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Speaker 1: 505-555-KRC, the talk station. Yay, it's Friday. It's Friday. There it is. Confirmation. Always looking forward to that on a Friday and a very happy one to you. Brian Thomas right here. Glad to be. And a phone number you can call. 513-749-5500, 800-823-TALK, or pound 550 on AT & T phone. I guess that's phone numbers. Three of them. Got something you want to talk about? Feel free to chime in. Today, it is Friday meeting Tech Friday with Dave Hedder coming up at 630. We will be talking about artificial intelligence CEOs saying, we got to slow this thing down. Rand Paul, uh, nixed a AI kill switch bill the other day. Maybe dig into the details on that a little bit. Not a whole lot to talk about on that, but slowing down the pace of development and more and more people chiming in. And this is something I called on day one, kind of swirling concerns over, oh my God, we're all going to die announcement from the various CEOs and these artificial intelligence mega companies. I pointed out antitrust. It was the first thing that kind of popped in my head. They want to coordinate. In the name of protecting us all, they will work together in coordination, which red, red, red, red flags. They know it's coming, Sherman antitrust law. So they're trying to get ahead of that. I think that's the nefarious element looming in the background. It's not about you and me. It's not about saving the world. It's not about we're all going to die. It's about their legal liability. Anyway, we'll talk about that with Tech Friday's Dave Hatter, followed by how our digital devices are putting our right to privacy at risk. There's a great.
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Speaker 1: The article sum and substance, just the point it makes, Republicans and Democrats finding strange bedfellows with each other because everybody hates flock cameras, and I kind of laugh about that. Yeah, you can make a great argument about flock cameras invading our rights of privacy and the abuse of the data that flock has collected, and go ahead. Just one little tiny slice of our privacy being at risk, and we embrace privacy. all of these Orwellian devices, and we voluntarily enter into the surveillance network when we bring them into our house. Hey, Alexa.
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Speaker 3: Bing!
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Speaker 1: And for those of you thinking that those devices just aren't listening to you all the time, you've got a bridge I want to sell you. The funny thing about that, you know, that the device is really ignoring the content of everything you say until the moment in time when you utter the device's name, at which time it starts listening and ferreting through what you're trying to get out of it, like play this particular song? Play Tool Enema. Okay. I choose not to go down that road. I don't invite that kind of technology into my home. Big Router is watching you. That's the third topic with Tech Friday's Dave Adder. Apparently, Wi-Fi could be secretly tracking you even if you have left your phone at home. Going back to, go ahead, focus on flock cameras that are outdoors recording information that pretty much anybody with a cell phone could record at any given moment in time. No privacy guarantee there. You got a router in your home? You got Wi-Fi? Right. 705, Congressman Warren Davidson missed having him on because he was traveling yesterday. I texted him yesterday.
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Speaker 3: I'm worried.
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Speaker 1: I just say, Hey man, we haven't talked in a while. Everything.
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Speaker 3: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Speaker 1: Can I, can you, you got time tomorrow? Hell yes. For Congressman Warren Davidson, we'll make time seven Oh five. Thank you. Just record for lining that one up on the fly yesterday. Got a variety of topics to go over with Congressman Davidson, which is not surprising given what's going on, including his vote, maybe to stop the end or end the Iranian war.
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Speaker 4: Hmm.
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Speaker 1: But, uh, We'll be talking about with Congressman Davidson a whole bunch of different things, including the National Taxpayers Union. Warren Davidson is, and congratulations, Warren Davidson, the National Taxpayer Union Taxpayer Defender of the Month. So we'll start off with that, and we'll continue that topic of conversation at 8.05 with Brandon Arnold, the Vice President of the National Taxpayer Union, on the reason they selected Congressman Warren Davidson to be the Taxpayer Defender of the Month, preceded by... Vivek Ramaswamy. You got to vote Vivek. Disturbing phone call yesterday suggesting race is a reason not to vote for him. That is sick and pathetic. Sick and pathetic. So after Brandon Arnold on the National Taxpayer Unit 805, we'll hear from Jack Windsor, which is typical on a Friday 830 with Jack Windsor. We'll get the latest. Amy Acton hiding in her basement, not taking questions. We got video of that. You can have a whole lot of video of Amy Acton dodging questions. Brown versus Husted race and comments on the continuing saga of State Representative Ismail Mohamed and his residency status. Fun and games closing out the Friday with Jack Windsor. Of course, Monday means Christopher Smitherman and Money Monday. All right. I've been saying, and it's something that the dots are easy to connect. People are angry about the price. I understand. We know it's expensive. The inflation is going up. Everything has gone up. Obviously, the price of gasoline and diesel has gone up. A whole lot of reasons for that, like refining abilities, and we don't have enough, especially when you have supply disruptions like the war. That's something I mentioned in Napolitano the other day. Listen, when you're considering the high price of gasoline and you're angry and you want to blame Donald Trump, and you, of course, can blame him. One of the reasons we have higher prices is because of the war. Now, you can argue all day long it was a necessary war, that we needed to do this. Fine, go ahead and make that argument. But the reality is the action of bombing and engaging the Iranians has obviously led to this. So you want to be angry at Trump for that, and I understand that. But if you are voting for a Democrat, you are an idiot if you think that, what's the point? Why would you go against pretty much everything you believe in politically because you're pissed off at Donald Trump because of the price of gasoline and diesel? What are you going to get in return? Oh, look right here. California diesel is $ 8. 35 a gallon. This is something I've been saying. They're desirous of higher fuel prices. This is the global warming crap that's been shoved down our throat now for how many years? I'm sorry. It used to be warming, right? No, it was global cooling preceded by warming. And then the ice age was supposed to come in the 70s, and that didn't happen. And so, right, it's nonsense. I argue. But the war and its impact on global fuel prices, you can obviously see that. And I've harped on this for a while, and now you know what I'm going to say. As soon as it's over, when it is over, the price will come back to stability. But not if you vote for Democrats who want it to be higher. And that's why California diesel is $ 8. 35 a gallon when everybody else in the United States is paying $ 6. 40. Still outrageously priced. Legislation, global warming, climate change, whatever, forcing the price of gas off. And it's just stupid. But ultimately, what California does obviously has an impact on the rest of the United States because a lot of stuff comes from California. We end up having to pay more for whatever it is because they're paying $ 8 plus a gallon out in California. So we got $ 6. 40 nationally. Result of a global diesel shortage, of course, the war. Acute in California. Because of politicians. Climate policies and taxes forcing the price of diesel and, of course, gasoline up through the roof. The diesel premium in California is $ 1. 95. Every single gallon you're paying $ 1. 95 more because of climate policies. California's low carbon fuel standards intended apparently to increase production of diesel from non-petroleum sources, vegetable oil, animal fats, and, you know, I haven't heard any studies to know if you're burning a diesel made from vegetable oil or animal fats, if that has less of an impact on climate. Does that mean there's no carbon dioxide associated with burning vegetable oil and animal fats as opposed to diesel? Of course there is. I don't think you can get rid of the chemical process that allows carbon dioxide to be released as a form of, if you want to call it a pollutant, I don't believe it's a pollutant. It's a naturally occurring part of the air that we breathe. Anyway, the regulation requires refiners and importers to reduce the carbon intensity of their fuels. So maybe vegetable oil produces less, but not zero. So you must reduce carbon intensity, they say, under the regulation, typically by using these renewable fuels. Or, here you go, buy credits from renewable fuel suppliers. That's the most nefarious element of all this. You can buy your way out. So when you pay for something, I guess the carbon dioxide disappears. Or you're going to supplement with this tax somebody who's making something that produces just less carbon dioxide.
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Speaker 5: It's a scam.
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Speaker 1: Anyway, that regulation adds, they say, about 29 cents to the price of Ghana diesel and acts as a subsidy, of course, for the renewable fuel producers. You're just robbing from Peter to pay Paul. Anyway. They say the value of the compliance credits can exceed that of the actual commodity, the regulatory subsidy. has prompted some California refiners to switch to producing renewable diesel. And here's what you get when they do that. Wall Street Journal citing two refinery complexes in the San Francisco Bay Area previously produced crude at a capacity of 280,000 barrels per day. What do they do? Well, the incentive resulted in them, because of this financial incentive, they converted to making renewable fuels. Now, they're only getting about 100,000 barrels per day in terms of production capacities. You've taken 180,000 barrels off the market because they want to make vegetable oil fuel as opposed to just using crude. Ergo, California lost refining capacity and became even more dependent on, are you ready, foreign oil.
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Speaker 3: Huh.
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Speaker 1: Are you telling me that California's need and demands for crude and basically the things made from it, like diesel fuel, didn't reduce, were not reduced, mean they have to continue to use diesel of some sort? They need fuel to move from point A to point B?
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Speaker 2: No kidding.
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Speaker 1: No kidding. You've taken away a domestically produced source of that fuel, and you've now started having to source it out from foreign entities.
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Speaker 2: Huh.
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Speaker 1: I thought we were energy independent here in the United States. California, in addition to that nonsense, also has a 13% sales tax on diesel on top of the 24.4% federal excise tax. In addition, what's more, the state imposes a 48.2 cent a gallon excise tax. all of which is passed on to their customers, including those out of the state of California in the form of higher prices. So go ahead, vote Democrats, and you get this on a national scale, not just California, mind you. This is the kind of crap they will embrace and have been embracing because the price of gasoline and diesel will necessarily increase in order for us to achieve our zero-carbon goals.
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Speaker 5: Yay!
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Speaker 1: Oh, that's right. A volcano just blew up, negating every damn effort we have engaged in since this whole idea of eradicating carbon dioxide from the planet was a gleam in someone's eye. 517 right now. 55KRC Talk Station. Plenty to talk about. I'd like to hear from you, too. Don't go away. 55KRC.
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Speaker 4: Don't miss our.
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Speaker 1: Only 74 degrees at 55KRC Talk Station. I'm Donald J. Trump, and I approve this message. Thank you, Don.
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Speaker 3: 521.
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Speaker 1: The 55K RC detox station.
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Speaker 3: Lemmy?
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Speaker 1: Hey, Joe. Lemmy was a drinking man, wasn't he? Just a skosh. He lived in that bar down the street from where he lived. Well, I mean, It was a second home, kind of like Christopher Smith and second home is Jim and Jack's, which will be after listener lunch next month. First Wednesday of the month, Jim and Jackson, the last event before last listener lunch before the election. I sure hope to see you there and, of course, get the benefit of Christopher Smith on here on Mondays on the 55 KRC morning show. And I am joking. He doesn't live there. But the only reason I bring that up on the heels of let me. Since it is the weekend. New Gallup poll says 54% of Americans say they drink alcohol.
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Speaker 3: 54%.
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Speaker 1: It's like, okay. But that's a decline of 10 points since January, or since 2023, last time they did this poll. And Gallup said alcohol consumption is at its lowest level it has ever been since it started the poll back in 1939. Alcohol falling out of favor. Local news, Alex Cruz over at, I believe it was.
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Speaker 1: WXIX, I apologize. Box 19. Talked to UC Health physician Dr. Michael Bender, who said, you know, a Surgeon General report came out last year linking alcohol to cancer as the reason some people are quitting drinking. This is his theory, at least, why the numbers have really dropped precipitously. Also, there it is, that I word, inflation. And this is something I certainly have noticed. You go to a bar, it's like 15, 16 bucks for a cocktail. Since when did a margarita cost $ 16? Anyway, so it's more expensive, and, of course, people are budget-minded, so you've got health and budget all falling into place here. Gallup found 17% of Americans say they have substituted non-alcoholic beverages for alcohol, another phenomenon I've noticed, the mocktails that have crept in. Mocktails. So, anyway, just a little fun fact for a Friday. That's alliterative, isn't it? And here's a thought question for you. I know everyone appalled, outraged, heartbroken over the Charlie Kirk assassination. And their family, the Charlie Kirk family, sued a whole host of people in connection with the assassination. Utah, Utah Valley University, Utah Valley University Police Department, Police Chief Jeffrey Long, claiming that their failures led to the assassination of Charlie Kirk and that they were negligent in providing security for the event where he was killed. And I thought about this. In the context of the Cincinnati Police Department, for example, where we're about 200 officers short, overtime is necessary to serve the bare minimum needs for security in the city of Cincinnati, generally speaking. Now, go ahead and throw an Oktoberfest on that. An additional half a million people descending in a concentrated area in downtown Cincinnati. You're in charge now. How many police officers do you need? Yeah, you don't know, do you? And what about the needs of every other community that is, well, being policed by the Cincinnati Police Department? There are a whole bunch of neighborhoods in downtown Cincinnati that haven't gotten a memo on that. So a whole bunch of people focus on the greater, the central business district showing up at Oktoberfest. The obvious needs are there because of the mass amount of people and the uncertainty in connection with crowds gathering these days. So what about the other neighborhoods? What if someone got assassinated in another neighborhood? What if there is another event in a different neighborhood where someone is speaking? How do you know how many officers you're going to need? Is that person going to be the target of an assassination attempt? I don't know. I don't know about the folks in Utah if they had any idea. And what are the obligations of any person speaking? Let's say Abdul El-Sayed. You know that guy. Let's say he was speaking there. And it was he who got assassinated and not a conservative, Charlie Kirk. How many people do you need? Is he the target? Would he be a target of assassination? I certainly have no one who comes to my mind that I'd like to assassinate. I don't think it's the right thing to do. But who is... I guess, is law enforcement supposed to be able to see into the future and know one way or another? And do we want to hold law enforcement accountable for not seeing into the future? And can you not make the argument? And I'm not saying that the family's at fault here, but if you know your loved one, the person you are supporting, the organization that is paying for Charlie Kirk to fly around all over the place and provide these wonderful education opportunities and exchanges of ideas, Should they be more forward-thinking? Man, this guy's controversial. There's a bunch of left-wing nutcases out there, and a whole hell of a lot more left-wing nutcases than right-wing ones these days. Maybe we should do something to bolster his security. Maybe we need to take it upon ourselves. And step back from that and ask yourself this question. If you were going out in public speaking, I'd do it all the time. Do I have an expectation that the Cincinnati Police Department is going to provide me with armed guards?
