3-17-26 Scott Sloan Show

woman is fighting back. Her attorney came out hot yesterday calling this whole investigation a hatchet job, because this is the third extension they've had for Frost Brown Todd to do an investigation to find out why they fired someone five months ago. Normally you have costs at the beginning, not at the end. It's a cluster or waiting for

the report to come out in two weeks. So what's the strategy here on that is a local attorney, former defense attorney in private practice now and UH employment law expert Jason Phillibum Jason, welcome, harre.

employment litigation pre positioning. And he's playing the game pretty well. But let's begin with some of the more obvious questions now that everyone's up to date on what's going on with Terry Thiji. So the hatchet job comment before the report's released, that is that smart? Does that risk alienating a potential jury pool down the road? Is that the right play?

that's wrong. So I think that's interesting because what it allows is it's almost like the Supreme Court argument before brief comes out, they all tell each other what they're going to say, and then they write their descents ahead of time. Its almost like he did that, and now it almost gives the other side a chance to put that number in in the report and say, yes, that's true. But and then they explain it away. So I found

it interesting. I think it has some strategic value. But I also think that it tells us that there's probably a negative report coming.

sure we've talked to everybody. But I'm also again reading the tea leaves, I'm guessing there's there's probably some policy that she violated, or maybe not one that she violated, something that she left you know, her her staff violate. That's probably what it's going to come down to. But you know that I've told people about this is look, at the end of the day of police chief or crime.

In my opinion of twenty six years, crime happens because the police chief is not you know, doing something correctly, the judicial system is not enforcing.

fire you and then find the reason why. But so now it's what two weeks out before this report drops? What is him actually trying to accomplish legally? Two weeks before why now? Why yesterday?

so there's a strong argument this was political. Someone had to be the scapegoat or rising crime because that's something that the elector they just they don't want to tolerate anymore. So that's one thing. And then secondly, now that you're getting ready to because once you file that lawsuit, then you have to be very careful in what you say because then courts get mad if you start talking when

there's a pending lawsuits. So it's almost like he use his strongest argument now because as soon as the report comes out, they're probably going to file something as soon as possible, and then at that point he's going to have to be a little bit more careful about what he talks about.

by gender. So was she treated differently than the male counterpart? Was, you know, and then you go into things of that nature, and then you have to again look at quantifiable numbers because I'm guessing that you know, policies that were broken here when they do a full investigation, they were probably broken across you know, It's like anything like you said, driving, I mean, how many people speed, you know, even if it's one, two, three miles, Well, technically that's the violation

of the law. So I think you're going to find some technical issues. And then the argument she's going to bring up as we'll wait a second, I'm the only one being mistreated, and I happen to be a female, which is a protected class. All the men that came before me and after me that were allowing the same thing, they weren't treated that way, and so that's going to be one of their strongest arguments for an employment.

fired her in the first place. I think most people look at that and go, okay, it sounds like a hatchet job. So using those words, I think we're correct. But he's setting the stage here, obviously positioning, prepositioning for what's about to come out. He specifically tied her removal to the timing of the election last October November. So how hard is that to prove political motivation was the

real reason behind this move? And because it's it's you know, if you throw something out there that you can't substantiate, because only a fool, I have to have pure of all is no fool would say yeah, of course as political entirely. That's a whole separate incident and problems for the city and in particular the mayor legally speaking, so he can't confirm that. He just ignores it. So if you throw something like that out, it kind of just floats out there. That does that help him?

get rid of her. But at the end of the day, you're fighting for your political life, You're two weeks away from an election, and you're let go when no one else that's been inder the same situations and let go.

It's like, if you lean into it, you could try to make an argument that yes, I'm doing what the people want. You know, they want me to make sure, you know, city is safe. So I don't know that. If I were the city I would stay away from that as much. But you know, at the end of the day, I'm guessing. You know, the way politics are and everyone hates politicians, they'll probably say, no, this is

because of a policy. But that's the other thing is they didn't know about the policy until after the investigation. That's the other strong argument that she's going to make is a wait a second, You found that that I touched that white line after the fact, Yeah, how can that be used to justify my removal?

like you anymore, then theoretically they can. Now if they let you go because you're the female in the office and all the other men aren't being let go, now you have an argument that you're being treated differently. So in that particular case, the fact that you know the city manager you serve with the pleasure, that's true, you're at will. But at the end of the day, that doesn't mean they can terminate you just because you know

of a protected class reason or something like that. So if it's you know, I think if again, if they leaned into it, if they just said we want to make a change, we don't like the direction this is going, and then they just made a change, I think they would have almost a better situation.

of course it's taken so long. They've had to investigate every single complaint, every single rumor and everything like that. And so I think, you know, what happens at the end of this report will tell us whether that's je files.

the alleged corruption they're looking at? Because it was really bad then it goes all the way to the top. Yeah, just past the you know, just.

We'll get into that after news on the Big One. Sorry, that was an interesting press conference yesterday with Stephen m in the case of Terry Thiji, the interesting case of the former and I say former although she hasn't been fired police chief Terry Thiji and Jason Phillibaum are legal expert on the Scott Sloan Show said well, you know you also have sex and or age discrimination in there too,

because those are protected classes. And man, there's a lot of protected classes these days, right, and that is just you know, the legal definition should be a group of people legally protected from employment, housing, public accommodation discrimination based on things like race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, disability. Basically, can't mistreat someone who can't help where or how or to whom they were born, right, And that's a pretty

good legal standard. I think it's hard to argue that going to I can't change who I was born to what I was born, and what I look like. But I want to bring this back. I said, there's a talie in here, with today being Saint Patrick's day in this Terry Thiji thing, and I if you listen to the show for any like the time. You know, I try to be consistent.

