another week or so. Are we going to see that here in Ohio, South in Kentucky.
That's a big question on Board would like to know. And you know you've seen one flu seven, you've seen one flu season. I do think we'll see a double peak, second peak. You know, this is one strain of one strain, and so there are other strains of flu. There are other strains of restless stuff. So I do think in February we'll see some kind of increase. I don't think it'll be anywhere near what we saw in early January.
Oh well, that's good news. The other element here too. People hear this and go, okay, well it's a super flu strain. It's dominant virus. I know people that are getting sick and a like, is it too late to get a flu shot?
It was not too late to get a flu shot, especially since the probably next peak that we see will be exactly what the flues four, so a good match, and so no, it is absolutely not too late. It does take a week or two for it to have an effect. So you want to get it sooner than later. But we'll keep saying get a flu shot until the end of the flu season.
Yeah, uh, Steven Stector Figan's if you got a shot in I don't know, September October, the conventional I don't know if it's it's wisdom or just a livestale, is that, Hey, that's only good for ninety days. You might have to get another one. Does the antibody stay in your body? Do you need another flu shot if you had it in September October?
That's a great question. You know, they do decrease, and that's why you get it. Every year last maybe six months at most four months probably average. Some people like to wait until they kind of know the flu is really really coming out there, but it's still there. There is no recommendation for a second flu shot, like a second boost or anything. In fact, think nons of studies and it really didn't make a difference.
Yeah, for the season itself, it's only six months, and that that shot should last year what you're saying they should. Yeah, And if it doesn't, it's because well, we you know, it's a guessing game, you guys, you know they're working in the other half there they're working on what they think is going to be the strain, and sometimes you do miss that. But it does protect you in a sense that your antibodies are up in your own body
that you produce UH to protect you. So even if you get the flu, can imagine it's happened to be last year. I always get the flu shot, and I got it last year, but it was only a couple of days. Hit me pretty hard, and I thought, well, thank god I had the flu shot because it'd be much much worse if I didn't. I still got it, but it wasn't as bad as it could have.
Been, exactly like the Five Days of badness. There's also influence and medication still works in too. Thankfully the mutations has not really change that. So but you got to take it within the first day or two of the symptom. You know, they started very suddenly for it to work, and really it really does. It just stops it from replicating, so it goes away faster when you take the medication.
Yeah, you still got to get a script for that too. It seems like that's something like an epi pench before you Like, by the time I get to my doctor, they call the script and it's it's already advanced.
Yeah, it's interesting, you know, making that over the counter. It isn't anti viral. Sometimes there are certain nursing homes if there's an outbreak, then they give it one to day to everybody for a couple of weeks, even force things. Bamously, the US Olympic team had a flu outbreak and they took Cama flu and they won from five bowld medals, one winters from that team, so.
You know, yeah again it's doctor Stephen Figgins. He's director Hamlet County Medical EMLA County Medical Director. I guess I should say we're talking about the flu and RS season where what these cold temperatures are going to be stuck indoors even more. Of course that causes it to be more communicable because you're around people the drier temperatures and other thing, which is why we advise having the humidity level in your house like around nice, comfortable thirty percent.
It saves money, but also it may reduce you getting the sickness or at least passing on, which is in the workplace you don't really have that. This is why we see the flu spread as much as we do humidity is a big part of part of this too, right, that can't be understanding.
It really is.
And so why do you get cold in the cold. It's not necessarily the cold weather, it's the lower humidity and that's virus. So a ton of studies I've really shown that, you know, it's it's the lower humidity that doesn't really cause the virus and has a little very own to break up like higher if you look at versus say forty percent, you know you're gonna have a lot less virus property particles make it sixty plus for the higher humidity bacteria of the opposite though, it's actually
lower humidity that you want for bacteria. That's how your operating rooms are all run at lower humidity on purpose to prevent bacterial infections. And so it's the viruses that are not inhibited by the lower humidity. So what about it humidifier, you know, and and for that little piece that it helps helps with symptoms, may help increase the humidity, elect may help with symptoms, but make sure that you wash it because you don't want the bacteria in humidifying.