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Speaker 5: No.
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Speaker 1: No, this is why I'm an advocate for concealed carry and the right to self-defense given to me by my Second Amendment, or at least protected by my Second Amendment.
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Speaker 3: I don't know.
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Speaker 1: I struggle with this because I feel badly for Charlie Kirk. It sucks that he got assassinated. It is an awful thing. It's revealing of the violence that the left wing will unleash on the world. See Stalin and all the other commies that have gotten into power and purged, they thought they were trying to anyway, purge their societies of all the dissenters. What obligation does a police force owe in this regard? And can we really ever, ever have enough law enforcement officers in the world to prevent this kind of thing from happening? I don't really think so. 528, 55 KRC, the talk station, local stories or phone calls, either way, we'll get going after these words. 55 KRC.
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Speaker 5: The NFL is back.
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Speaker 1: Sunday, it's currently 74 degrees, 55 KRC, the talk station.
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Speaker 5: Don't vote Democrat.
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Speaker 1: Tom's not here. He said yesterday he was not going to be on. No, we don't put Tom on the rundown. Joe Strucker doesn't put Tom on the rundown. Joe Strucker, executive producer. So you can feel free to to take Tom's place if you like. I always enjoy hearing from listeners. 513-749-5500, 800-823-TALK, or pound 550 on AT & T phones. People freaking out about measles. And we got a measles exposure reported in Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center after two out-of-state patients confirmed with measles went to the emergency room while contagious. Apparently occurred in a shared public areas of the hospital's emergency department. So were you at Cincinnati Children's Hospital in the area of the emergency department on September 4th or early on September 15th, specifically between the hours of 5.40 p.m. to 7.48 p.m. on September 14th, 11.15 p.m. to 1.15 a.m. beginning the night of September 14th into September 15th. So Apparently, that's the exposure period of time where these two out-of-state individuals with measles were in Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. Health officials say there are currently no active measles cases in Cincinnati. Not just at Cincinnati Children's, the entire city. They say testing completed Wednesday confirmed that both patients did, in fact, have measles and were, in fact, contagious when they were at the hospital. Patients have been exposed to measles in their home state, as I mentioned previously. Exposure limited to these public areas, so if you were not in the public areas, I get the impression from the reporting here that, well, you needn't worry about it. So if you visit an emergency room during the identified exposure hours and you have not received a call to contact the Cincinnati Health Department, and I just, I pause on that. How would they know who to call? I guess the employees, but... Are there video cameras? Are they using facial recognition software, Joe, in the hospital emergency room area to see who's in there and who's not at any given time? Anyway, a health official said, I'll also advise people who have developed symptoms after a potential exposure to please contact their own health care provider before going into a medical facility, I guess, and exposing others. Look for high fever, cough, runny nose, red watery eyes, and rash, which symptoms typically develop several days after exposure but can take as long as three weeks to show up. We go to Oxford where Oxford police detained a man Tuesday evening after receiving two separate calls about a guy walking around University Avenue with a knife. Videos taken by neighbors show the man walking up and down the street Tuesday evening with this large knife in his hand. Lieutenant Adam Price of the Oxford police said they were called to the 200 block of East Seymour Avenue after the first call came in about 6 p.m. The caller told police they came into contact with this person with a knife and felt threatened by the person's actions. Price said the person ran off. Police could not locate him. Price said that the man also had growled at the caller. A little bit later, about an hour, 7 p.m., a second call came in, University Avenue, regarding a man with long hair, wearing pajamas, carrying what was described as a large kitchen knife. Hey, it's that guy. Price said the man was on one side of the street, said something to a resident, then crossed the street and approached her and sat down on her porch. Man detained down the street from the scene. Price said he lives nearby and he was taken to the hospital for treatment because they suspected he was having a mental health crisis. Drugs are bad. Joe may be on to something. 1 p.m. Monday, Timothy... Wrigley, I think I got that right, 20 years old, just been sentenced for assault and failure to comply with the order of a police officer. Well, according to the video that was taken, sheriff's deputy walking him out after sentencing, Wrigley broke through his handcuffs, punched the deputy in the throat, described as bulldozing his way through another deputy while making his escape, heading down the courthouse stairwell and into the arms of another deputy. He made a break for the front door when an officer used a taser on him, and that was the point when he was brought down before he got outside, taken back into custody. Meanwhile, first deputy was still on the ground while all this was going on, holding a paper towel to his bloody face, and others came to help him out. Both deputies taken to the hospital, conditions unknown. Injured officers described as recovering at home. 535 right now, 55 KRC Detox Station, life of a law enforcement officer. Jeez Louise. God bless each and every one of you. Don't go wagging. Can you play John the Fisherman? Got to be a Friday.
00:24:24
Speaker 6: 540.
00:24:24
Speaker 1: The 55 Care CD Talk Station.
00:24:30
Speaker 3: 513-749-5500. 800-823-TALK.
00:24:30
Speaker 1: Or pound 550 on.
00:24:35
Speaker 5: AT & T phones.
00:24:48
Speaker 1: 55krc. iheart. com for podcasts and other information and books. Get a copy of Bill O'Reilly's book, Confronting America. It's a good read. Plus, Jeff Scherr, local author. His book, Shots Fired on Redding Road, 42-year-old cold case that former detective Scherr, along with another former detective, solved. Never too late to solve a case, most notably those involving the murder of a police officer.
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Speaker 4: So check it out.
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Speaker 1: Also, Dave Williams, the Taxpayer Protection Alliance. And later in the morning, you'll have the opportunity to listen to what Dave Adder has to say. And Warren Davidson, and Vivek Ramaswamy, and Brandon Arnold, President of the National Taxpayers Union, and Jack Windsor. Full show lineup this morning. God bless you, Joe Strecker. Three-sentence article here in the Stack is Stupid. Not a whole lot of details, but I do know. that Elmer Dan Harline Jr., who's 64, from the city of Rome, was arrested at a place called Tasty Cakes. After reports said he exposed his sexual organs, according to the arrest report, he was viewed on surveillance cameras at the Tasty Cakes, removing all of his clothing, and then defecating in the parking lot. Whoa, that's a lot of feces. Charged with public indecency and a probation violation. No charges related to the defecation. That's all the information in the article. Wilkes-Barre. Police responded to several 911 calls and arrested. What day is it? Right. Naked guy in the area of South Washington and East Ross Street. Happened Tuesday of this week. Officers dispatched the scene after the call came in, claiming a naked guy was walking around on South Washington Street. Passed, of course, St. Nicholas Elementary School. Fortunately, it was after school hours, 6.30 p.m. That's when officers encountered Theodore Macajack. Close enough. 45 years old. He was completely naked when police found him. He told officers, are you ready to, quote, call Donald Trump at the White House? Why are you doing that? And then identify himself using a different name than his actual name. Police records say this guy struggled when being placed in a prisoner transport van. he was arraigned by the judge on charges of indecent exposure, open looseness, and disorderly conduct. Drugs are bad. Oklahoma City got a guy taken into custody there after an armed disturbance and pursuit involving damaged police vehicles. Officers initially dispatched to a residence after receiving a report that an armed individual was making threats against his relatives. That guy, Johnny Kemp Johnny Kemp subsequently fled the scene in a pickup truck. And while attempting to escape in that truck, Kemp hit multiple police vehicles. He kept on driving, hitting additional vehicles before ultimately colliding with a shipping container located on the premises. He was apprehended. And at the time of his apprehension, he was entirely naked. Currently held in a wide array of criminal counts. That's all you get for the reporting on this one. A wide array. Oh, wow. Could result in someone getting shot. We go to McGregor, Texas, where a 28-year-old man now facing multiple felony charges after the father of a boy and a girl found him naked in the kid's bedroom. David Refugio. Joe, what would your reaction be? Right? I know what mine would be. Listen, we have a castle doctrine. There's some naked guy in my young kid's room? Anyhow, David Refugio Lopez, lucky to still be alive, booked into the McLennan County Jail. This is Texas, remember? This after McGregor police were called to the home on Garfield Avenue. Police found him naked, locked in a closet. The girls blocked into a closet. He'd been allowed to get dressed before the officers showed up. I guess dad let him put his clothes on. Father said he and his wife woke up saying someone was in their daughter's room. His wife told him. Rest affidavit said that when the father went into the room, he found the naked guy in a closet and that his daughter and son were also in the room and creepily gross, also naked. Affidavits say the police were told that the daughter had let the man into the house without the parents' approval and that she stated repeatedly there had been no sexual contact. Thank God. Police said the man refused to provide any full identity information, was originally listed as being 19 years old. He's 28. Jail records indicate that he remained there the next day with charges including two counts of indecency with a child, exposed, purgatory of a habitation with failure to identify. Jail records indicate that an immigration detainer had been added later in the day. Add another one to the list of illegal immigrants committing horrific crimes or maybe have committed horrific crimes. Maybe he just didn't have the opportunity to close the deal. Either way, I don't know what your reaction would have been, but there's a total stranger in the middle of the night locked in a kid's bedroom with the kids naked. I know which direction I'm leaning right now. Anyway, 545, 55 KRC Talk Station. More stupid coming up.
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Speaker 2: Or phone station.
00:30:19
Speaker 1: 550, the 55 KRC Talk Station. Oh, look who it is.
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Speaker 3: 513-749-5500.
00:30:27
Speaker 1: 800-823-TALK. Feel free to get behind him, but he's first in line. He is my submariner friend, Cribbage Mike. Good to have you back on, Mike. Happy Friday to you.
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Speaker 5: Happy Friday, Brian. And right at the top, I want to thank you and Joe for promoting last night's wonderful Navy Week event out at the USS Cincinnati Memorial. The turnout was unbelievable.
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Speaker 6: Good!
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Speaker 5: Especially to you because you had some dedicated listeners. If you remember Colonel Randall Fannin that was in studio with me promoting the BFW Memorial team.
00:30:58
Speaker 1: Of course I do.
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Speaker 5: He was there with his wife and a lovely couple, and I told him I was going to mention them, Pam and Jerry from Landon, and hopefully there are going to be some upcoming listener lunch attendees.
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Speaker 3: Oh, that's great.
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Speaker 5: You know, because they said they've always heard about it because she's a daily listener. And she said, I can finally put a face with Cribbage Mike again.
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Speaker 1: Well, at least unlike me, you don't have a face for radio. Unlike me. Well, that's fantastic. Good morning to those folks. And thank you for listening to the program. That's great.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely.
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Speaker 5: We had two parachutists, one coming and carrying the Navy flag and one with the American flag. The Navy band ensemble was entertaining for almost an hour, and the drill team from the Great Lakes Recruit Training Center was there. And if anybody wants to check them out, they're going to be down at Oktoberfest all weekend long. There's going to be a booth, but I can't thank you, Brian, once again, and you and Joe for putting it on the website because I know they had a lot to do with getting people out there.
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Speaker 1: Oh man, it's, you know, Joe Strecker is the one that is responsible for keeping the website updated and God bless him. And thank you, Joe Strecker for doing that every day. But, you know, it's the least we can do here in the morning show. I mean, what a great opportunity. I encourage everybody to get out the voice of America park to checks out the USS Cincinnati submarine memorial. And it's just the neatest thing. And. Of course, someday, Mike, you and I are going to meet out there and you're going to give me.