a leprechaun logo? You know, a height challenge, verdict challenged, firecrotch, red bearded mascot, and the logo goes on everything and no one is screaming about racism, ethnicity or ready for it, cultural misappropriation. Where are the cultural misappropriation crowd? Where are they? Where are they? On Saint Patrick's Day? A lot of other ethnic holidays are things you point out are like, no, we can't, you can't do that. You know, when I someone who is not I don't know hispanic opens up

a taco stand or tries to. There's some things long ago where where you know, you have fusion cuisine, which is the combination of two different cuisines into something else. And we've always done that in America. And people are losing their minds because white people are cooking Hispanic food. It's cultural misappropriation. Shut the hell up. They're just trying

to make money, is what they're doing. They're ready to come up with something new, and I think it's a great You know, if we have this established cultural framework, in this doxing and cancel culture in which we currently live that says its stereotypical ethnic caricatures cause harm, then me being mister consistency, is that standard has to fly across the board. We're not gonna talk about principles or politics. So if you look at a leprechaun, by every objective

matter measure, it's it's an ethnic caricature. You've got a short, red haired, green clad irishman obsessed with gold and drinking. I mean, if you ran that through the DEI computer, it would explode. Okay, drink. He's a drunk and he's obsessed with gold, and he's got red hair and he's short. The Chillele. Yeah, that's well, that's the third We put your lips on the third rail there, Clark. But again we have this selective enforcement of cultural sensitivity rules. It

exposes the whole thing is a fraud. It's a power play. It's not a moral standard. The whole thing's a fraud. And this fits into DEI as well. It reduces a nationale to a mythological figure which I lean into. I think that part Irish. Why I identify more as Italian, but I got that Irish sloan. That's pretty Irish name, and reinforces the drinking stereotype that Irish all drunks, and the whole wow, they don't mind defense that doesn't hold.

We reject that argument for every other group. Why this one and the whole image itself was kind of born from mockery, the vaudeville age, you know, the eye bumbling, superstitious drunk was a stock comedy character back in the eighteen hundreds and nineteen hundreds, and the leprechaonus direct descend into that that type of ridicule and publish, well, well

you know it's it's a different thing. Well, why because you're white Europeans, I mean, if you are a cultural warrior and you object to cultural misappropriation and dangerous stereoisis, where are those people today? They're at the bar drinking green beer, wearing a silly hat. That's what they're doing. I mean, it's such a This to me just is just another or this is another brick in the wall and trying to segregate DEI because at the heart of DEI and you know, certainly I think there's a period

of time certainly needed that. I think it's a good test today to find ef can stand on its own and you know, you win on merit, not who you are or where you came from, as it should be, and that's what the Constitution says. And I think you got to give that time to go okay, well did it work or not? And time to stand on your own. So you got to pull that carpet out. But in this just exemplifies that opinion, like this is a great defense of it is. No one is complaining, even Irish people.

I'm complaining about stereotyping Irish people today. You know, you got a bar serving green beer and lucky charms and doing shots today. Imagine a bar doing tequila shots with speedy gonzalesnces on sinco demand. But here's the thing, is like the stereotype is that you see you see Hispanics, particularly the Mexican culture leaning the Mexican right. You go into a Mexican restaurant and it's your birthday, you're doing

shots and you've got a big some on. But then people, if you post it on social people, actually there's clapping back at you for misappropriating that culture, even though the people who are foisting on you and encouraging to do it are the same people who should be offended according to that theory. That's why this who the whole ethnic stereotype and race, I mean, it's just it's all based

to charade, is what it is. Like if the protected class, the darlings of the day, are protected, then that's all that matters. Well, then applied equally across and you see how ridiculous this whole fight is. You know, you don't get to ban a sombrero and keep a leprechaun man pick a lane. Pick a lane. And the inconsistency isn't a bug. It's proof that the rules are political leverage and not about human dignity. All these things I mean, all right, you can be offended. We got Chief Wahoo, Okay,

got rid of that. And I'm not saying it was good or bad. I'm just pointing out the inconsistency here, right, Chief Wahoo. Yeah, it's kind of cringey. Okay, we got you know, Uncle Ben on the on the rice box, subservient black man in a bow top got where that Missus Butterworth was under review. Remember that when the Missus Butterworth Syrup controversy, I thought it was just some I just thought it was Missus doubtfire. But apparently I guess

someone determined this to be a mammy characature. I'm not quite sure. Landa Lakes Butter went through it. The Native American maiden on the box that went away. Remember it was Star Wars Jar jar Binks that controversy you had, you have a Pooh on the Simpsons, and so, I mean, the point is it's not defending the stereotypes, saying look, if you're just going to be what you say you are,

then you have to be consistent. So if you're offended about butter and syrup and rice and a Pooh and jar jar Binks, then I would say why where's the outrage over Saint Patrick's Day? And you can't find it because well, largely it's like that's they're Europeans, so it's but that undermines your whole argument, you know, the green you got great and the culture mistrepublisher people wearing green hair and green clothes and the Chileley and kiss me

I'm Irish and chili and beer. It's a stereotype, but it's also it's it's cultural misappropriation. Where are the cultural misappropriation warriors on Saint Patrick's Day? To show you how what it's based on is a bunch of nonsense and a shakedown. There you go, I don't see people protesting at Maldy Malone's or anything like that on and rightly, so you should go in and drink and eat boiled food and pretend to like Irish dancing for a day. They given the people who are like Irish don't really

like Irish dancing. It's like, what is this? And so either all that they all go or they all stay. But you know, we admit, when the framework gets selectively enforced based on which groups have agency or have current political capital, we got to start pretending it's it's about human dignancy, human decency and dignity and protecting a culture.

It's just it's silly, and it's like, well, I'm trying to think if there's a we Got Rid of Columbus Day, because that was offensive on I'm trying to think if there's another holiday and say go to MI. I mean, I remember it was here locally a number of years ago where someone was under fire. The place was under fire because they had a I think it was kind of a thick I can picture the logo in my head.

I escaped me and forget what it was, but it was like a guy taking a siesta under a net, leaning up against a cactus, which is not a good place to rest your head. But nonetheless it's just a logo. No one's really being pricked by the cactus. And maybe it's a non prickly cactus. I don't know, but it's a fat guy in a sarape and he's got the bandalier around, he's got the sombrero and the big mustache and he's having a siesta. And that was the logo.