Okay, so let's talk about maybe if we get a second wave the FED saying, Okay, CDC looks like we may see a spike in February, said got, I hope not. But some of you plan for the worst, hope for the best.
We always plan for, say, if you're a health system, you always plan for a third in anything. Right now, children since the children that seem more rs to the hospitalizations and flu, so there's always some virus or.
Some kind of bactery.
It's gonna going to be out there, so you're always planned for that. As a house, you know, you always plan for treatment or being able to call a healthcare provider to get medication or at least to get an evaluation if if need be. And so you know, the usual things are the are the usual things just like you're just like your mom.
Said, yeah, well how are we doing on RSV?
So r C is a in fact, if you look around, we don't know as much about our speakers. We don't test any adults.
They tested children.
More often than not.
We don't test it, so it could be more than we we know. So we look at wastewater, and wastewater says show r SC levels being about half because they were very high at this time last year, so maybe half to two thirds of what they were last year, but certainly typical of this time of year.
Okay, So r SV is a from the entire generally hits the younger and maybe the older as well, but all of us. I think we all amen, I got I hope I don't get the flu this year, and a lot of people are sick. And I think there's also a misdiagnosis too, would you agree most people think they have the flu and it may not be the flu, or don't think they have the flu and they actually do.
Oh, of course, and who knows what the you know what the cold is and soil You test pretty much everybody who comes in works department or at least gets in the hospital gets at least a flu test A and B, and in a COVID test. Sometimes we do more if we're not sure.
But yeah, I mean there's all.
Kinds of stuff, you know, you you may or may not have had, and you get through it.
How's our COVID rates by the way, so COVID, you.
Know, kind of popped up and in fact I sort of see more in the hospital myself and maybe peaking U probably you know half of what last year and you had a little little peak in August, so we're roughly about that level. And so that's why, you know, when you look at the winter, you look at it as a whole respiratory season. It always seems like something's
going to fill it. Floo comes down, COVID goes up, RSB, whatever, And so the actual number of respiratory I ealnits is are kind of constant for the curve through the winter.
Right, is that part of the problem too. You mentioned all of the confluence of these things, and with multiple respiratory viruses co circulating, I think people need to know to make treatment decisions. For example, you know, I mentioned tamil flu for the flu, but what is the state here of accessible affordable testing in the county.
It's pretty good, and so we do recommend, you know, going in goo store and you can get a combination of flu and covid death. And in fact, you know, sometimes employers will ask employees to do that, like, hey, you're feeling bad, go and check that. Check that before you come. And certainly sports teams, hey you feeling bad, go ahead and check that. Law sports teams travel with those with those testings. So it's pretty pretty available, Like twenty dollars or so you can get there. You need
to do two. And so you do need to do one. Okay, it's negative, you know, wait twelve hours or maybe the next day the second one just to confirm. And that's why there are two tests in those in those packets that you buy.
Gotcha, what is the shelf life for that? By the way, most people don't even buy the reading expiration.
Dates well, you know they're pretty good, pretty last at least a couple of years.
Always check the expiration date.
Hopefully don't sell stuff that's expired. But they they continue to study, you know, whether these things are still correct. Even though COVID changes, the test still picks it up and the influenza changes, the new flute still picked up by the point care or the typical influenza tests. They've checked that, so they're still reasonably accurate. Hardst part is getting the thing up your nose to the point that it needs to be.
Well, if you've been around during what six years ago, you remember jamming that thing up until it came out of the top of your head, So you know those days are back when you get the two we should be used to this stuff.
Doctor, Well, sort of.
Yeah, it's always uncomfortable to get that thing and get that good sample, but again that you know what you have and can seek treatment relative to especially with flu, you can get early treatment and really knock that thing down. Between the vaccination and tamil, food products, anti virals, you're probably in pretty good shape. It seems like we are weathering the storm quite well here. We are, like you know,
it feels like we're halfway through winter. Although Winner doesn't want to give it up, it's going to be a while here before we can stop having this conversation. But you see them on top of things and ready for whatever other nature throws out.