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Speaker 2: A personal tour of that.
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Speaker 5: Absolutely.
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Speaker 1: We'll hook up a date.
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Speaker 5: And the turnout has been so overwhelming because we initially, especially with our first year, we're just going to be there for the holidays. But the turnout has been so overwhelming. So if anybody wants to come out and would like a tour from a submarine veteran to explain a lot of the placards that are there. Every Saturday and Sunday, all the way through November, every Saturday and Sunday from 1 to 6, an actual submarine veteran will be there, very recognizable in our red shirts, red hats, red vests. So pull us aside because we'd love to share. If we're going to give you a good two or 45 minutes to an hour and you'll come away, I think, for a greater appreciation than what our men and women are doing underneath the seas.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and Cold War era submarine and, of course, going to Voice of America Broadcast Museum and see what it was like during the Cold War when they were operating out of Voice of America and broadcasting the radio signals into the Russian territories and everything. That is the just wildest, wildest place out there. Just walking back in time, it's like it hasn't even changed. It's really neat.
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Speaker 5: It couldn't have been a better location because about 15 years ago, we were going to be down on the river, but we would not have near the expansive area that we have now, the parking. And as you mentioned, we highlight that right at the beginning of the tour, the synergy between Voice of America and USS Cincinnati and what our submarine force and all our military did to defeat the Cold War. It's a perfect synergy.
00:33:41
Speaker 1: It is, and that community is filled with American patriots, too. Thanks again, Brian. You're welcome, Mike. I appreciate you and what you do, and everybody who was involved in that. And it is a better location. I'm glad he brought up the free parking. Can you imagine having to pay like $ 27 to see the USS Cincinnati Memorial if it was downtown Cincinnati? Anyway, back to the stack of stupid. Got a woman allegedly high on drugs. There's the answer, Joe, right out of the gate. He was walking into the Watertown, New York business naked. Police charged Cherry Teal, she's 32 years old, with harassment, exposure, resisting arrest, and appearing in public under the influence of drug. Walked into the smoke shop on Factory Street naked about 1.30 in the morning on August 10th. Court documents say she was also on a public sidewalk causing numerous people to call the police. Of course, because she's naked. Police got there. She allegedly kicked one of the officers in the leg and stomach multiple times, also accused of striking a second police officer while slamming her body into him. After being restrained, she spit in the face of an ambulance worker who was just simply trying to help her. They say police have dealt with this woman before. Police officer said Teal's boyfriend told her that she was high on Oli. O-L-L-Y. Officer said Ollie is the nickname for a synthetic drug with similar effects to MDMA and causes hallucinations and erratic behavior. Drugs are bad. Taking to Samaritan Medical Center. Police arrested her about 2.30 in the morning on Wednesday.
00:35:19
Speaker 3: The aristocrats.
00:35:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know illegal drugs don't come with a warning label. But Maybe I'm just being too logical and reasonable, but this is the way I've operated throughout my life. If someone's going to hand you something, and you're going to get high, man, but it also comes with losing your mind, death, doing things that you have no control over, losing your sense of perspective and understanding about what's real and unreal, anything like that, how about no? 555, 55 cares to the talk station. Oh, by the way, it makes you take your clothes off, too, for some reason. Don't go away. Six o'clock hour includes, of course, Tech Friday's. Dave had lots of great stuff to talk about with Dave at 630. Opportunity to call here between now and then. I'll be right back after the news.
00:36:01
Speaker 5: Did you hear about it? Did you hear that story?
00:36:03
Speaker 1: Talk about it. It's 606-55-KRC, the talk station. Brian Thomas right here. Joe Strecker, executive producer in there. Phone number right here, 513-749-5500, 800-823-TALK, 9550 on AT & T phones. Coming up, it's Friday, 630 every week with Tech Friday's Dave Hatter. We'll be talking about artificial intelligence CEOs saying we need to stop the pace of this development. We're all going to die. That'll be one topic. Followed by how our own digital devices are putting our right to privacy at risk. Oh, I guess people got the memo. Continuing the theme on Tech Friday with Dave Hatter. Big router is watching you. Apparently Wi-Fi can track you even if you leave your phone at home.
00:36:46
Speaker 3: Good.
00:36:47
Speaker 1: Congressman Warren Davidson at 7.05. Fast forward an hour. We've got a whole bunch of things to go over with Congressman Davidson. A whole bunch of things. Vivek Ramasamy, he's running for governor here in the state of Ohio. He'll be on the program at 7.30. And Brandon Arnold, which is timed great because Brandon Arnold happens to be the vice president of the National Taxpayer Union. Congratulations to Congressman Warren Davidson because they named him the Taxpayer Defender of the Month. So we'll get a word or two from Congressman Davidson, probably in appreciation for being awarded the Taxpayer Defender of the Month. And then Brandon Arnold can explain all about what goes into the selection process. 805 with that. And then Jack Windsor from TheOhioPressNetwork.com. Amy Acton's hiding. We have the latest video of her refusing to take questions. Jack's all over that. Brown versus Husted. Huge race. John Hughes said, I think last time I saw a poll behind a couple of points in the polls, and I'm just scratching my head over that. Going back to the point I started the program out with, if you want to pay $ 8. 95 or something for diesel fuel like they're paying in California, go ahead, be angry with Trump because it's $ 6. 50 here, recognizing that if you vote for the Democrats, it'll be $ 8. 50 here because they will institute their global warming policies here and across this country, forcing the price up. Have I made that point enough? And that just seems so reasonable to come to, to come to the conclusion that's going to happen. I mean, we've been dealing with this for years and years. So I go back to my conversation with the Paul town. He just kind of stopped and said, I don't think people will put the dot. We'll connect the dots on that. I don't think people going into vote can put past them the anger they have over just having paid four and a half bucks a gallon for gasoline. You go into the, in the poll, ah, orange man. Okay. And then vote for the communists. That makes sense, doesn't it? No, it doesn't. Anyway. Jack Windsor on that. And then finally, continuing saga of State Representative Ismail Mohamed and his residency status. I'm looking forward to hearing what Jack has to say about that. Excuse me. Using the cough button. Good morning, Andrew Pappas, who brought this to my attention yesterday. Act Blue. It's this massive... Democrat fundraising machine, major political fundraising organization for left-wing candidates and causes. Now, they're having a congressional hearing on this, and they brought some ActBlue folks and principals in, including previously they brought in ActBlue's CEO. This happened in June, second week of June, where ActBlue's CEO, Regina Wallace-Jones, would not answer any questions, including not even answering what her name was, yes or no. she asserted her Fifth Amendment right to be free from self-incrimination. Well, why would you do that? Well, here's some details behind it. In fact, Attorney General Ken Paxton in Texas has already sued ActBlue. This happened back in April of this year, which, of course, led to her testimony. Now, ActBlue is saying, oh, no, Congress can't investigate crimes, which is an outright lie. And that's, in fact, what the CEO said when she asserted her Fifth Amendment right to be free of self-incrimination in an explanation. I'm allowed to do that, and the reason I'm doing that is because this is a politically motivated act by, well, the congressional panel. They're only doing it to go after me. It's targeted. It's political retribution. She said asserting her Fifth Amendment right is the only reasonable response to a proceeding that from the beginning has been about harassing political opponent fundraising platform. It's not genuine oversight. She also claimed that Congress has no constitutional authority to even look into this. Well, that's not true. So we got Ken Paxton's lawsuit against the group for, and you'll get some of the details here. I'll just give you a minute of some of the things that they were doing. Bottom line is it appears as though they were overlooking some really concerning and troubling donations from foreign individuals, which is illegal. Foreign powers and folks cannot contribute to political campaigns here. But they were facilitating that according to the allegations, and this is what the reason for the congressional investigation is. Now, there can be a criminal investigation by the Department of Justice. They can start that on their own. If they have probable cause to believe a crime has been committed, that's what the Department of Justice does. Congress, in doing an investigation related to its congressional role, can refer matters to the Department of Justice to the extent they encounter criminal activity. They can't prosecute, but they can refer. And then sometimes there is a criminal investigation going on over at the Department of Justice or by, again, Ken Paxson, Attorney General. He's got a criminal investigation. He's filed a lawsuit against this organization. Congress can engage in oversight parallel to a criminal investigation, and to the extent they uncover any evidence of crimes or information relating to the separate criminal investigation, they can send that evidence over and let the prosecutors deal with it. So this is all on the up and up. But they asserted their Fifth Amendment rights. The principles that have been hauled in, the CEO previously in June, Their allegation is that this is all politically motivated, that there is nothing to see here.
00:42:04
Speaker 2: Huh.
00:42:06
Speaker 1: Well, and whatever reason I'm thinking of Amy Acton hiding, if you've got a point to make, if you believe this is all politically motivated, if you can explain away what has been revealed so far in the investigation, what Paxton has shown and what the Republicans and, well, I guess what the evidence is reflecting and the reason for the congressional oversight, Why wouldn't you do it? I mean, the CEO is kind of acknowledging, well, if in fact what she is saying is true, the Fifth Amendment has no connection with this. She's just saying out loud, I'm only asserting the Fifth Amendment because I don't want to engage in this process. She's trying to suggest she's not or has not engaged in criminal activity or something that might suggest she has and therefore would be prosecuted based upon her own testimony. No, she's just saying this is all motivated by politics and that there is nothing wrong with what they do. That's the point, isn't it? If there's nothing wrong with what you have done and all these illustrations that have been popping up about them massaging the rules and relaxing protocols and standards to make sure that foreign donors can contribute to political campaigns here in the United States of America... then why don't you show it and say it? So the Republicans have accused ActBlue of weakening the safeguards that they actually had in place, the fraud safeguards, also accepting suspicious contributions, as well as misleading Congress on how it screens donations. There are laws on the book. This is one of Congress's role, keep foreign money out of our elections. This is being led by... Brian Steele, who's a Republican from Wisconsin, along with, yes, Jim Jordan here from Ohio, and James Comer, Oversight Committee Chairman. The latest report alleges ActBlue repeatedly relaxed its fraud prevention standards, even as internal reviews warned that the changes could allow for more fraudulent donations to come through. The report states, citing ActBlue's Staff report they've got information from within the organization, which serves as the basis and predicate for these allegations that have been levied against ActBlue. The committee oversight has found that ActBlue, in its own words, decided to take a more lenient approach to fraud prevention in 2024, weakening its fraud prevention policies at least twice, even though internal ActBlue internal assessments showed that the changes would result in a measurable increase in fraudulent contributions. Huh, how do we get more money in? Relax the fraud standards. Just don't look for it, and it won't be brought to your attention. According to the report, similarly, internal trainings directed ActBlue's fraud prevention team to, quote, look for reasons to accept contributions rather than to examine them closely for indicators of fraud, as required by the federal regulations. They say ActBlue took this lax approach to fraud prevention, even though it had detected at least 22 significant fraud campaigns on the platform in recent years, including several from foreign sources. Look, there it is. Well, it doesn't happen that much. Just a little bit of foreign money came in. Well, that's because you just didn't pay attention to look for it. Committee now accusing ActBlue of potentially accepting illegal foreign political contributions and attempting a subsequent cover-up when congressional investigators started digging into the platform's practices. Major porn dispute involves the way ActBlue verifies donations from people using addresses outside of the United States. ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones previously told Congress that those donors were required to provide a passport number. Are you ready for this? change in ActBlue policies regarding passport numbers? Apparently, the ActBlue check system merely looked into whether the number contained the required number of characters. Didn't verify whether it was an authentic U.S. passport number. So apparently, let's just say there's 15 characters in a passport number. All they did was count what the passport number characters are, number, not the characters themselves to determine whether it was a passport. number. Valid one. It's got the right nine in numbers. It may be okay. Well, clearly it could have been a fraudulent one or one that was stolen. Anyway, report also includes internal communications that Republicans say show staff approving donations despite potentially suspicious signals. Again, relaxed standards allow you to overlook this kind of stuff. One memo praised transaction as quote, great except while noting, quote, donors sometimes has an IP address in Hong Kong, but none of their other signals raise eyebrows. So, wow, giant red flag. This donor has a Hong Kong address on this one? Well, but the other ones didn't show a Hong Kong address. Well, I guess they just dropped the ball and said the silent part out loud on this most recent donation. You think we should look into it? No, they didn't. There are multiple allegations along these lines. So you've got all the documents, internal memorandum with quotes, Regarding the lax standards, and then you call them in to talk to them about, and they all take the fifth. No, nothing to see here. 617 right now, 55 KRC, the talk station. Time to mention Gate of Heaven Cemetery. The value of life. It can't be understated. A fond appreciation for life at all phases. That's Gate of Heaven Catholic Cemetery's mission, is to honor life at all stages.