And of course you can't have that people, even though I think the people who ran in the place were I think they were Mexicans, so I mean, if you wouldn't. And a funny thing is I remember traveling down to Cancun and back in the day when they had phone books, and they leave the phone book and I'm like, well, it's in the Mexican phone book and the logos for the Mexican restaurants. There were all these stereotypes that here

at America were offended about. These are actual Mexicans do well, that's different because they can do that because it's their culture. I see. But man, I'll tell you what you want to split hairs. Saint Patti's Day, Saint Patty's Day? What about that? I don't know any irishman who's offended by a leprechaun. Quite honestly, I don't, nor should you be. But that's the point of this. Hey, Chris, you're on the Scott Slan Show. Thanks for checking on.

That's a big no, it's just bingo. It's just sloany here on seven hundred w W had five one three cent four and I seven thousand, College Tilla and a joby on the Scott Flung Show. Thanks for checking in and appreciate what's up? Hey, Thank you, Jake.

of age and protected classes. Absolutely, that's what it is. Because the people on the right rush to defend this old carr and you only get room because he's old, and so that fell under the age discrimination category. And now we've got the right canceling stuff. You know, just enough already. If the logos change the logo, that's fine. The problem is probably the food, the food and who owns it and what the you know, what the demo is, I guess more than the logo ware.

I don't know. I saw plenty of people, you know, people of color, brown people, white people, Asian folks all celebrating Saint Patrick's Day, and you know, no one's scriminal culture. Is that culture? Well, no, that's different because these are the white European overlords. I get it. Racism and ethnicity is fine as long as you're not the one on the receiving end.

can get my dog to fill the bracket. I want to see if the dog can what the accuracy rate is, because you know, you've got people like Austin, You've got Tony Pike, You've got Lance McAllister, you got Moegger, you got all these guys on sports guys, and I'll fill out the brackets and als. I just want to see, like you know, your whole reason for being is based on being a sports actor. I just want to see if the dog can randomly pick winners and losers better

than the experts. It's a it's a good I may do that. I may have bandit filled that thing out. I used to do that with the forecast with my old dog who has since been put down a long time ago, Lego, the World's Dumbest dog TM, who would predict the forecast, like when we had the snow today. I'd have different plates of food with one, you know, less than an inch, one to two inches, two to three inches, four inches loss a snowmageddon, and he would whatever food bowl he ate out of that would be

the forecast. And it turned out he was as accurate as a lot of the climatarists that are on television. Wag caused a lot of problems back in the day between me and my friends in the TV media. Anyway, anyway, if we have March Madness here, we'll talk about responsible

gaming coming up. At ten oh seven. Earlier in the show, if you missed it, I had on Jason Philibaum, former prosecutor and defense attorney and talking about the Terry Thigi situation, because this whole rant about de Ei and you know, Saint Patrick's day was rooted in that going on. He said, you know, she may have a sex and age discrimination case because it's a protected class and said, well, it's

an interesting time to talk about that. You mentioned that because of Saint Patrick's day, but talking about yesterday's press conference with her attorney, Stephen m who's a wonderful employment lawyer and has already fired the first salvo across the bow regarding her termination some five months ago. And it was a great discussion. If you missed it, it's going to be on the podcast fall on the show via

the iHeartRadio. Of course, if you miss it too, you can always take us wherever you are go from the car to you're off to just have your earbuds in you can take the show. It's completely portable that way. But it's interesting watching some of the highlights of the press conference yesterday where Steve m called this a hatchet job. And I think the strategy itself is really interesting too.

So why would you have a press conference before the report drops and the report presumably is going to drop the first week of next month, because this is the third time they've extended the contract with Frost Brown Todd, Who's going to spend and spend a lot of time and a lot of your money if you live in the city, investigating why they fired her five months ago, which is not a good look. So they held the press conference yesterday. And what he's doing, he's poisoning the

well is what it's called. So whatever comes up out of that report, and I think they got a tip that there's some bad stuff in there, he readily public called it a hatchet job. So then he said, well, we expect this from the It doesn't take five months to find out why you fired someone in October, and here it is March and April, and now you're just getting around. Some of the report hits our frame of mind as the public mean you be in the public.

That's already said. Of course it's as bad thing. Frost Brown Todd was not paid to find good things about Terry Thig. They're paid to find bad things about Terry Thig. Of course it's gonna come out. For example, you know, company may go hire a consultant. You know the consult everything can be running great, hurry consultant. They're going to find stuff to change because it justifies why we're paying

them this money in the first place. And Steve him yesterday also made the point of comparison that violent crime had increased since theg went on leave, Yet no one's moving to take interim chief. Heini off the jiant And you know there's a thing. I mean, he's doing a great job, am Henny's ston doing a great job from

all intents and purposes. And so you could say the same about Terry Thig And they basically put the city on notice saying there's gonna be a lawsuit get ready for it in the city is going to have to pay, meaning the taxpayers as well. So he knows the report is not going to look good. The investigation has been extended twice and they're building a case against her. But he can't stop the report. What you can control, though,

if you're the attorney. Here is what people believe about the report before they read a single word of it. It's it's pretty smart. That's a good legal strategy right there. I'm not a lawyer, but I can see what he's doing right here, and it'll turn into it. I told you so a moment. It'll you know, if you see this as a canard and a whole political cover for AFTABS administration, then you're totally buying in this and that's the goal.

And if you're planning to have some skin in the game, there things you need to know for you bet specifically online in that version of namely, what to do if the stops feeling like fun and you don't want to get in over your head because it's a real deal this time of year. And our partners at DraftKings, it's Lauria Klane's on the show this morning to talk about responsible gaming on the show. Welcome Laurie.

kinds of different limits. You can set check in reminders, and as you mentioned, our customers can also of course choose to cool off for you know, a set period of time, or even self exclude if they're not comfortable with their play and you know how they're feeling about the app.

interest changes. Does that change how you approach responsible gaming?