It sounds like, well, thanks. And there's a ton of people epidemiologists and a ton of people always want and always looking want checking down the sort of you know, assous disease fighters there who are working, working all the time, and anytime something pops up, there's the conversation discussion. And we talk not just with the health departments, with the health systems, and so we have a pretty good network.
We've been texting all morning of the health systems and health departments here in this part of the country.
Yeah, I mean, you work together to make sure that you know, you see the trends coming before we know about them for sure. Is there something on the horizon you know about you can maybe in the next couple of weeks or a couple of months, how and how far in advance you kind of figure these things out well.
And so there is this thing called the winter vomiting thickness votavirus, you know, the things see on cruise it and stuff like that. And we in the past week or so have in fact seeing uh one or more of our wastewater treatment plants start to come up in voatavirus and so probably put out you know, the alert here in the next next day or so. And so that's not something you want either. And so it's not a bit so you know, but I will tell you it's that right now it's roughly half of what it
was this time of year. But this time of year last year we had one of the highest amounts of roatavirus that we've seen a long time. So so we're at typical levels, but we are you know, the wastewater is showing at and you know, wastewater doesn't lie for vatavirus because that's how it how it breads.
Yeah, so rotavirus routine backs. Infants get it a lot too. But is it solely hand washing? And what is the as you call the vector the same? What how do you want to contract is it? Is it their dirty hands?
Right?
The same thing?
Hand washing, good hand washing, nortrus, both of those are kind of the same. And so you know, good good hand washing, and especially especially Swinea family is really throwing up a lot. It is that you know, that bombit it, that's duchius. And so you want to sanitize that and make sure it's washed with soap and water, not hand sanitizer because the alcohol really didn't didn't take nor ours.
Oh wow, so that's good news. Okay, I'll throw alcohol, you know, hand sanitizer on it. That does not do it. It's got to be soap, uh sir factor. And then you wash your hands for twenty seconds and get all those germs down the sink. Yes, yep, and only watched a second. Just rub your face, touch your hand to your face.
You got it.
If you got that habit, it's not a good one to have this. This is this time of year, that's for sure. Doctor Stephen Fagan's uh he is the medical Director Hamilt County. Thanks again so much for the information. Appreciate it.
Be well, take care every day.
Yeah, there's a few more people back at work today, but again we're not the full strength, as we say in hockey. We'll do a news update in a few minutes. At cold is gonna last. Here's a spoiler alert for you with the weather, it's gonna last for a couple of weeks. It's a good feel like anyway, maybe a week from Thursday possibly. I guess this is when we may get near freezing at this point. Who knows. You just gotta bear down. We're gonna white knuckle it literally
and figuratively for sure. So that's on the way. We get news update latest to Minnesota and we'll return a little money tune up. Andy Shaeffer drops in once again. He's with Simply Money and all Worth Advisors. Lots to talk about the markets, including India and the European Union getting together to try and gang up on the United States to try and circumvent tariffs. What does all that mean? We'll talk about it next with Andy Shaeffer from Alworth
on the Scott Sloan Show. This is seven hundred w time to talk about money, how to make it, how did you keep it, and how to keep others off your stack. This is all Worth Advice with Andy Schaeffer. All right, wrapping up the show this morning, as we do on Tuesdays with our buddy Andy Shaffer from all Worth Financial. Drew, Good morning house. Things in the deep priests for you way out there in Claremont County.
Yeah, everything's great. They cleared the roads pretty well for us, and you know we're just kind of hunkering down out here. But no business as usual as far as the markets go.
Yeah, that's true, and everyone is. I guess anyone possible working from home. Yesterday when I left the station, it looked like it was Christmas Day. There's no one in the parking garage today. A few more cars, but not many. So that, you know, from an economic perspective, that helps because you can work literally from anywhere. Let's get into this stuff. I'll put you on the spot and about this new deal that India and the Europeanian Union struck
a trade deal. As you know, we hit them with fifty percent tariffs and now the EU and India said, okay, you know what, we'll partner together and we'll trade with you guys kind of squeeze in America out. I think the biggest thing, top of my mind, Andy, is what about the auto market there, because we export a lot of our vehicles Detroit does to India.
Yeah.