00:47:59
Speaker 2: 55 KRC, the talk station.
00:48:03
Speaker 1: 622-55-KRC-D Talk Station. Tech Friday with Dave Hatter coming up next. Always enjoy hearing from Dave. I hope you do, too. And I hope you heed his words.
00:48:15
Speaker 3: David?
00:48:18
Speaker 1: Different David. Bipartisanship on full display is a 417 to 3 in a vote to require artificial intelligence centers to, well, ensure that they can cover their own energy costs. It's a Republican-inspired measure, but obviously he enjoyed almost complete support. Apparently he's going to impose new requirements that AI and other data centers make deals with local providers to cover, in the words of the legislation, the full incremental cost of any generation, transmission, or distribution upgrade necessary to serve their energy needs. And what do we got with AI? You got the wealthiest companies that generate the most revenue and now require the most energy. They're obviously huge users of energy to make this technology work. I don't know, percentage-wise, nationally, I think it's like 4%. But if there was any other industry that used a lot of electricity, and a lot of them do, have they ever been called upon to provide their own? own energy in advance? I'm just scratching my head. I know we're all worried about this. Ahead of the vote, it said it was unclear whether legislation could win the backing of progressive lawmakers. Apparently, they came on board because everybody's freaked out about AI.
00:49:32
Speaker 4: Ah.
00:49:37
Speaker 1: Estimates indicate currently data centers– yeah, I was right about that. I did read it here. Data centers use about 4% of the U.S. electric grid, and it's supposed to increase dramatically. Now, the parallel that's drawn here, drawing roughly 176 terawatts of electricity per year, the energy used to power these facilities could otherwise be used to power 16 million homes. That's according to this entity called Electric Choice. I We don't live in a static world. You know, the energy demands that people place on the grid increase literally every single year. One of the big impediments to going all electric in this country is because the power companies have not maintained or kept up with the electric grid, replacing old, depleted stuff that causes fires out in California or otherwise more transmission lines to reach other areas, more power generation, which seems to be the source of the problem. In this particular case, we've hobbled ourselves. You know, windmills can't power artificial intelligence plants. but neither can they power all of us and the otherwise 16 million homes that would be powered if the AI wasn't there. The demand is ever increasing. Our officials and the power company officials and the quasi-state private entities that usually are power companies owe it to us to think forward and allow us to continue to access the grid so people like AI can come in and pay the same damn freight we all are. It's the abundance in amount of electricity generated. Therein lies the major challenge. And if they'd have stayed up on it, there wouldn't be this massive spike when AI comes along and sticks a plug in the wall to power its facilities. And the one thing I can see here in the midst of all this is at least the benefit will inure to us. Because these companies are multi-trillion dollar companies or whatever kind of profit that they generate, they can afford to do it. If you're going to ask them to pay for what they do to not tax the grid, then they're going to say, well, can I put a small modular reactor here? And everybody's going to go, hell yeah, because if you do it, we'll get it. And they're powerful enough to have the regulatory skids greased, which should be greased anyway or never should have been an impediment for you and I enjoying cheap electricity. They'll get it done. Much in the same way, by all collectively freaking out in chorus, in unison, the major AI folks can all tell us we're all going to die so that they get special treatment under the antitrust laws. Yeah, it's amazing what big, powerful companies can do. 626, 55KRC, the talk station. Here, let me do a commercial for my friends at 223. Talk with Wendy. 631, Friday. It's that time. I always look forward to it. I know everybody does. Appointment listening with Tech Friday's Dave Hatter. This segment brought to you by Interest IT. Dave's company, employee-owned, as I understand it. The business carrier says they are absolutely the best in the business when it comes to your business computer needs. You're in the best hands with Dave Hatter and the team. Welcome back, my friend. Love having you on the program on a Friday.
00:52:35
Speaker 3: Brian, always my pleasure to be here and look forward to our conversation this morning and every Friday.
00:52:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do too. It's very informative and I implore my listeners to heed your advice. especially when it comes to the Internet of Things devices. We'll get to that. Apparently we've got a real hot one on our hands with Wi-Fi. But moving beside that, I guess we're all going to die, and therefore we need to free the artificial intelligence companies of any obligations under the law for liability and, I guess, more likely for antitrust. They want to collude together in the name of keeping us from dying, Dave. Any suspicions about this? Any concerns? Any raised eyebrows? Yeah.
00:53:11
Speaker 3: If you recall, Brian, ever since AI has been on the front page of really in the last four years or so. And I just remind folks, the whole idea of AI is not new. It's been around for a long time. Now, obviously, it's advanced a lot and much more capable now than it was four years ago or prior to that. But, you know, since then, we've had all kinds of apocalyptic warnings. And, you know, there's all kinds of theories. Now, I want to be clear. I'm not saying there's absolutely nothing to what these folks are saying. OK, I'm not saying that, but I'm also not saying I think we're all going to be dead by 2030. Like they're these guys are or at least insinuating could happen. It is interesting that this is not the first time someone has said we should slow this down. And then it's also not the first time that they've come out with these rather apocalyptic warnings. So, you know, all these guys are trying to IPO. There's definitely a race there. And I think you have to take into context the idea that other countries like China are also building this stuff. And, you know, I think it is a legitimate concern. Yeah.
00:54:22
Speaker 1: Dave, I must note that they are not subject to the Sherman Antitrust Act or America's tort laws.
00:54:28
Speaker 4: Right.
00:54:29
Speaker 3: That's an excellent point, Brian. And also, they typically don't operate the same way we do in the US. And that's kind of where I'm going. If they're not going to have any sort of restraints on what they're doing, and they potentially, you know, like in the nuclear arms race, you know, again, idea of mutually assured destruction, you know, arms gap and all this sort of thing. I understand the arguments for and against all that. But I think, We're in a place now where you don't want an adversarial nation to get too far ahead on this. It's a tricky problem. There's a lot of hype. There's a lot of hyperbole out there. It's hard to know what to believe or who to believe. But I will say this. When you look at some of the legitimate stories that have been out there in the news about things like the Hugging Face attack and some of the cases where agents have gone rogue. An agent is essentially– I'm trying to explain this in the most basic terms. An agent is essentially software that uses AI that can make decisions and do things on its own, right? It can act like a human being to some extent. And I would remind folks that these things still have a problem with hallucination, although it's gotten better. Hallucination is the idea that it will make something up, right? So do you want a process that can act on its own? So for example, you could create an agent and say, okay, here's my credit card number. search for the best price on this thing. And if it drops below a certain price, buy it. Okay. I can tell you, I'm not going to do something like that because unless the way these things work, they're probabilistic, not deterministic, right? You can go in right now. Anyone can try this, open up any one of these tools, ask a question. You will not get the same answer every time.
00:56:18
Speaker 1: So, and you might not get the same answer asking the same format, the same question multiple times.
00:56:24
Speaker 3: But, That's exactly right. It's so weird. And it might literally just make something up. So depending on your tolerance for risk and what you're asking this to do, especially if there's no human oversight of it, it can do things that you would rather it not do. Partially like some of these stories where these things have gone rogue and this agent works with that agent. I mean, there's some wild stuff out there. It is somewhat concerning to me. I don't think we're going to suddenly have Terminators fall out of the sky. But some of the things they're saying, I think there is a legitimate concern. How much? Is it 50%? Is it 80%? I don't know, because there's plenty of other people that know a lot about this who are saying this is more of a hype cycle. They're saying these things because it helps them build a moat around their businesses. So I don't know what to think, Brian.
00:57:17
Speaker 1: I think the hurry up, we've got to do something to save us from ourself is a mode of going back to the IPO. If you have this emergency crisis, oh, my God, it's an existential threat to humanity. Hurry up and free us from liability. Dave, if that actually happened, question almost rhetorical, if not absolutely rhetorical, would the price of the IPO share be more More if they had all that protection from antitrust liability and tort liability, or would the shares be worth less? I think it'd be a lot more. 53636, don't go away. We're going to talk about how digital devices are putting our right to privacy at risk. I guess we voluntarily enter into that, don't we? First, though, I want to mention 4NIC. 641-55KRC, VTALK station, Friday. Tech Friday, Dave Hatter, intrustit.com. That's who you need to get in touch with for your business computer needs. Hey, our right to privacy is at risk, Dave. You never talk about stuff like this.
00:58:16
Speaker 3: Never, Brian, never. In all the years we've been doing this, I never talk about it.
00:58:20
Speaker 6: Never.
00:58:20
Speaker 1: You've never mentioned the Internet of Things devices. You need to explain that someday because it's something that never comes across your field of vision.
00:58:27
Speaker 3: No, never. So Internet of Things, a.k.a. smart devices, things like your ring doorbell, your Nest thermostat, your refrigerator, your TVs.
00:58:36
Speaker 1: Your vacuum?
00:58:37
Speaker 3: Yes, your vacuum. I don't know if you've seen the story about the LG TVs. If not, we should talk about that one specifically next week because it really puts a super fine point on.
00:58:47
Speaker 1: … Is that like part of the LGBTQ agenda at the end of the day?
00:58:51
Speaker 5: No.
00:58:51
Speaker 3: No, in this case, it's LG TVs that are doing some insane data collection behind the scenes. And here's the thing, Brian. I know people will tell me all the time, hey, look, I don't have anything to hide. I don't care whether it's flock cameras or fill in the blank, right? Flock camera. That would be another example of an Internet of Things. device. You know, in the simplest of terms, if it has software in it and it connects to the Internet, well, that's an Internet of Things device. And increasingly, that's everything now, right? It's hard to even find a dumb device because everything has software in it. Much of that comes from China. It's often found to have security problems on top of the privacy problems, in some cases backdoors built into it. In the most layman of terms, a backdoor is either an intentional or maybe unintentional flaw in the software that would allow someone to take remote control of something.
00:59:43
Speaker 1: Well, quickly, can I just interject a very quick question? I don't need to labor on it, but I just want to know. Isn't that one area where artificial intelligence can be a wonderful benefit to humanity by finding backdoor access and by being able to just analyze the program and find out where the weaknesses are?
01:00:02
Speaker 3: That is, yes. But that cuts both ways. I don't know if you caught the headline.
01:00:06
Speaker 1: I did.
01:00:07
Speaker 3: Microsoft has this Patch Tuesday thing. Once a month on a Tuesday, they put out updates for their software to fix vulnerabilities, holes, backdoors, whatever, right? And in this last patch Tuesday, they patched almost a thousand problems. And that's because they're using AI to analyze all of this code and try to find these problems. So, yeah, that is one upside. But the flip side of that, Brian, is, of course, bad guys, including low skilled bad guys who would not know anything about this stuff, can use these same tools to find these flaws. And, you know, there's been lots of recent news, again, without going too far down this rabbit hole. And it's important for small businesses to understand who have this same mentality of, well, I'm too small. I don't have anything we're stealing. You know, I'm not P & G. I'm not CentOS. I'm not Kroger. Well, your money is worth stealing. And thanks to these AI tools, whether it's deep fakes or it's hackers using these tools to attack your environment to find these flaws, the frequency of attacks is increasing. The sophistication of attacks is increasing, not because the people behind them are more sophisticated, but because they're using these tools. But back to our IoT devices. You know, I hate this stuff. I have essentially none of this stuff in my house. And when people tell me why I have nothing to hide, I encourage everyone to go out and look into this LG TV thing. You know, if a device is connected to the Internet and especially if it has a microphone and camera in it, it can be used to surveil you. If you have an LG TV or any of these TVs, for example. in, let's say, a boardroom where you're having sensitive conversations about trade secrets or lawsuits or whatever, it's entirely possible that these devices are listening to you, collecting data, and it's being shipped off to some third party somewhere. And the more of these things you have, and this particular article we started out with, there's a book out there from a law professor named Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, who wrote wrote a book called Your Data Will Be Used Against You. And it talks about this and why you should care about these things. And there are folks out there like Mikko Haponin. I've brought him up on the show before. I'm a big fan. He wrote a book called If It's Smart, It's Vulnerable. If it has software in it, it is vulnerable. I don't care what it is. It's not possible to write software that is completely invulnerable. And we're seeing that more and more and all the attacks on critical infrastructure and so forth. So my point, Brian, is the less of these things you have, I get they're cool, I get the convenience, but they are increasingly putting you, your family, your business at risk. You should be divesting yourself of this stuff.
01:02:48
Speaker 1: Indeed, and for those who think they don't have anything to hide, just wait until we elect a bunch of communists, and then they start engaging in the purge, where they'll look for people who have political dissent, who are not ideologically wed to the party in power, and then you're sent off to the gulag. That has happened in history, has it not, Dave Hatter?
01:03:04
Speaker 3: I believe it has.