And then when somebody's actually on the app, let's say they've spent a whole lot of time, you know, hours on the app, will send them reminders and really try to engage to you know, give them a moment to reflect.

see everything that's available in the Responsible Gaming Center. So, you know, I tell everyone I know, whether they place a bet or not, they probably know somebody who does. And you know, sometimes people don't want to listen to me. They want to listen to their friends or relatives. So I encourage everybody to take a look at that it's RG dot DraftKings dot com and they can see the suite of tools and resources that we have available.

force anyone into bankruptcy. But you know, we've seen cases where people do abuse it, and it's a great way to predict if you might be of you know, have that vulnerability. And I think it's a really responsible thing you do there. And I know you guys do this, but but other gaming platforms do as well too. You also work with state gaming regulators too. Is there a baseline of responsible gaming tools that every legal operator like

yourselves at DraftKings are required to provide? And do you do you just meet that or you go above it?

my stat Sheet we're super proud of. It's about a two year old tool that we built, and that's a personalized dashboard where everybody who's on draftings can see all of their activity over the last thirty days, over the last years, since the lifetime of their accounts. I had

no idea that we go above and beyond. Yes, this is my full time job, and we have a whole team of people that work on this all day, every day, and we're trying to be the best, and you know, give all of our customers various options.

or even you know, frequency of deposits. So they're very smart systems, and we send in app messages to those people and you know, those can escalate over time, and in many cases we will manually review accounts when we think there's potentially some issue going on there. But by and large, we really find that educating people and the people who are customers who are stay informed and are self aware are able to use our tools and really keep it fun. Because at the end of the day,

if somebody's out of control, they're not having fun. And we are an entertainment company and you know, we want everybody to have fun. So everybody's got a different budget, but we've got something for everybody.

come back. So this is, you know, the long game, and we want customers to spend what they can afford. We know that everybody has an entertainment budget, and if Scott Sloan has decided he wants to spend his entertainment money on, you know, having some skin in the game, we want you to spend it with us. And that's all there is to it. And you know we want lots of happy customers.

And you know, we have college athletes now themselves prohibited for betting and some may How do you how do you approach age verification make sure it's not become a platform for underage gambling, because I know that this coincides with a bill out of California right now called the Protecting Our Kids from Gambling Addiction Act, which is a long name, but it prohibit online gaming operators like yourself at DraftKings in predictive market platforms from providing gambling services

to minors or advertising. And you know again, I think a parent gives a kid a credit card, they got to monitor what the kids spending the money on because able to see it right there. I think there's a lot of parental accountability goes by the wayside when lawmakers get involved. But how do you balance that out with a younger audience and young people getting involved?

in her name, that's a violation of our terms. But our systems are very smart and so oftentimes I can't tell you exactly how it happens, but our systems will identify when there's somebody underage that we believe is playing on someone else's account, and in those cases, we block the account and we reach out and verify who it is that's actually placing those bests. I mean, in most jurisdictions that I'm aware of, it's a violation of not only our terms of service, it's a violation of the law.

And you know, I grew up in Las Vegas, right, so I've been around gambling my entire life, and I start from a place where you know, there's an age for gambling, and there's you know, underage and we have no place for that on our app. And unfortunately, there are social media sites and there are illegal sites that are marketing to teenagers and it's really it's terrible. And if I had a bad i'd go out and shut them down myself.

I mean, you guys are looking for. What I'm saying is I don't know a ten, twelve, fourteen year old that can have it our own credit card if that's what we're concerned about without the parents' knowledge, and if the parents get my card and don't bother the check where they're spending their money, I don't know how that's on any operator like yourselves, on any platform or predictive markets. Another big one too that's coming out that do things

besides sports. That's outside of your scope obviously Lorid Klanney at DraftKings, but I think it applies is that, like, you know, we can put all these measures in place, but it's a partnership. Mom and dad have to be actively involved in this as well.

it anyway because you're responsible. Right, So if you know, my goal is to have everybody use the tools that we've built, will continue to innovate. We're going to make them better, smarter. I mean, they're great right now. We're like the top rated RG program in the country. But you know we're gonna we're not stopping. I have an entire team that works on this night and day, and we're gonna, you know, keep pounding the drum here.

They're targeting kids, hooking them young, and betting they'll become lifelong customers. Their reach. Research says more than a third of boys ages eleven to seventeen already gambling, and most of them didn't go looking for it, it found them. Well, that's social media, that's advertising, and that's the algorithm. But I want to know what eleven year old has access to a credit card because generally you can't secure a credit card at that age. So I think I put it.

But you know it's again it's California, and then they're looking for reasons to go after big companies. I understand that, but I think it's kind of a baseless suit or a baseless cause myself. If you're doing all these things to try and weed that out, you can only do so much in order to do that, and sounds like you're doing way above that. She is a Lori Kalani at DraftKings. Thanks for come on the show this March

Madness season and laying it out. If this is you and you're like, I didn't know this stuff was out there, and maybe you're gonna dip a tel Win or you're having a friend, family member, maybe something like that, I'll point them in that direction and there's some tools in there that can help to make sure that they're not betting over their head. Laurie all the best. Thanks for jumping on this morning, and I apologize for my colleagues.

warm up here, not maybe tomorrow again. We have some light snow tomorrow, but back up to forty five eventually, and then we look nice and warm starting on Thursday and moving back into what the temperature should feel like this time of year. News update happens next, and more to follow, including I beg I've been doing some good toilet thinking here lately about this straight of horror moves problem.

I think I might have a solution for you, or maybe it's just more stupidity coming up next seven hundred WW. Scott Sloan shows seven hundred Happy, Happy, and hate. Try that again three two on Scott Flowing seven hundred WWW. Happy Saint Patrick's Day, even though it's a racist holiday. I got into that after nine thirty. I don't want to go back into that well. But keep seeing everybody on the news is wearing their green hats and the

green tin, green green granite. Where are the cultural misappropriations idiots on Saint Patrick's Day? I ask you, the same people that complained about the cultural misappropriation of Sinco de Mayo, the same people who canceled Columbus Day, not offended at all by by little people in green suits. It's it's the funniest damn thing to show you just how insincere they are. At least, if anything, I am consistent. I try to be consistent, try to be consistent. So I

did some really good research yesterday. I was on the toilet and just kind of got down a rabbit hole and I'm thinking, all right, we got these straight. And foremost here's the problem. We need cheap oil. Right for us to do what we do in America, we need cheap oil. We need all to be almost free, like bucket. Gal'd be great. COVID. That was the one good thing

about COVID. No one was driving. I had to show to work if you had to work during COVID, And actually report to office like I did before I figured it out, working from home. It was like a car commercial was a car commercially. They got the road to myself. No one's on these streets. I'm in a major metropolitanaria and the only car in the road just happens, even to this brand new model we're trying to sell you and that people look happy and smug, and it's amazing.