I think it remains to be seen how this is all going to work out, but it's fascinating to me. I love following the news from a jeipolitical standpoint and
how it might affect the economy in the markets. But this is kind of like the old end around for Canada, right, you know, because most of their you know, energy exports have been to the United States, about ninety eight percent of their energy exports, and so it does make sense for them to actually look for other partners when doing deals, particularly with President Trump and the administration threatening one hundred percent tariffs on Canada if they get a deal done
with China. So there's a lot of gamesmanship at play here. But essentially what this is is Canada is negotiating a deal where they're going to send a large amount of crude oil to India and in turn, India is going to refine a lot of the oil and send it back to Canada. And so you know, that irritates the Trump administration to some degree. We do enjoy our energy relationship with Canada, but I think you know, from Canada's standpoint,
they probably do need to look for different partners. I think more interestingly is the deal that they are potentially entering in with China, And I think that is a little bit more concerning because the Trump administration at this point says, well, China is trying to look at kind of a workaround to get imports into the United States
and avoid terriffs by going through Canada first. And so both of these deals that Canada is negotiating right now are very interesting and we'll see how it all plays out.
All right, Are they working around as to the point where maybe we ought to rethink these tariffs, because I mean, I have no idea. I'm going to ask you, is I don't know if the tariffs are working or not. If it's gone on so long that our former partners are starting to work without it's going, well, we'll just work around the United States. I mean, they can't completely squeeze it out were America, for God's sake, so we do everything.
No, I don't think it's really going to have that big of an impact. I think some of it is you know, gamesmanship. You know, at the end of the day, Canada, India, and China all need the consumer market of the United States, where the most robust economy in the world. Everybody wants to sell their goods to us, and I think that, you know, it's more about creating leverage than anything else.
So it will be interesting. We're going to get our trade deficit numbers that are delayed still from the government shutdown, but we're going to get those this week and will be interesting to see, you know, if we've been able to close the gap a little bit on that. But I don't think it's really going to have a major impact. And again, most of this is a lot of negotiating employ Yeah, and I'm just curious to kind of watch it from the sidewine.
What's our exit strategy then how we get out of this?
Well, I think you know, first of all, you know, they're putting pressure on us in all these countries, right whether it's China, whether it's Canada, whether it's India, and we have direct negotiations with each one of them, and ultimately, I think what we want to have happen is something that's a little bit more harmonious for everybody, so that
it does make sense. You know, initially the Trump administration and courage can to make some deals with China until they figured out, you know, kind of under the hood what was going on there, and the you know, from an economic standpoint, the fear is that trying to is trying to go through Canada to get their goods in the United States and avoid the tariffs, and so that
we lose levers. So I think this will all work itself out over the next few months, and I don't really think it's going to have a major impact on the economy overall.
Okay, good, it looks like markets agree with you there too. Good. I just you wonder, as a you know, just someone who buys stuff, way where this is all going at this point.
Yeah, And there could be some moments in time where there might be some surges and prices you know, from imports with each of those countries, but none of it's going to be long term or lasting. And right now, you know, energy prices are fairly low and fairly affordable, so we do have some leeway there.
All right, Andy Schaeffer, I saw that gold is at fifty one hundred ounce right now, which is an all time high. Right there, you were. You were a guy told me not long ago, don't buy gold, gold, stoop, don't buy gold. When's the time good time to buy gold? When's a good time to buy gold? When Andy said it was still but to buy gold, that's when the best time to buy gold was.
Yeah, I think that.