01:03:05
Speaker 1: It's just one moment away from them coming after you because of something that you said or did when it was normal and rational and logical to maybe say what you said or did. Futures, well, can learn a lot by studying the mistakes of the past. 646 right now. We will talk about a really freaky thing, your Wi-Fi.
01:03:21
Speaker 2: Talk station.
01:03:22
Speaker 1: 651-55-KRC-D. Talk station. Interest IT. where you find Dave Adder and his crew to help you with business needs. And, of course, LinkedIn.com is where you find Dave and the resources he relies upon throughout the week. And, of course, here on the 55KRC Morning Show on a Friday. This one is weird. Everybody's freaked out about flaw cameras. I know you're not a fan, Dave, in the interest of privacy protection and maybe people that are using it for nefarious purposes like tracking, stalking girlfriends or whatever. But that's nothing compared to what I'm reading here. Wi-Fi, I think, is pretty much everywhere, Dave.
01:03:56
Speaker 3: Wi-Fi pretty much is everywhere now, Brian. And maybe you recall that we have talked about this particular thing before, but as the technology progresses, of course, like so many of these things, it gets better in helpful ways and it gets better in potentially unhelpful ways like this. So this is a story from the New York Post. Big routers watching you. Wi-Fi could secretly track you even if you leave your phone at home. So I think anyone who's ever watched a crime show realizes that your phone is a source of tracking, right? And that's not necessarily nefarious. It's just the way the cellular network has to work, right? It has to know where your phone is in order to be able to connect to it, to send you a phone call or receive a text message, email, whatever, right? And I'm constantly surprised. If you watch a show like Dateline, it seems like people... generally criminals anyway, don't seem to get that like, hey, if I'm going to go out and get murdery, it's a good idea not to take my phone with me because it's going to tell the police where I was, that I was in the vicinity of the crime. But what this story is pointing out is that, you know, even if you don't have some sort of device like that on you, and to your point, Brian, Wi-Fi is pretty much, certainly at least in urban areas, everywhere now. Yeah. There's the capability through the radio signals that the Wi-Fi is sending out to make it possible to connect to the Internet over Wi-Fi to essentially in sort of like a radar-ish type of way, if you will. I think most people at least generally understand the idea of radar. You send out a radio signal, it bounces off something. You could tell how far away it is, how fast it's going, what it is generally, especially as the technology has improved over time. And that's essentially what researchers are pointing out here. So, I mean, I'll just read a couple of lines from the article. The finding raises the unsettling possibility that millions of Wi-Fi routers surrounding us could become a vast, invisible surveillance network, potentially allowing corporations, governments, and others to identify people without their knowledge. And then it goes on to say, connected devices routinely send back to routers to optimize wireless communications. These are signals known as beamforming feedback information and are transmitted without encryption, researchers found. So basically, you know, this in the most basic terms, this is just bouncing off of you. And it goes on to say further in here, you know, that this can essentially create. So quoting from the article, this technology turns every router into a potential means of surveillance. Warren co-researcher Julian Tote, if you regularly pass by a cafe that operates a Wi-Fi network, you could be identified there without noticing it and be recognized later.
01:06:40
Speaker 1: So they study things like, I mean, AI, your gate. your height, your weight, it immediately computes this and calculates it. And only so many people have the exact gate that you have, so they can narrow it down just by process or by, just by analyzing that kind of thing.
01:06:52
Speaker 5: Right.
01:06:54
Speaker 6: Exactly.
01:06:54
Speaker 3: And there's, you know, this, this goes even further. They're saying that basically, you know, this will almost create a picture of you, you know, quite not the same, like a camera would per se. Um, but yeah, it's, uh, It's interesting how, as this stuff advances, you see all these different ways that it can be used that aren't immediately obvious and aren't necessarily beneficial to you as a regular person. So, yeah.
01:07:21
Speaker 1: And, you know, the.
01:07:23
Speaker 3: Genie's out of the bottle on a lot of this stuff.
01:07:25
Speaker 1: It is.
01:07:26
Speaker 3: So, you know, one of the things I think we need to look at as a society, and, you know, the Supreme Court did recently weigh in on geofencing that potentially affects flocks. you know, the Fourth Amendment has been kind of upended by all this. And I think, you know, we need to, as a society, take a look at how is this technology potentially being used in ways that violate your constitutional rights now? You know, I'm not on the Supreme Court. I'm not making these decisions. You know, the old standards for so much of this stuff don't really apply anymore because the technology has changed so quickly and advanced in ways that Again, probably the average person is not even aware of that it's creating some real, at least in my mind, concerns.
01:08:12
Speaker 1: Legitimate ones. Well, and as you point out, I remember we talked about this several years ago about using Wi-Fi within someone's residence to where people are and just identify location. But that was just like location. There's movement over there. The Wi-Fi can recognize that. Now it can determine exactly who the identity of that particular person is, not just in that controlled environment, but literally everywhere. And about five minutes in tech time from now, it's going to be as if a photograph was taken without any devices on you, wherever you happen to be. I think it's going to get that smart, Dave. It just seems obvious right now.
01:08:47
Speaker 3: It's certainly headed in that direction.
01:08:49
Speaker 1: Yeah.
01:08:51
Speaker 3: Again, it creates interesting challenges that 30, 40 years ago, you wouldn't have even been able to predict. Unless, of course, you were working in that technology yourself and knew about the potential future advances.
01:09:05
Speaker 1: May you live in interesting times, Dave.
01:09:08
Speaker 3: Well, we do, Brian.
01:09:09
Speaker 1: Yes, we do.
01:09:10
Speaker 3: Very interesting.
01:09:10
Speaker 1: And that's not a good thing, necessarily. IntrustIT.com, LinkedIn.com to find Dave in the articles and find him here every Friday beginning at 630. Thank you, Dave, for being here for all of us and keep up the great work. Congratulations. You are the Taxpayer Defender of the Month. Warren Davidson, your reaction to this award? We're going to be talking to Brandon Arnold, the Vice President of the National Taxpayer Union, who bestowed this award on you. He'll have him on the program coming up at 8.05. So what did you do to deserve that?
01:09:38
Speaker 2: Well, I was just surprised somebody noticed, you know, you go through there and you're like, hey, people pay attention to these wonky things. And, you know, we're out there spending money like crazy and trying harder to spend even more. So back in July, they had a plan to spend ninety five billion dollars. And there's a rule in the House that says you're supposed to pay for the spending, either find revenue or cut spending elsewhere. And, of course, they waive the rules almost every time that would be an issue. So they just spend it. There's no way to pay for it. And so I offered amendments to pay for it.
01:10:21
Speaker 1: Well, you said there's a rule that you got to find the source of the money before you can spend it. How do we end up $ 40 trillion in the hole, Congressman Davidson?
01:10:30
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, they obviously waived the rules quite a lot, right? So this is the thing. You pass these rules. It's like, oh, no, there's a rule for that. We're not supposed to do that. And they waive the rules all the time. And in fact, this was the infuriating thing. The week before, we've got this Major Richard Starr Act, which is supposed to do a better job of taking care of veterans. There's an anomaly there where medically retired veterans aren't really cared for the same way. as fully retired veterans are. So they get shorted. And you're medically retired because you get injured and can't continue to serve what they believe. So anyway, the quirk there, to get it fixed, and to do that common sense fix, they're like, no, you have to have a pay-for. Well, the bill failed because we couldn't agree on the pay-for. So we still haven't fixed that. But then the following week, it's like, no, we need $ 95 billion for some Other purposes, we fund the war in Iran, subsidize some farm issues and pay for some disasters. And I'm like, well, I want to offer amendments to pay for it. And so I found $ 95 billion in spending, which is the most basic layup. But then I found three other amendments that could go all the way up. One went all the way up to $ 4 trillion of savings payments. So there's plenty of ways to cut fraud, waste, and abuse or things that aren't even constitutional that the federal government's doing. And it's not that they're not important if the states want to do them fine, but there's no constitutional role for the federal government in a lot of things.
01:12:08
Speaker 1: Fair enough. And congratulations again on Taxpayer Defender of the Month. Moving over to the freak out over artificial intelligence. And we get these corporate CEOs at AI companies coming out and saying, look, 10% chance we're all going to die within a decade and other nonsense like that. And Everyone freaks out and they collectively are demanding that you save them from yourself or from themselves. We need legislation passed. We need to coordinate efforts. It just seems to me after all the initial freak out happened that we got cooler heads and a moment later we're like, wait a second. This sounds to me like they're trying to avoid Sherman Antitrust Act because they need to work together in order to save us from these harms. It looks like they're trying to get some protections from product liability law because people know how dangerous AI can be when it's unleashed. And yet the Chinese Communist Party busily working away and has no problem with any of this because our liability laws and our antitrust laws do not reach into China. Is this all about the IPO and improving the value of the share price when they finally announce that they're doing an IPO? Congressman Davidson, where are you on this?
01:13:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think it's a coordinated op. I mean, in my view, there's already a little collaboration because they decided to launch this coordinated messaging program together. If you go back to May of last year, the House version of the Big Beautiful Bill had a 10-year blanket exemption for any liability for artificial intelligence companies. That was in the text, and that was one of the reasons I voted no on the House version. So we raised a stink over that. The public heard about it. They weren't real happy with it. We got the forced vote on removing that portion in the Senate bill. And it passed 99 to 1 because when people had to go on record saying, well, they know it's a terrible idea. And so we removed it. So that's a big deal. So then fast forward here this year, this is exactly what the AI companies are wanting, either blanket exemption from liability. But just yesterday, the CEO of Palantir said, hey, I think AI companies ought to be nationalized. And why? Because you get sovereign immunity. So they can still do all the things they want to do. So I think we're into kind of crazy land here with a lot of things on AI. And unfortunately, Congress really isn't taking action on this. And privacy really is the base layer for this because they're harvesting just massive amounts of data in every facet of your life, car, phone, Internet, bank, you name it. And then now AI will say, well, we don't have a database. Well, they don't. They have large language models that go out and harvest it from everywhere it's accessible. And the kind of things that you can pull up with a strong artificial intelligence tool, I've seen demos of it. I mean, you can even find, the most shocking thing was you could find maybe the last three or four phones that someone has had.
01:15:14
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
01:15:15
Speaker 2: The advertising for that phone. and literally essentially their browser history. What is it that you like to do with your phone? And it's all available out there. And so you know once you get access to those kinds of things, plus the ability to break encryption and do all kinds of other things that the leading edge of technology is capable of, I mean, there's going to be some liability for some things.
01:15:45
Speaker 1: Well, and the other component is, before we get into the break here, people are expecting Vivek Ramaswamy next. I recorded my interview with Vivek Ramaswamy after the show yesterday, so we're going to kick that off in order to keep you on. But I just have to comment, the other thing that AI is doing, it is monetizing. Because artificial intelligence, I mean, these corporations aren't doing this out of altruism. They're doing it for purpose of profitability, right? So when they absorb literally every single word of content out in the world, and they're doing that, they're monetizing copywritten and protected work that other people's work and effort and labor have created without compensating that person. That seems to be a problem. I mean, when we play songs on the radio, we've got to compensate the artist. It seems to be the same argument, doesn't it, Congressman Davidson?
01:16:27
Speaker 2: Oh, very much so. And they're malicious about it. I mean, they got caught buying rare books and destroying them. So they literally have machines that slice the binding off the back of the book, and then they're just scanning the pages of text in. And they want to buy up the book so the physical copy isn't even available. And this is truly Orwellian because then you're like, well, that's not what this book says.
01:16:51
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, it is.
01:16:52
Speaker 2: It's right here. They're like, no, no, I have a paper copy. Oh, those are illegal.
01:16:57
Speaker 1: We're getting rid of this. It's Fahrenheit 451. For whatever reason, there's a scene in Rollerball the medium popped in mind as well. Exact same kind of thing. We'll continue with Congressman Warren Davidson. We'll talk about the KRC, the talk station. It is 730, 55 KRC, the talk station. And a very, very happy Friday to you. Congressman Warren Davidson on the program. We'll get to Vivek Ramaswamy again, recorded yesterday, so I can't talk to him about his most recent endorsement. And good morning, Christopher Smith, and he let me know that Vivek Ramaswamy just scored the Carpenters Union endorsement, which is an interesting situation, Congressman Davidson, because they normally endorse Democrats. So that's, uh, you got any comments about Vivek being neck and neck with Amy Acton? I don't mean to put you on the spot. If you don't want to talk about that, it's okay. But I am really perplexed. This is Ohio. We are not even a purple state. We're blue. How could it even be possible? Congressman Davidson, do you mind?