It's absolute unless you're, you know, going off road, and then you're climbing a mountain tone of I don't know, some sort of ingot like I don't know the middle of the sphere in Las Vegas or something. You're tone up a hill. But I digress, as I usually do. So we need cheap oil, and Iran has effectively closed the straight up our moves. So we got a thousand plus cargo ships and the ones that move are getting bombed the hell out. Now we're trying to get allies

on our side to escort these things. You know, all you need is one drone to get through with a bomb, and it's over where do you Some tankers go up in flames, and of course this is what is driving up the cost of fuel. So Iran is attacking ships. They're laying mines in the Strait. And the Strait, by the way, and you probably have already heard, this carries a quarter of the world's liquid national gas. It's called

LNG liquid natural gas. And at the narrowest point, and that would be the Strait, it's about twenty one nautical miles wide. At its narrowest it's pretty it's about thirty miles, so it's really really narrow. And this is the choke point then, where Iran can launch stuff at these ships and essentially close it. And so how do you work around that one mask It's like, okay, well that's the problem. Geology is the problem. How do we fix that? How do we fix it? Because reopening it is pretty hard.

They've got small fast boats that are abusings for mine laying, and it's harder to counter than large naval forces. So the little boats are doing the mine dropping. And that transit lane is, you know, three four miles from the Iranian shore, and if you're a ship, a cargo ship or a tanker, you have what I'm told, less than two minutes to react to drone missile attacks. Not very big ship like that. It's awfully difficult to pivot. And you know, they use a remote controlled explosive boat to

damage a tanker in Iraqi waters. And that's why we think, well, we may need a ground operation and secure the coast. And the last thing we want to do is put boots on the ground. The last thing we don't want to I shouldn't say the last thing. It's the thing we don't want to do at all, is put boots

on the ground in Iran. Now, Trump called for an international naval task force, and there's reluctant to do that because you know, China is like, hey, no comment, nothing to see here, Japan doesn't have any plans, Germany is out, Australia is out, France is I think they don't want to escalate things. I think they already surrendered. And the UK may send some mine hunters, but we don't really want to send ships, they said, So we're like, hey,

good luck with us, good luck with us. So the idea I had with was on the tone is what we did in Panama. So Panama, I have the Panama Canal, and that was what about fifty miles And we did that because largely because we wanted Rubber to come up from Panama so we can make card tires, Henry Ford. But it worked right, and we still have the Panama Canal today. I know we gave it back and Trump is thinking about we're sending that order that Carter did. But nonetheless we got this. What if we did a

canal through that, Well, it's a peninsula. Just cut off the tip and that sounds very painful, I know, guys, but just cut off the tip a little bit there. And so it's so if you look at and I looked at Google or say, okay, how populated is it? There's some pockets that are because I mean, you know, Dubai's right there, and it's also the UA, but it's also a Mon, and a Mon really wants to be Switzerland there. Like we we're not the pick inside here. We're too small to them. As we don't want to

mess anybody off. We're gonna just we're gonna sit here and make our oil money and be quiet. But if you went through those two countries, you could bypass that choke point entirely correct. And then what happens then if Iran really wants to continue doing what they do for years to come, it's gonna be awfully difficult because now they would be outside their territorial waters in order to do that, and be much more difficult for them to

shut that down. Not saying it's impossible, but I'd be pretty close, depending on how deeply you cut in that peninsula. And now here's the issue though, as I looked at I look at Google earthwin are there some cities there, But there's a lot of dead space there you could cut through, and I'm not quite sure how. I'm pretty sure that property acquisition and eminent domain laws aren't what

they are in the United States. In those countries, I'm pretty sure they could come and go, we're taking this here, if you really wanted to do this. But the problem, of course is geology. So the Panama Canals, I understand that was limestone in granite and compared to the Panama Canal that was volcanic soil fifty miles. As I said, that took ten years and killed thousands of people. Took

a long time to do that. Now we're in the modern era, we have better technology, better knowledge, better science. So could you cut that down in a reasonable period maybe, depending how far you got to go. But the problem is it's a mountainous area, and so excavating that rock

at scale is more expensive than soil. You're cutting through a mountain range, and it have to be wide enough and deep enough for supertankers and LNG vessels liquid natural gas to come through, and it have to be about twenty meters deep and pretty damn wide, and you have a lock system. And look at this way it took pan in the Panama Canal took nine billion dollars to expand it for mount it I said nine billion dollars

for modern tankers. And this area that we're talking about through the Mussinden Peninsul and am on the rocky finger that's jutting out there that connects the Persian Golf to the Gulf of Aman and bypass the strait of our moose entirely. It would dwarf that cost for sure. However, they got oil money. That's a whole different level of money out there, right Like when they're Lamborghini runs out of gas, they don't go to the gas. They just

get a new Lamborghini. They got that. They got stupid money. So I don't know money is an object in this case or technology for them, man. I mean Look how fast they're throwing buildings up in the UAE. It's it's impressive.

multiple ones cheaper and faster than canal. Now, it doesn't solve the tanker problem. Look, the real problem here is the liquid natural gas. Because gases, you know, they take gas and they turn it into a liquid because it's easier transport, it's more it's more effective because if you're just to take tankers of gas, you wouldn't have much gas in the tanker. However, if you liquefy it and then reconstitute it back into a gas from a liquid after it it goes to port and gets processed and refined,

then that's how you do it. So you can't pipe liquid tanker. The say you can't do it. But you got two countries here, And I mentioned though, Man is pre politically neutral, and I would imagine they'd be reluctant to host something like this because it could make them a target. And Iran would look at construction's active war. Probably I don't know how, but maybe an active war. But boy, if you did something like this, couldn't you

squeeze out I ran entirely. Now, it's going to take a long time, and maybe we need to have some patience here. If it took eight years or ten or whatever it took, I don't know. And would there be the impetus in the Middle East for them to do this, But it's a consideration because the issue here's real estate. Know a little bit about real estate. The issue is real estate. The whole reason why where war we know the problem in the Ran is because they cut off

the supply of oil. Oil goes off the charts. We all flip out, We could pitulate, and then we do this all over again every few years, and maybe a different country, different cause. But I mean, this has happened a handful of times in my lifetime where Iran has said, we're cutting off the straight of our moves and we're gonna squeeze you when it comes to oil prices, which is why we need things like and Trump's right on this.