You know, when you look at the history of gold, it's not a very it's not a very good long term investment. Certainly, it's done very well lately, and you know, and I was mistaken about that. However, it's not the right time to buy gold. You're seeing right now with gold is that it is at all time highs and a lot of it has to do not with you and me, Scott. It's not the average investor that's going out buying gold bars or stocking you know, their basements
with all of this, you know, tangible gold. What we're seeing is that you're seeing a lot of the banking industries starting their heads their bets because of a lot of the geopolitical turmoil that we have, and they want to make sure that they have enough reserves to be able to withstand any type of financial crisis that may come down the road. Now, I think that's more just
playing it safe than anything else. We're also seeing China buy a lot of gold as well, and that's driving up the price too, So you know, the average person isn't going out there buying a ton of gold coins or gold bars. There is a little bit more exposure in gold ETFs. But you have to remember, you know, the S and P five hundred has done great too, So it's it's not like gold has done well in spite of other investments. It's just done well in addition
to the other investments. Yeah, yeah, I get it's got I point your money. It's yeah, Okay, that's that's more. I guess it's more Willy's act. He's coming up at the twelve US. He's the gold guy. Put everything in the gold. Yeah, what you're saying, you know, we can talk about Willie. What what you are seeing is you are seeing a lot of wealthier families by gold because they don't need to chase returns. So for them, it's
more about wealth preservation than anything else. You know, when you've become extremely wealthy, it's more about protecting what you have as opposed to trying to generate more wealth. And so you are seeing you know, more established wealthy families by more gold as opposed to you know, the everyday.
Joe Willy's got a room in his house. It's just gold, right, He said, well, yeah, sony, you gotta get gold. What about when, well, when I arm that happens when the liberal Democrats take over, The streets are rife with blood and our houses are on fire, and you're gonna need gold because currencies not go. What are you gonna do then?
What? Now?
And I said, I got a gun, I'll just take your gold.
That's right, that's right.
You can't eat gold.
I don't know you're you're old, and I got guns. I'll just give me a stick them up, give me that. Uh Andy Schaeffer from all Worth Financial, simply money. Let's talk about stop lelast or early last week, I guess should say, with the Greenland thing, we saw stocks take a dump, and then of course we said, well, hey, you know he goes just kidding, just joking, uh, and then the markets went back up too.
Uh.
And so it's see, I don't know if it's a whip saw as much I think the markets are just kind of used to this, but now we're on the Minnesota, so we've moved from one controversy to any in Venezuela. Seems like it's light years ago. For crying out loud, it seems like the markets of settling go, this is just gonna be you know, every day there's something new and we're not gonna pay attention to that. It feels like that to me.
Yeah, you'll see some swings, you know, generally speaking, when the economies expand and we have you know, this turmoil. You know, from a geopolitical standpoint, you will see the market's whipsaul a little bit, but mostly that's due to investor irrational behavior. You know, people tend to respond to fear and greed, and fear is a bigger driver than greed.
And a lot of people watch headlines. You know, when I talk to my clients, whether they're you know, lean right or they lean left, they usually watch news organizations that encourage what they already believe, as opposed to challenging their beliefs. And so you do have investors that respond to these types of things.
You know.
Greenland's another one that's pretty fascinating. You know, when you look at Greenland. You know, initially it was the Trump administration say hey, we're going to move our military in there. We're gonna you know, basically take it over over. It's going to become the fifty first state. And you know, when he was in Davos two days later, he said, oh no, you know, we kind of have a deal
done already. And I think from the Trump administration, when you look at Greenland, you know, from a geography standpoint, if you're looking at a clock, Greenland is you know, at one o'clock directly northeast of US, and it does make sense, you know from uh, you know from a defense stamp there that we have to have our foot in that area not only for Arctic trade routes, but also to protect the Northern Hemisphere and North America. So you know, that seems to be working itself out as well.
Now we have a base there already.
I'm sure the Danish wouldn't care if we put another one on the days A gah, go ahead, you're gonna put the infrastructure there, we should be okay. Yeah, it seems like it's an asset and the way things are changing the world. Yeah, but I don't know if you need to take the country over completely in order to do that, which is all over countries that are are
not ours. Although people will say, hey, this time, you know, but this time with the things on them at this time it's different, Is it really all that different?
No.
And the other thing is is I think, you know, the Trump administration makes a good point about NATO. You know, if if if China was able to get a foothold somehow to Greenland's rare earth minerals and those types of things that Denmark, probably it wouldn't be able to defend Greenland. And we are obligated as a nation, as a part of NATO to defend the other members of NATO. And I think that's why the Trump administration is saying, hey, you know, we have a lot of skin in the
game here. You know, what we're trying to do is be preemptive to make sure that there is protection there so that we're not reactionary if some type of military action takes place. And so it seems like cooler heads are prevailing. It seems like we're not We're not going to go in there and invade Greenland and take it over. It just seems like we're just going to have better deals in a more clear picture and try to get aligned in the same direction from a NATO standpoint.