01:17:56
Speaker 2: No, I'm a big Vivek Ramaswamy fan. I mean, he's a good guy. I've known him about 10 years. Brilliant, uh, phenomenally successful. I mean, grew up right there, uh, you know, Princeton high school, uh, area. And of course went to St. X and, uh, you know, people are, I mean, just odd whenever you see him speak. I mean, I look at him in a working crowds and he came up to the dark County fair, had hundreds of people coming out to see him. I think there's kind of an AstroTurf campaign out there saying people don't support, uh, Vivek. And I'm like, well, I mean, bikers for Trump support, Trump support Vivek. I mean, you get, uh, You get intellectual support in Trump or support in Vivek. So you look at it, and they have spun up some level of concern about Vivek. And Amy Acton is nothing. I mean, that's why she's avoiding a lot of things in public. She can't string two sentences together. And it's not just the ability to speak about things. It's just looking at, well, what have you done? So the resume isn't close. Who would you want to hire to run your state? And it's mind blowing to me that Amy Acton could could even be within, you know, 10 margins of error. But apparently she is on a lot of these polls.
01:19:18
Speaker 1: No question about it. And, you know, even I just I'd mean to be critical of her as a person because nobody's great at public speaking. But you're going to be governor of a state of Ohio. You better have some measure of skill in that regard. Her her own commercials with her speaking skills. Wait a second. This is the best they can provide by way of her articulating a word or two about her campaign? I mean, that would have been take one, but I can only imagine how many takes they did before they got the final one out on the air. It suggests something really bad is going on over there. Anyhow, vote Ramos for me. He'll be on next. Let's go back to the Clarity Act, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, which failed in the Senate the other day. What's your take on this?
01:19:58
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not surprised that it failed. The Democrats have never negotiated in good faith on this. We had a challenge in the House. And I think we ultimately reached a point where we just said, look, we're going to call the question.
01:20:09
Speaker 1: We're going to put it on the floor.
01:20:11
Speaker 2: And, you know, it was an issue that unites Republicans and divides Democrats. In the House, Democrats did not stick together and just refused to break ranks. The Senate has kind of become that way. There's only, you know, 47 of them over there. So they just stick together. And in the House, we had about 70 Democrats just say, well, I think this is a common sense bill. And we had no problem passing it in the House and in a bipartisan way. But the Senate's basically just dug in over there and on all kinds of issues. And if they think it might mean that Donald Trump should get credit for some sort of win, they're not giving they're not giving ground. If they think that's it is a good. That's 100%. I mean, it's a lot of it's anti-Trump. But I will say Elizabeth Warren is a ringleader over there. She used to control Sherrod Brown. She really ran the Senate Banking Committee that Sherrod Brown was officially in charge of. And she had this anti-crypto army. So everything on financial services and banking, Elizabeth Warren really is the ringleader for Democrats and has been for years. And Sher Brown was over there doing Elizabeth Warren's bidding the whole time, which is why two years ago, he lost. I mean, Bernie Marino had lots of support from a lot of industries. The crypto fintech area was one of the big ones that supported him because Sher Brown had been working to kill this industry. And the main reason they're trying to kill it, frankly, is the biggest banks and government surveillance. Freedom is something that Democrats have decided is a bad thing. They don't want you to control your own payments. They want everything to stay account-based. One of the provisions that they insisted in getting in the bill, still didn't get them to yes, was Section 305. It gives the government the ability to freeze your bank account, as if you're a Canadian trucker. And it gives the liability shield for the financial institution that's just following orders from the government. This isn't orders as in, well, we had an order from a judge. There was some due process.
01:22:36
Speaker 1: You could appeal it.
01:22:37
Speaker 2: It's a civil asset forfeiture. We're going to take your stuff and then get around to due process later. And so there's provisions like that in this bill, and it still didn't get Democrats' T.S.
01:22:49
Speaker 3: Wow.
01:22:50
Speaker 1: I guess we can chalk that off as a good thing. Congressman Warren Davidson, I know it's in your district. I believe it is. 22-3 on Route 42 between Mason 11 and the NRA. Gun bus is going to be there on Thursday between 10 and 2. And by good word, and I didn't ask him yesterday when I interviewed Ramos, apparently he is likely to be there. And Eric Conroy also, I was told, is going to be there. If you've got any time between 10 and 2, I plan on showing up at 22-3. That's my favorite gun store, Congressman Davidson. So if you've got some time, I just wanted to let you know that that was coming to the area. Apparently a very popular thing. Congressman Davidson, I want to thank you so much for joining the program and spending time with my listeners and me. And congratulations again on being the Taxpayer Defender of the Month. Well-deserved, and you can keep up the great work along those lines.
01:23:30
Speaker 2: It's an honor to join you, Brian. My apologies for the tardy start here. Thanks for highlighting Vivek and Eric Conroy, two really strong candidates. And I hope folks will go out and support him. But thank you for doing so.
01:23:42
Speaker 1: Happy to do it.
01:23:43
Speaker 2: God bless you and all your listeners.
01:23:44
Speaker 1: And to you, sir. Thanks again. 737 Vivek Ramaswamy. Coming on next. We'll talk to you. Hi, it's Brian Thomas. Pleased to welcome back to the 55 KRC Morning Show. Love when he's on. Vivek Ramaswamy. He's got my vote for sure. Mr. Ramaswamy, you can find online at Vivek4Ohio. V-I-V-E-K for Ohio. And I recommend you do that because you can get his entire platform. Vivek Ramaswamy, it's a pleasure having you back on the show. Can I ask you right out of the gate? Yeah, you've gotten many endorsements. Who got the Ohio State Medical Association endorsement, Mr. Ramaswamy?
01:24:15
Speaker 5: It just came out this week, and I'm proud to receive the endorsement of the Ohio State Medical Association. That's the leading group of Ohio's physicians, the doctors of this state, which.
01:24:27
Speaker 7: Is obviously an honor in any race. But in this particular race, it means a lot. Where I'm running against the state's former health director, Dr.
01:24:36
Speaker 5: Amy Acton. And to receive their endorsement in this race, I think, speaks volumes.
01:24:41
Speaker 1: And I think that.
01:24:42
Speaker 7: It's an indication that people who have really vetted both candidates have.
01:24:47
Speaker 5: Really, and they went through a rigorous process. The fact that they landed where they did, I.
01:24:50
Speaker 1: Think, means a lot. Well, it really does. And I just was going to jokingly say, you haven't gotten a medical degree since the last time we talked, have you?
01:24:58
Speaker 5: No, my wife has had one.
01:24:59
Speaker 7: And she's the real, she's the person who saves lives every day.
01:25:03
Speaker 5: And she's the real hero of the family.
01:25:05
Speaker 7: But No, I think it's the fact that, look, a lot of these groups from FOP, law enforcement, to the state physician's body, to a lot of even the labor groups that have endorsed us, understand that even above right versus left disputes, what we really need at the top is somebody who is competent and capable of leading the state, someone who is able to make tough executive decisions and able to understand and process the issues. And I do think that for a lot of these groups, and I think for a lot of voters, The fact that Amy Acton refuses to show up for a debate, I think, is a very telling sign that she is just unable to do this job.
01:25:46
Speaker 5: But let's put her to one side, Brian.
01:25:47
Speaker 7: I think one of the things that I want to do in this state is improve health care delivery, improve the quality of health outcomes, bring down health care costs, prosecute Medicaid fraud, bring some health care price transparency. And those were some tangible policies that we talked through with this group as well, making it easier and simpler to practice medicine and focus on patients instead of paperwork.
01:26:09
Speaker 1: Those are important factors as well.
01:26:11
Speaker 7: That I think are going to allow us to make this a great state to not only practice medicine, but a great state to get affordable health care. And that, too, is a big part of the reason why they endorsed us.
01:26:20
Speaker 1: Well, I know we're involved in a great discussion on class warfare brought to you by the DSA and everybody else who can use greed and envy as a vehicle against their opposition. But I keep hearing people have problems with your being so wildly successful and so wealthy. Honestly, Mr. Rimes, I mean, I take great comfort in that because you at least aren't getting into elected office for the purpose of padding your own financial book, for not making money. You don't need it. And that leads me to the question, why, sir, because you don't need this job, are you willing to take on the incredible challenges of being the governor of the state of Ohio? What's the point of all this, sir?
01:26:55
Speaker 7: Well, look, I think that there's two parts to that. I mean, the first is that I can't be bought. And I think that's really important in reforming the way the state is run for the better and taking Ohio to the next level. The only interest group I report to is the voters.
01:27:09
Speaker 5: I'm self-funding my campaign. I'm matching every dollar that we raise.
01:27:12
Speaker 7: And that has me putting many tens of millions of my own money into the campaign. But one of the things that that's good for is that it means that no special interest group can really influence or buy me off. And I think that that's different from the historical class of politicians who usually run not just in Ohio, but in state government generally. But one of the things I'll say more generally, Brian, is on a personal level, I feel a moral duty to do this because I have been successful and I owe it to this country and to our state to really pay forward what opportunities I've been given. My parents came from Southwest India to Southwest Ohio with nothing to their name. I went to public schools, as you know, and greater Cincinnati through eighth grade, I eventually ended up becoming an entrepreneur, ended up founding successful companies, the largest of which, Roivent, has developed six FDA-approved medicines, which are.
01:28:03
Speaker 5: Life-saving therapies for patients today. And now we're raising our kids in Columbus in circumstances that neither of my parents or my wife's parents would have ever imagined possible. That is the American dream.
01:28:16
Speaker 7: And I think that with that American dream also comes a responsibility. To pass that American dream on to our kids and their generation, that is why I'm in this. I mean, there's no other reason that you should run for governor, not for fame, not for fortune.
01:28:31
Speaker 5: We've been blessed beyond our wildest imagination.
01:28:34
Speaker 7: The only reason that I want to do this job is I know we can have an impact. I know that we can create a state. where every kid in Ohio has a shot at success, the same level of success or more than I have achieved. And I wasn't born into wealth, unlike my opponent, whose running mate.
01:28:51
Speaker 5: Really went to some of the most expensive schools.
01:28:53
Speaker 7: In Ohio that my family couldn't have dreamed of sending me to at that same point in time, Trust Fund Inheritances.
01:28:59
Speaker 5: No, that wasn't how I earned my wealth. I earned my wealth through hard work, entrepreneurship, ingenuity, through the opportunities that this country uniquely gives to people like me and to hopefully to like all of the kids growing up in this state.
01:29:14
Speaker 7: And so I wasn't born a millionaire or a billionaire or anything air. I was born an heir to nothing. But I understand what economic mobility looks like. And I want every family in this state to enjoy that upward economic mobility.
01:29:28
Speaker 1: Yes.
01:29:29
Speaker 5: And my basic view is pretty simple on this, Brian. The more we celebrate success in Ohio, the more of it we're likely to have. The more we penalize success, the less of it we're likely to have.
01:29:41
Speaker 1: That's the fork in the road.
01:29:42
Speaker 5: That's the choice on the ballot in less than seven weeks from when we're having this conversation. And I believe people are going to choose economic success for themselves, for their families and for our state.
01:29:53
Speaker 7: And that's what we're going to win.
01:29:54
Speaker 1: Well, the foundation of that economic success, and I know educational achievement is one of the key components to your platform, sir. What can we do to improve the quality and maybe just improve education, generally speaking, to benefit our children? Because as I've come to conclude, and maybe it's too much of a broad-brush statement, I think the modern education system, at least K-12 public education, is failing our children. As demonstrated by class scores, we need to change that trajectory. What do you, knowing the value of education, what it did for your success, what do we do in Ohio? What more can we do?
01:30:27
Speaker 5: I think we have to just double down and focus on the fundamentals of both math, reading, writing at an early age. And then as kids get into high school, also incorporating skills, real world skills. If you think about many of these students, if you want to pursue a four-year college degree, that could be great, and we want great universities in Ohio. But many of them also can pursue alternative careers in the trades as welders or electricians or carpenters or even plumbers or mechanics. This is something that we can foster starting at a younger age too. But right now, our education system isn't doing a great job of preparing our kids for the workforce by the time they graduate from high school. By bringing some basic standards back, I do think we can fix that. Now, one of the things that does bother me, and it's a motivation for me to run and hopefully serve as the governor of the state.
01:31:18
Speaker 7: Is how much the very people who pay lip service to public education hurt public education itself. And my opponent is the prime example of that. She's the archetype of that. We're the number one thing that hurt public schools and public school education in Ohio. Number one thing we can point to in the 21st century was the COVID school shutdowns. Ohio was unfortunately the first state to shut down our public schools In Cincinnati, think about where I grew up. Cincinnati public schools were closed for nearly two years, whereas St. X High School, where I had a chance to go to high school, was closed for five days. Those kids in those public schools will never get those two years of their education back. And so I don't have a lot of patience for those like Amy Acton who will preach about inequality. but created the very inequality that they complain about.