We need energy in dependence. Maybe not fully, but we're still producing a lot more than we have and re establishing pipelines like the Keystone XL pipeline, getting that back online. But again to show you just how dependent we are in for and oil, it's still not enough. It's still not enough, and we're getting oiled by the way from Venezuela. Still not enough. And it all goes in the world supply. We're all dependent on one another, and it all takes

us Iran to say we're shutting this thing down. And even though the other nations, most of the other nations in the Middle East are with US as opposed to them, it still doesn't mean anything. So the solution here is to figure out a way to bypass the straight of our moves. Can you do that with a canal? It's a big ask, it's a lot of work. There's mountains

to move. Can we move mountains? I would think that the Middle East of those countries, uh and maybe opek I don't know where they stand in the second they've got enough money to be able to go. Well, actually we have we have mountain moving cash. They're flush with. Not poor area out there. You probably could do this. Could you add more pipeline, Well you need more military protection. There is that something that they work with the United

States to make sure that those assets are protected. Because you've just created another choke pointed it. But we've kind of moved the choke. The chow points south. If you look at it, you know there's this little peninsula juts out. The strait of our moves is very narrow. If we kind of cut that tip off, guys, if we circumcise that peninsula, then maybe there's an opportunity here. But I don't know you do that with more pipelines and infrastructure.

But if you do the pipeline, probably only is that now you're really exposed because that is probably pretty easy to sabotage. How do you get someone in the country with some C four and blow up part of a pipeline or a hole in at least or cause some sort of disruption. I imagine that'd be pretty easy to do.

That'd have to be a very heavily guarded line in the first place, by and it's going to cost a lot more in military in defense than would be just to a canal, you know, like I said, you know Panama Canal costs that would have been nineteen fourteen, I think be about seventeen billion today, and then we expanded it for another five billion. This is I mean, you're in the half a trillion dollar range here, right, And it could take twenty thirty forty years maybe I don't know,

ten years, I don't know. So theoretically possible, I guess practically maybe not, but it seems to be the solutions. We got to find a way to get to take the straight of our moves out of the equation. That to me is the difficult task. But some quality toilet time was saying said they thinking this whole issue, and maybe you thought of the same thing, because I certainly don't claim to be the sharpest knife in the drawer, But they said, yeah, well we mess on the STRAIGHTFORRM.

Is there a better way to move that oil out of that region? Canals and pipelines? We ought to be at least be looking at a kicking the tires on it. Otherwise our grandkids will be doing the same thing in a few years, and so it goes quick time out

back with more. Scott's Loan Show continues on seven hundred Wold four minutes away from a news update here on seven hundred w scott Sloan Show, and then at eleven oh seven, she's Kentucky Representative Beverly Chester Burton, who is sponsoring legislation that we should pay attention to here in Ohio as well. Kentucky. We just had the street takeover

this past weekend. Dozens of people jammed up in this thing, and it's going to get worse, not better, with the winter, the winter months behind us and the warm weather come up right. Her proposal there is because it really hit Louisville pretty hard where she's from, and she wants to after the second event. So first defense is pretty strict. We take your license and let's face it, license revocation and suspended people dus all the time. Like you look at a court docket. A lot of them are driving

well suspended, driving insurance, but driving well suspended. People don't pay attention, don't care. Used to be like, well I don't have a license, I can't drive. Now people just don't care, so that I don't know if that's a deterrent or not. I don't think it is. But taking your car and crushing it, that is a deterrent. Now, my civil libertarian radar went up on that one, going, well, I've got issues in the past and the present with confiscation because we know it is abused, namely in drugs.

There'd be people traveling with cash or driving their car with cash, and the authorities will seize it, going well, you've got ten thousand dollars here, what's it for. It's cash, I'm allowed to have. I come a lot to have as long as my money. I'm allowed to have a million dollars. The problem is that they will say, well, that's drug proceeds, even without proving it, and take the cash and other things as well. So I have a lot of problem with asset forfeiture because it's been abused

like anything by the government. You know, you give me an opportunity, they're going to somebody. We're gonna abuse it because the money goes to police agencies and general funds, and that's a way for them to take more of our money that's not in the tax form. But this is an interesting one. You know, if the threat of having your car, you know, fifty sixty seventy thousand dollars car, it's spend her having that thing seized and crushed. Oh boy,

that gets your attention. Anyway, she is on. It's her idea. We'll kick that around. Coming up at eleven oh seven here on the Scotslane Show on seven hundred WLW one. One think this is a perfect crime, but it's not. This woman in Colorado is looking at twenty years in prison for fraud. And what she did was she was a a mortician and this is not good. The family needed money. They were scared and desperate. They needed cash.