Gotcha, all right, We are in earning season right now. Actually hasn't go not quick kicked in a high gear yet, but some numbers are coming out. What do we see.
Well, Ups came out, you know, and their earnings were pretty good, and you know, I think we're going to continue to see some decent growth. Looking at about eight point four percent s and P five hundred earnings growth in quarter four, probably about seven point five revenue growth. But typically you know, we usually see earnings to the side of that. Remember, companies kind of want to low ball their estimations because they want to tell their shareholder
how good that we've done by beating those estimations. You know, in twenty twenty five, earnings growth rate was over thirteen percent and that exceeded the expectation of five point six percent. So you know, we might see a little bit more of the same. We're just getting started in earning a season. We do have a number of companies that I'm looking at this week that are going to report, including Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft and Video, and Tesla you know, so we'll see
what happens. But right now things are trending towards the positive. All right, that's good.
So looking ahead here you mentioned a little bit of that too, don't we have a FED and Reserve meeting and meetings every week? Oh, we got a big meeting. Yeah, that's all they do, is me. Yeah, they like, yeah, that's right.
Well, we're going to get the feder Reserve Monetary policy meetings on Wednesday as always. We're going to get FED sham and pals communication and taking questions after that meeting. Right now, we're kind of in a goldilocks situation from an economic standpoint. You know, we're close to form ployment, inflation is under control. So I don't think there's going to be a lot of earth shattering news when FED chairman speaks. I don't expect that we're going to see
any rate changes this month. And you know, more, it's more important to understand what the guidance is from the Fed. You know, what are they looking at moving forward? And that's why I like listening to the press conference because a lot of good questions get asked. You know, it's likely we probably don't see another cut until June. The Fed is in no hurry, so right now, you know their stance is still pretty dubbish.
Okay, Speaking of things coming up ahead this year, I know that now we have officially started, the green flag is up on tax season, we have taxis. I think most people are going to get more money this year, right, yeah.
We'll see. You know, the Trump administration is implemented. You know some bigger refunds this year. You know some of those include the senior deduction. If you're over sixty five, you might be eligible for the new six thousand dollars senior deduction. Now there is an income phase out. The phase out is seventy five thousand dollars for individuals and one hundred and fifty five dollars for joint filers. But you know that can be significant. There's going to be
continuing no tax on tips. Self played workers can deduct qualified tips. You know that the IRS deems customarily and regularly receiving tics tips. No tax on overtime. That's a big one. One that I'm interested in is the no tax and car loan interests. So if you bought a car in twenty twenty five, it took out a loan to finance it. You can deduct up to ten thousand dollars on that loan interest, you know, to qualify, though, the car net needs to have its final assembly here
in the United States. But there is a phase out there too, so if you have income over one hundred thousand dollars or two hundred thousand dollars for joint filers, you won't be eligible for that either. But you know, overall, there's a lot more opportunity out there, so if you're working with a financial advisor or a CPA, make sure you inquire about some other opportunities for tax deductions.
Yeah, fair enough, Andy Shaeff are all worth financial. Their show simply money there is at six o'clock on fifty five KRC every weeknight. Andy checks in every Tuesday a little cash money update this morning, dual, Well the best. We'll talk again in a week. Be well and stay warm, okay, Scott you too, all right, appreciate it man. We have
a news update coming up in just minutes. Latest what's going on in Minnesota of course, and closer to home, of course, how we're fighting the severe cold right now, along with the snow removal efforts that continue I know Bill Cuningham is going to talk about that coming up in just a few minutes. Right after that news update, I'm back tomorrow at nine oh six on the home of the Reds. Believe it or not, we're inside that
sixty day window for Red's baseball to start. Won't be long before they're reporting the goodyear and thoughts of warm weather collectively. You think baseball it'll help you feel warmer. It's a fact. Try it. Scott'sloan, Home to the red seven hundred w Rison's Net