01:32:09
Speaker 5: So I want actual solutions. I believe those kids in the inner city of Cincinnati deserve access to the same education that every kid in the state, including myself, enjoyed by going to places like Sanex High School. I want every kid to have those opportunities. I want our public schools to perform. I want our public schools to serve our kids. I want to support our teachers. Our teachers in those public schools are Starting salaries should be higher than what they are right now, and that includes some level of parental accountability as well. I think parents need to have real responsibilities and real accountability. So all of that is part of our vision for educational reform, and we owe it to our kids, Brian, in Ohio to ensure that they're able to compete in the workforce of the future and that they're educated and prepared to do it.
01:32:56
Speaker 1: He will answer questions. He will appear in public. You can ask Vivek Ramaswamy a question when you see him out at some event, and he's not afraid to talk about the issues. That's why he's right for Ohio. That's why you need to check out VivekForOhio.com. Check out his entire plan. And, of course, vote for him in November.
01:33:13
Speaker 3: Mr.
01:33:13
Speaker 1: Ramaswamy, Vivek, it's my friend. I'm glad to have you on the morning show, and I appreciate your willingness to talk about policies and what your vision is for the state of Ohio. And I hope my listeners embrace it and get everyone and their friends to head on over to the polls and vote for you in November.
01:33:27
Speaker 5: One more thing, Brian, just before we wrap.
01:33:29
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
01:33:29
Speaker 7: I still think it'd be great if we have a debate in this race. And CNN and NBC, local, and WWT and Cincinnati included, offered to host a debate. I accepted both CNN and WWT. I respectfully challenge Amy Acton to show up. And for either candidate, if you can't show up to debate, that means you're not fit to lead this state. You've got to have what it takes to lead, and I think that will be such a positive thing in the weeks that we have ahead. And if someone doesn't show up, my opponent has refused, I think that should affect the way people think about who they're voting for.
01:34:02
Speaker 1: You're going to have a hell of a lot bigger challenges as the governor of the state than a simple debate with your opponent. I've been calling her a coward.
01:34:11
Speaker 5: Yeah, you can get out of the game.
01:34:13
Speaker 7: That's what I would say.
01:34:14
Speaker 1: Hey, man, thanks for your time today, sir. I'm anxious to vote for you, and again, I encourage my listeners to do so. If you have any doubt in your mind, I don't know where it's coming from. Vive4Ohio. com is a place where you might get those questions answered. Thank you, sir, and I appreciate you running for office. I really, truly do. 8.05, the 55KRCD talk station. Happy Friday. Bottom of the hour with Jack Windsor. A bunch of stuff to talk about with Jack. In the meantime... We had him on early in the program, Congressman Warren Davidson, the recipient of the Taxpayer Defender of the Month from the National Taxpayers Union. And congratulations to Congressman Davidson on that and joining the program now to talk about that and what they do, the National Taxpayers Union, is the Executive Vice President of NTU. You can find the National Taxpayers Union online at NTU.org. Brandon Arnold is the Executive Vice President. He is, well, you probably know him. He's testified before Congress. He's written for all the major publications. He's been on all the major news programs on television. And fun fact, one of his prior positions, and he's got an impressive resume, Director of Government Affairs at the Cato Institute, who recently crunched numbers on the cost of the Democratic Socialist of America platform, which only comes in between $ 30 and $ 70 trillion over 10 years. Brandon Arnold, welcome to The Morning Show. It's a pleasure to have you on today.
01:35:28
Speaker 6: Thank you. It's my pleasure to be here.
01:35:29
Speaker 1: And I appreciate what you're doing there, shedding some light on factual reality over the realities of what our government does. And let us talk about Congressman Davidson. What led you to select him, and what factors did you look at in selecting any given taxpayer defender of the month?
01:35:46
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, Congressman Davidson has just a spectacular record going back to his early days in Congress, being a champion of limited government, cutting spending, reducing taxes, free markets, all the stuff that we love and we work for at National Taxpayers Union. But what really stood out was a courageous vote that he took this July when the budget resolution was moving and basically all Republicans were supporting a plan to boost spending by about $ 100 billion without a single penny of offsets. And not only was he just in a small handful of Republicans that opposed this resolution, he was actually crafting amendments to try to improve the bill from a fiscal perspective, ways to offset some of that higher spending so that future generations of taxpayers are not burdened by the debt that we are putting on their backs and shoulders right now. So he really took a leadership role, not surprising for folks who knew Warren Davidson, but still something that deserved an award and a great deal of recognition for.
01:36:49
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I'm glad you mentioned the words future generation because, you know, when you stare at $ 40 trillion in debt, it's just, it's mind-blowing and your eyes glaze over and we even, we lose track. When someone says, we found a fraudster that bilked the government for $ 10 million, we're like, what's the big deal? It's only $ 10 million in a country that literally spends extra billions per day in deficit spending, but Our future generations are going to have to eat all that. They're going to have to tighten their belts because we lived way, way larger while the federal government printed money than we should have. And that dovetails nicely in a conclusion you reach at the National Taxpayers Union about the $ 5, 000 checks from Trump. I mean, that's going to fuel inflation and debt. How can you come to any other conclusion? And it's difficult to be critical of Donald Trump because people freak out and pull their hair out, but I share your position, the National Taxpayers Union position, on this $ 5, 000 dividend payment. As you crunch the numbers, $ 1. 85 trillion when you add in the cost of debt service, additional debt.
01:37:49
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely. You know, the first thing we have to do, the old Dave Ramsey strategy here for getting out of debt is cut up those credit cards and stop spending more. Unfortunately, I don't think we're moving in that direction. We're talking about boosting spending through this reconciliation package. Again, thanks to Warren Davidson for voting against that. You know, we're talking about these stimulus checks, these $ 5, 000 checks. We just don't have the money for it. You know, maybe in a different scenario where we had trillions of dollars of surplus, we could be having that kind of discussion about giving money back to the people. But right now, we need to batten down the hatches. We need to make spending reductions. We need to bring our budget closer to balance because we see what's taking place.
01:38:30
Speaker 2: Place.
01:38:30
Speaker 6: It's driving up borrowing costs if you want to buy a house or finance an automobile. It's creating havoc in the bond markets that create some serious economic disruptions. It's really starting to take an enormous impact on everyday Americans. This isn't a theoretical problem. It's a real problem. and it'll get worse unless we do something about it.
01:38:50
Speaker 1: Well, if you just look at the value of the dollar that's been eroded over the years, I saw someone that posted a U.S. gas prices since the 1970s calculated based on the adjusted to approximately $ 20, $ 26. I mean, sure, we're paying $ 4. 50 a gallon today, but if you factor in the discount value of the dollar, thanks to the printing press, we were paying effectively about $ 5. 50 a gallon when Obama was president. So We've been through these times before, but if we hadn't watered down the dollar, we'd kind of have a better understanding of the reality of where we are and what the printing press has done to us.
01:39:22
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, hopefully with Kevin Warsh at the Fed, we'll have a little bit tighter monetary policy and we won't be pumping as much in the way of cash into the economy. That's one of the ways. That inflation has increased, not the only way. We need to spend less.
01:39:37
Speaker 5: We need to be.
01:39:37
Speaker 6: Better stewards of taxpayer dollars. There's a lot of things that need to take place. But until we, again, cut up those credit cards and start to be actually responsible with taxpayer dollars, this battle is going to be a losing one. Unfortunately, we're taking more steps backwards than we take steps forwards. We need more people like Warren Davidson, Jim Jordan, other great Ohioans that are in Washington to actually... get a handle on our federal deficits and start turning things around.
01:40:06
Speaker 1: Well, I think COVID was a real eye-opener for so many people. We feel like we were lied to. There was a bait and switch going on. Oh my God, never let a good crisis go to waste. And have we ever seen a crisis like COVID-19? And they used every form of alchemy to get us to all freak out and do stupid things. And they also used it as a vehicle to throw money at a whole bunch of cities. The city of Cincinnati was complaining because they're having a budget issue because, well, they ran out of COVID money. I'm thinking, what? What would you have done without COVID for the past several years without that money? But I saw that you gave Representative Greg Stubbe from Florida the Taxpayer Defender of the Month because he was behind and introduced the Government Bailout Prevention Act, which apparently is establishing safeguards or will if it's passed against federal funds being used to bail out state and local governments in financial distress. Isn't that exactly what the PPP loans and all the other money that was thrown at cities was all about? All these cities that were underwater already immediately found themselves awash in COVID dollars. I draw a straight line between the two. Any comment on that, sir?
01:41:08
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the problem, there are many problems, but one of the big problems from a fiscal perspective with COVID was it created this ratchet effect for spending. We increased spending to weather the storm. That's what we were told. Hey, we just got to get through this crisis. Let's print all this money. Let's push all this money out into the economy. But then when COVID ended, we didn't revert back to where we were in 2019. We just kind of built that into our baseline for spending and then constructed additional spending on top of that. And I'm speaking mostly of the federal government. But as you said, that was happening at the municipal level. It was happening at the county level. It was happening at the state level. All of these entities were just building that extra spending in. And then when it started to go away, they clamored and they got a lot of that money from the federal government in many instances. So, yeah, COVID created this enormous ratchet effect on spending pretty much at every level of government. And now we do have to worry about bailouts because the especially poorly run states and localities, think Illinois, think California. You know, a lot of these areas are in even worse fiscal shape than they were prior to the pandemic. And of course, they're going to come knocking if they haven't already to the federal government looking for funds. So thank you to Congressman Stubbe of Florida for pushing that very, very important bill. But unfortunately, I think we're going to see that problem materialize more. as we start, hopefully, to cut back and move back to where we were in 2019 in terms of spending. Incidentally, spending was too high back then, but we've ratcheted spending up. Now it's approaching a quarter of the economy, which is well above historic norms. So don't let anyone tell you that the taxes are the problem. Spending has increased as a share of our overall economy, and that is what is driving the primary driver of budget deficits and debt.
01:42:58
Speaker 1: Well, no party has a lock on spending too much. We can blame Republicans, not quite as equally as Democrats, but this overspending, and I always like to turn my head toward the Democrats whose response and plan for everything is a new government program with more spending or more spending in any given program that's already there. I keep looking at it going, look, we are on a highway to hell with the debt. Our credit card bill's racking up, as you pointed out. Every year we have to spend more and more on debt service, and we can't let the creditors of the world down because, well, we own an obligation or the whole world would collapse economically. But the spending is really going to have a profound impact on people, and I'm thinking about Social Security. All this great grand program, we're going to protect you in your old age, it is on. That trajectory is looming large. Within the next several years, my senior friends and the listening audience are going to have to take a 22% cut in their monthly nut. But then come the calls for some measure of reform, I guess maybe doing a means testing thing or no more cap on income in terms of Social Security tax levies. It's not going to solve the problem. All of these programs have really an existential threat, and that is government runaway spending. The people who are dependent upon them, the Democrat base, if you want to be so bold as to say that, they're facing a real collapse. Is it going to take a calamity like the Great Depression to get these people to wake the hell up and cut off the spending machine, Brandon Arnold?
01:44:19
Speaker 6: I don't know what it'll take at this point. I'm hopeful that people are seeing that check engine light flashing on the dashboard right now with bond markets being in a state of flux that they're in. $ 40 trillion of debt, as you mentioned earlier. We're about to hit the debt ceiling again early in 2027, and all likelihood we're going to need to lift that debt ceiling. Again, that may actually happen in the lame duck session of this current Congress. So all of these warning signs are going off right now. You talk about the 22% cut. Absolutely terrifying. And it's going to take place in about six years. That date could actually be accelerated if things don't go our way. If we extend the no tax on Social Security, the senior deduction that was passed as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill, a bill that we supported, but certainly has... more work to be done in the deficit space after passing that legislation. So if that date does move up, what is Congress going to do about it? We are literally on the Hill every day saying the time to act is now. The time to act was decades ago, but given that we didn't do that, the time to act is now. And unfortunately, we get a lot of cold blank stares from most members of Congress when we talk about touching the third rail that is Social Security or any of the entitlement programs really. But putting your head in the sand is probably the least responsible thing you can do at a time like now. So hopefully that tide will turn. They need to hear from more constituents saying, hey, what is your plan for Social Security? Because time is running out.
01:45:47
Speaker 1: Well, as a young man, when I became of political age during the first Reagan administration, I don't know how old you are, Brandon Arnold, but I'll be 61 in a week. I remember Ronald Reagan complaining about the national debt when it hadn't even reached a trillion yet, if I recall that correctly. Look where we are.
01:46:04
Speaker 6: Yeah, unfortunately, a lot of politicians have realized that you get a lot more ticker tape parades by spending taxpayer money than you do from cutting federal spending. And that has led to this really untenable debt situation that I think most Americans get, but most members of Congress don't, unfortunately.