No excuse, but that was the excuse. She helped her ex husband hide two hundred decomposing bodies and essentially turned the ashes over to people who had the families had their loved ones cremated, and instead of the ashes, she filled the urns with concrete mix. Don't I don't know how you discover it, because you know, my mom was cremated and my dad's a creama and the look at the ashes are like it does kind of look like concrete mix, and most people are probably not. You may

look at it going, wonder what this looks like? You look at it, going, Okay, same thing with dogs, right, Oh, looks it's just white powder and it's all ground down. Anyways, there's really nothing identifying in these things. Everything else is taken out that you know, if you have an artificial whatever, they take that out. But I don't know how you tell who's actually doing a test to see if it's if if it actually has ashes something I don't know

it did. Somebody's earned get wet and it turned into concrete and he went, wait, hold on, understand, I'm just trying and figuring out how how you would discover that it's not something you would test to make sure, but somebody did, and she's in prison and deservedly so, deservedly so so. And wonder how many people now are checking the ashes of their loved one. Kind of morbid I know,

kind of a morbid topic. Anyway, Hopefully we do not have more traffic problems tomorrow morning like we did today. We'll recare that with news. We got weather, we've got the forecast, we've got traffic, as I mentioned, and of course a full news update, and then we will talk about whether or not you should have your car taken from you if you're street racing or you are doing a shutdown like we had this weekend with a street

takeover in Cincinnati. Should you surrender your car and have it crushed before your eyes if you're guilty of those offenses? Kentucky lawmaker joins us next to talk about that. She's Beverly Chester Burton on the Scotsland Show Home of the Red seven hundred WWT Cincinnati.

going to destroy your vehicle. She is Commonwealth Representative Beverly Chester Burton from Louisville, joining the show this morning, sponsor of Kentucky House built for twenty five. Good morning, Representative chester Burton, how are you?

going to thousand again. It's still an issue. People are still commenting and you know, emailing me or you know, calling me about you know it didn't pass last time, or do you think it.

violations impounded for ninety days. So you lose your driving privileges for ninety days for the first defense. Second offense, you're fined between one thousand and two thousand dollars or up to a year in jail. Your operator's license to drive is suspended, and any motor vehicle used by the person and commission of the violation forfeited to the state to be disposed of under Kentucky law. So we will seize your vehicle for a second time and either sell

it or destroy it. I guess more is a civil libertarian, Beverly. I'm concerned that now we have another civil asset forfeiture situation. As you know, when with drug arrests, we take somebody's caring a lot of cash and a commission of a felony drug stop, they seize the cash. And now we have people who are just well, it's not illegal to have ten thousand dollars or twenty thousand dollars cash with you,

and now under pretext, they just seize the money. And there's been many cases where authorities have seized property across the country and not returned it even though the person's been a generated This is just another way to increase the revenues. How do you balance that in.

The positive that comes out of that is that it's going to go to the Crime Victims Compensation Board.

the state. Should there be a I don't know, across the line effort here to prevent this from happening.

that were not even from the area. So what is happening is people will move from one community to the next when as they need to when things are shut down, and so I think it will require in the future that they to work together. It just continues.

prohibitive here too. En result though, Louisville Metro Police for you are Beverly Little recrushed a street racing card September, made a big deal out of it, and the video went viral. It went all over the country, but you still had a major street takeover a few months later. So what's your response to critics who say the destruction of property doesn't work.

And that's what you know we are intending to do.

heavy penalty for the first time out. Does that just go? Well, it's a slap on the rest day. I've I don't have anything, you know, I haven't been arrested before. Let's say, I guess most of these people probably haven't maybe a few tickets here there. I'm probably not going to get jail time, will get suspended. I'll play court. Costs a few thousand dollars and I'm out the door. But I'll probably do it again.

the community. Yeah, And I'm just trying to respond to people who have taken a look at what they see in the community happening that they don't like, and they want the legislators to do something about it.

you know, palm this particular so called entertainment down. But see, it's not a harmless entertainment, you know, because you know, it's many different areas, you know, passengers, tgestions, and neighborhoods. And I think that's the big picture, neighborhoods. So you know, when they turn public roads into like a race track, then that's when the consequences change.

I think it's a little bit of a bit of a different and I agree with you on that one. And the truth is somewhere between an m One and Cincinnati, which is I mean, it's probably gonna be a slap on the wrist for most of these folks. I wonder if they'll participate in it again. I guess the other thing I would say is what and I this is the problem I had with the speed cameras in that you know, someone could be borrowing my car. It could be a son, daughter, or someone else, family member or

a neighbor. Whoever, they blow through a light, I get the ticket. That's not fair. I'm not the person driving the car. Same thing here. What happens to an innocent vehicle owner, a parent, a spouse whose car is used by someone in a street takeover without their knowledge? Is they are they protected?

I mean, the goal, the goal here is well, I think the goal here is as simple, you know, just trying to create a detergent so that people can understand that, you know, with lives or risks on our roads, that's going to be consequence. That's all I mean. I mean, the blast thing I want is to see anybody's you know, car taken away or anything like that. All I'm trying to do, or all we are trying to do from our legislature, is to answer the call of the community.

the event. These aren't spontaneous. I think there's got to be different distinctions there between organizers and people who are just watching it, watching it unfold.

you're second tracking, you've witnessed what have you? I mean, that's you know those are probably you you know, incidents because you don't know that it's coming.

I think going after those who are actually doing the driving and the organization should be the focus of this thing. If it passes it, yeah, go ahead.

But I think there are a lot of constitutional challenges, no doubt that you are going to face, and it certainly's got to be tweaked at this point. But again, it's a Kentucky house built four twenty five way the street. Takeover here this weekend in Cincinnati. In Kentucky, there's a proposal because they have the same problem in Louisville and Lexington and elsewhere. And that is all right, we're gonna hit you pretty hard with the first defense, second offense.

We're gonna take your car and crush it. And you know, somebody say, well, taking the driver's license enough. If you look at a court docket, is you know Beverly Chester burden, There's people drive all the time without a license. The fact that you don't have a license, doesn't stop a lot of people on the roads. I think there'll be a lot fewer drivers if everyone by it. So taking your license is not does not mean that you're gonna prevent you from driving a car in the first place.

So what's the time whine forgetting this thing through?

it's the way you go about it. I mean, if you are on the highway and if you shut down an expressway, uh, and you got cause backed up, that's I mean, that's an issue. I would say, either build a build a build your own track, or find a track or what have you that you think that you want to direct race, but not on city roads, not in communities not on interstate that's just not appropriate.

big cities like Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland and elsewhere for that matter. Beverly, thanks for coming on the show this morning.

lot of drivers out there, more than you think. Who are driving without an operator's license? Y're driving well suspended. The court dotts are full of these things. How else do you get someone else's attention? It's certainly an interesting question to be answered. Scott's Loan Show. This is seven hundred WLW time to.

And then you know, secondarily, Mexico had an issue with a parasite with a lot of their cattle. And usually whatever we have a shortage, we go to Mexico to be whatever. You know, we're short as far as the cattle industry is concerned, and that significantly damaged kind of our backup plan. So, yeah, this is a little unnerving. You know, my wife and I like to have a

stake from time to time. We get it from a local farmer who originately here in New Richmond, which is nice, but you know, from a national point of view, you know you're probably going to see prices continue to anchors.

we've never seen before. And one of the stories actually in the Financial Times I was reading was that, you know, some of investors are taking everything he says literally and other ones are ignoring it, and it's causing the markets to go up and down. And we really don't see it all that much when it comes to this president and why is it happening now?

You know, last week we saw the price of oil spike above one hundred. Yesterday it came back a little bit into the mid nineties, and that's why we saw the markets, you know, rise about one percent yesterday because everybody's looking at the price of oil in which goes on in Iran, and so, you know, it continues to develop. You know, we're starting to get a little bit more clear to you about what's going on over there. Donald Trump is now putting pressure on our NATO partners to

help him with opening up the straight of Hord News. Furthermore, Iran has now allowed some shipping out of the street and that caused a little bit of the fears yesterday when we saw oil prices fall a little bit. But what Iran is doing at this point is they're only allowing shipping to some of their partners, including China, India, Pakistan, those types of places. But there is some easing there now we'll see how that all plays out. The other thing you have to understand is that this is the

straight uphoard moves is pretty cool too. Iran's economy as well. You know, even though they're only four percent of a global output, they rely on China's income and they want to keep in good relations with a lot of their trading partners and they don't want them to fall into crisis. You know, China depends on Iranian oil, so obviously it's in Iran's best interest to send oil to China. And so all of those things combined allowed for us to see a little bit of a dropping oil prices yesterday.

through the tradeable moves. You know, we can see oil prices continue to rise, and you know, when you go back and you look at the data from financial steam point, if oil prices start to increase at a rate of seventy five percent of higher versus its previous annual has, then you can see a conflict as far as inflation starting to increase. And that's certainly what we don't want. We don't want the Fed to have to reverse years and start to raise interest rates again because that can

certainly push us into recession. So everybody's keeping an eye on oil prices and we're also keeping an eye on, you know, whether that we can find a solution to the conflict that we have in Iran right now.

on vessels. And you know, I found that that was you know, an interesting strategy because you know, hopefully that will increase oil production throughout the rest of the world. But obviously that's against you know, Trump's initial political plan

to put the class on Russia a little bit. So you know, you can kind of feel the administration puckering a little bit on this, particularly if they're going to give Russia a pats I'm producing again, So you know, I think it's coming to a critical moment here over the next couple of weeks, and again hopefully we can you know, find some type of resolution.

last week. We saw hadline prices rise about point three percent, and that's the twelve month print remaining at two point four percent, and core inflation, which should excludes food and energy experience at point two percent monthly increase, so two point five percent year of year. And so generally why oil prices grab the headlines. You know, energy only comprises of about six percent of our total inflation, but when gas prices jump, it can feel like an immediate pay

cut for consumers. And so, you know, the data has been pretty good, Labor market has been steady. You know, the the reading that we got two weeks ago wasn't very encouraging. We lost ninety two thousand jobs, and you know that was a lot less than what I'm sorry, a lot more than what's expected.

rate is concerned. But what we are finding with the private credit, particularly when interest rates were low, is that a lot of these companies, for a lot of these hedge funds, were starting to take more risk in the private credit sector, so they were trying to chase yields a little bit. So if they wanted to get a seven or eight percent return, essentially, they would have to look at these businesses that are a little bit more risky as far as the health of their business is concerned.

And what we've seen is that largely some of these companies have failed. And so this is starting to ignite a little bit of fear for those shareholders that are in these private hedge private hedge private funds, and they're starting to initiate withdrawals. While these private credit funds at this point are starting to limit withdrawals because they want to protect and stop the floodgates from completely opening, and

they're fund collapsing overall. So it's it's started with Blue ou Out in California and now we're starting to see it with Black Rocks. There's some other providers like KKR that are starting to feel the pinch a little bit,

you know. So I think a lot of times when you get into investments, you know, and we do offer private credit, I don't particularly have any clients that are in it, but when you get into invest investments that are, you know, touting specific returns that seem higher than normal, there's going to be some risk involved with that. So you want to make sure that you understand what types of investments you're getting in because they do all have risk.

I did notice this for those of us kind of the middle and the upper part of that is the we have a record number of people who are taking money, pulling money from their far one k I think the genius though, is why they're doing that.

to tap in that resource. The problem is is that you know, you can pay taxes if you're under fifty nine and a half on those withdrawals, and potentially a ten percent penalty as well. So you should use it as a last resort, and furthermore, a lot of times people might look into maybe potentially taking a loan out of a four one KSE. The problem with that is is not only do you have to pay it five

typically at a time for a about five years. But any money that you're pulling out of the market, you're losing that opportunity to participate in the returns of the market. And so if you had a loan out over the last three years in the market of fifteen to fifteen percent each year, you know you're missing out on some significant returns. Now, it is a last resort. It is a provision that I do support, and it does come in handy for people that are in a pinch.

people are starting to save a little bit more. That's why it's so important to have a decent amount of cash reserves that are at state in case you do come across emergencies where you don't even have to have

this type of option. I know it's hard out there for most savers and most consumers here in the United States, but try to put a little bit away each month, trying to put twenty five dollars away, maybe fifty dollars away, and ultimately that you know, you take that out of your paycheck instead of it aside, and you know your lifestyle will adjust to that, and then if you do come across an emergency in your life, you'll have that available and you don't have to worry about tapping into

these types of bums.

Willie is on the way in just a few minutes, right after news here and the national anthem, and of course we are getting ready for baseball. We're inside two weeks. Can you believe it?