01:46:26
Speaker 1: Brandon Arnold, he is vice president of the National Taxpayers Union, NTU.org. I recommend you check it out. Lots of fantastic information there and enlightening information like the bill that I found out Representative Stubbe was behind. Sounds like a fantastic idea. So I'll encourage my listeners to check you out and support your organization, and I'll applaud you for what you are doing. We have a real problem on our hands, and I thank the National Taxpayers Union for regularly reminding our elected officials they've got a job to do. Brandon Arnold, it's been great having you on the show.
01:46:55
Speaker 6: It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.
01:46:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, I look forward to doing it again sometime. Coming up at 818 right now, 55KRC, the talk station, a couple minutes before we get to Jack Windsor, Ohio Press Network. We'll come out of the gate with Jack talking about the latest Amy Acton video of her, of course, not taking questions. That after the challenge from Vivek Ramaswamy earlier to do a debate. Don't hold your breath. 818, 55KRC, the talk station.
01:47:18
Speaker 5: 55KRC.
01:47:18
Speaker 1: Don't miss it. It is 822-55-KRCD Talk Station. It's Friday, and a happy one to you. Jack Windsor coming up next. Yeah, we'll talk about Amy Acton. We'll talk about the Brown versus Houston race. And who is Ishmael Muhammad, and why does he have residency status problems? Jack will enlighten us on that. I was talking, and we were talking there with Brandon Arnold, and I mentioned the gas prices. I saw this thing, and the moment of shock for me when gasoline went through the roof was the early 80s, the first time it went over $ 1. And at the time, I was driving a Caprice Classic Convertible, a 1973 Caprice Classic Convertible. And no, it did not have the massive V8 that it possibly came with, the 454. It had a 350 with a two-barrel. I got like eight miles of the gallon in that thing. And that's on a good day. Today's dollar value, it was about what we're paying today in 1981. today in 1981, $ 4. 44 or $ 4. 50 roughly. And so I feel the pain. I remember the shock of that, you know, because when you're 16 years old and you don't have a whole lot of money, it's impossible to fill a really big gas tank like that and more effectively what was then $ 4.
01:48:35
Speaker 5: 50 a pop.
01:48:37
Speaker 1: So it's been a lot worse. We can complain about it, and we can, and it's worthy complaining about it because it shouldn't be this high, but you were paying more under Biden. Middle of the term, 2022, it was $ 4.
01:48:49
Speaker 3: 65.
01:48:51
Speaker 1: Today, $ 4. 32, at least when the chart was printed. Under Obama, that was the most anybody ever paid, and he told you it was going to be that way. Something I keep going back to. Price of gasoline necessary will increase. And over the first several years of his administration, it went from what was effectively around, oh, let's say about $ 3. 75 all the way up to $ 5.
01:49:20
Speaker 2: 41.
01:49:20
Speaker 1: That was 2011. That's how much you were paying in 2011 dollars. So two terms for Obama. And isn't it wild? Someone also observed about this. If you look at the chart, The price of gasoline dropped pretty dramatically during the end of Obama's term. It went from $ 5. 41 in 2011, in today's dollars, and magically got down to $ 3. 14 ahead of the election. Huh, Trump won. Elections have consequences. Please don't let the price of gasoline impact your vote. There's no correlation between the gasoline price And the gubernatorial election in Ohio. Zero.
01:50:07
Speaker 5: 825.
01:50:08
Speaker 1: 55 KRC Talk Station. Looking forward to Jack Windsor joining the program. Coming up next, we'll start off with Amy Acton. Where in the hell is she?
01:50:16
Speaker 2: KRC The Talk Station.
01:50:17
Speaker 1: 830 on a Friday. It is that time of week I look forward to. I look forward to a lot of times during the week. Special guests on the program, but regular guests included. And thank God for them. And it's time. For TheOhioPressNetwork.com, Jack Windsor. Jack, good to see you this morning. I get the pleasure of seeing him on video. And, of course, my listeners get the opportunity to hear him talk about the issues that he brings up all the time on TheOhioPressNetwork.com. Jack, always good to have you on the program.
01:50:44
Speaker 4: Brian, always an honor to be here with you and Joe and the listeners. And your listeners are lucky. They only get to hear me. You have to see me on the face for radio.
01:50:52
Speaker 1: I have one, too. Although I have a new headshot on my blog page because the old one was like 10 years old. And no, I don't look like that anymore. So I had to update that. The prior one, I looked like I was 10 years old. So a little slow keeping things up to date. But that's about all anybody needs to see of me. Jack Windsor, somebody needs to see more of Amy Acton except on her television spots. I know she's been hiding in the basement. And I guess... I brought this up earlier because Vivek Ramaswamy is on the program, and he did say out loud, I want to debate her. Listen, I'll debate her anywhere. CNN, NBC, MSNBC. Basically, he threw out a bunch of left-wing. He doesn't care. He wants an opportunity to engage in a back-and-forth, and who wouldn't want that opportunity? But Amy Acton's television commercials, her own produced television commercials, Jack, you see the one they run on TV? I'm just wondering, when we get that, and that is the best they could hopefully come up with, that's as polished as we're going to get, she is not exactly confidence-inspiring, I have to observe.
01:51:53
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I don't know. So I say this now because someone said this to me earlier in the week. They said, Jack, you're not normal. And what they were trying to say is I'm a little more of a politico, I guess, and you and I probably fall into that same striping.
01:52:08
Speaker 1: As too many of the listeners. Yeah, we dwell on it. Yeah.
01:52:10
Speaker 4: And so, you know, I don't know, usually after Labor Day, people kind of start tuning in, but we're about, you know, 50 plus days away from the election. And I think people are starting to pay more attention today than they were say 60 days ago. And I think that's bad for Amy Acton, frankly, is, is how I'm going to boil it down. I emceed the Ohio Christian Alliance event last night. Vivek Ramaswamy was there. I was able to introduce him and he said, you know, I'll take a couple of questions, but we were tight on time. We only, only, uh, got to ask, or excuse me, answer to. And one of the questions was from somebody that was not hostile, but was basically, hey, you know, I voted for Trump. I'm really dissatisfied, really kind of pissed off. Are you going to sell this out like Trump, essentially? And Vivek Ramaswamy thanked him, you know, took the question, and he answered it. And I remember standing there thinking, can you imagine if Amy Acton was asked a question and Joe Biden or the Democrats or Amy, are you going to sell us out? I would almost fully expect her armed guard to come over and apprehend the person and say, no more questions. But one thing, regardless of where you stand with his political ideology and his policy positions, Vivek Ramaswamy is not afraid to take questions. And he's not afraid to take questions from people who are not just there to appease him or to give him praise. And I think there's something to say about that. I think voters are starting to see that.
01:53:36
Speaker 1: Well, I would hope so. And who cannot see her outright refusal to debate him? What possible reason would a candidate have for not doing so? Has she articulated anything that she could possibly hang her hat on along those lines, Jack?
01:53:51
Speaker 4: Well, you know, it's a lot of political posturing. And frankly, I don't know if it's Amy Acton doing it. You've heard me say, I think you and I might agree on this, David Pepper's running that show. If she wins, he's going to be running the show.
01:54:02
Speaker 1: Puppet master.
01:54:02
Speaker 4: And she's the out front dog and pony show performer, right?
01:54:06
Speaker 3: So.
01:54:07
Speaker 4: Really, Vivek said it last night. She's not afraid of him. I think she's afraid of voters. I think she's afraid of handling the hard questions. And I've got to give you my lived experience again. Go back six years to her being right in the middle of the state's COVID response. And on at least two occasions, I asked some really hard questions. And by the way, I wasn't mean. I just asked questions because the data and scoreboard that they used wasn't adding up to the policies and so on and so forth. And any time that I asked a hard question, she would miss the next day's press conference. And so I think that there is just kind of this baked-in sensitivity. I don't think she's cut for this. I don't think she's hardwired for it. And therefore, they're going with the Joe Biden strategy, keep her in the basement, talk a lot of smack about her opponent, and just hope that her likability is high enough that voters push the button or pull the lever for her.
01:54:58
Speaker 1: Well, she wasn't up to the task of the medical director. She walked off that job, Jack.
01:55:03
Speaker 4: Yeah, less than 100 days in. And by the way, I think she's quit every job she's had. If you remember, she didn't want to be front and center. DeWine, during a state hiring freeze, hired her for $ 230, 000 a year as his personal advisor. That lasted not very long. And then she went on to some nonprofit and then another and then another. And if you remember, I think it was 2022, she was going to run for U.S. Senate and didn't do that. She walked out on that opportunity, went somewhere else, quit that job. And, you know, one of the things I've been trying to determine is does she or has she ever practiced medicine? I don't have any evidence to say that she has. So I'm really at a loss other than being a professor of public health. What has she done? And when she did do something where the going got tough, as you said, less than 100 days in, she quit.
01:55:54
Speaker 1: Quit and won't debate. Not exactly a profile in courage, Jack Winters. Don't go away. We're going to get your thoughts and comments on the Brown versus Husted race and how that one can be close is another one that puzzles me. Plus, the tail end of the program, the continuing saga of Representative Ishmael Muhammad. He's got some real problems on his hands, and Jack has been hounding him and riding him like a circus pony. Don't go away. More with Jack Windsor after these words.
01:56:19
Speaker 5: 55KRC.
01:56:20
Speaker 4: Nope.
01:56:20
Speaker 1: 839-55KRC, the talk station. Continue to talk this morning. A man who can talk and articulate better than me today, Jack Winterson. Jack, pivoting over to the Sherrod Brown-John Husted race. They haven't got a debate scheduled for that one either, although I haven't heard either side say they don't want a debate. Is that still a possibility?
01:56:45
Speaker 4: I think it is. I really think it is. I had someone in my studio earlier in the week, a Republican strategist by the name of Bob Clegg. And because, by the way, there are some accusations floating around on social media that from people on the left who say, well, why are you so mad that Amy Acton isn't going to debate? Because John Husted is not going to debate. His campaign has not told me that. There just is not something scheduled. We'll probably get into this. There was a poll, two polls that came out recently, one last night, one earlier in the week. And I'm trying to find it here. A good number of people, a majority of people say that a debate is important. 55% say a televised governor's debate is very important. 87% say it is at least somewhat important. So I'm assuming there may not be that much crossover for U.S.
01:57:37
Speaker 2: Senate.
01:57:37
Speaker 4: But my guess is a majority of people probably say, yeah, it's important to hear from the candidates directly on certain issues and to allow them to address issues. some of the skeletons in their closet, if you will, the stuff that always comes out down the stretch here.
01:57:52
Speaker 1: Well, and that's exactly why you would want to debate. If a candidate is being targeted and attacked in these PAC, political action committee ads can be really harsh. I mean, if a candidate doesn't have to approve them, they can pretty much say anything. Because these folks are public figures, you get away with a lot. So with that stated, if I am... am running for office and I'm being publicly attacked and I know that these are demonstrably false claims or at least hiding the reality of what is being asserted, I would like to get out in the open and talk about it. I mean, why wouldn't you avail yourself to any possible opportunity to do exactly that?
01:58:26
Speaker 3: Yeah.
01:58:28
Speaker 1: And what other conclusion can one draw is maybe perhaps the candidate that doesn't want to debate perhaps is concerned about the truth of some of these allegations being stated. There's an option.
01:58:39
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, some people would argue that Sherrod Brown has some stuff, but he's had some stuff for several decades. He continues to carry it with him every election cycle. Of course, you and I both know what John Husted would be attacked on, the House Bill 6 stuff. So that would be fresh. Well, that might be tricky there for him.
01:58:58
Speaker 1: Go ahead.
01:58:58
Speaker 3: Sorry.
01:58:58
Speaker 1: Oh, it's the Larry. Just to remind my listeners, that's the whole energy Larry householder thing.
01:59:02
Speaker 3: Right. OK.
01:59:03
Speaker 6: Yeah.
01:59:04
Speaker 4: And I don't know, by the way, if if if those there are certain investigations on a on a state level that are still going on. I don't know if John Husted would would be able to comment on some of that. Frankly, I know that he had been subpoenaed. I don't know where that is in the process. That might make it a little trickier. Going back to the polls, what we're seeing, other than the Fox poll that came out late in the summer that had Brown plus eight, this latest series of polls has Brown somewhere between three and four. You had the Bowling Green State University poll earlier in the week with YouGov, and then last night, Trafalgar, which I think most people consider a little bit right-leaning, also had Brown between 3% and 4%. And a couple of interesting things in both of those polls, Democrats are more motivated almost by a 2 to 1 ratio. And I think that's going to be the tail of the tape, Brian. Are Republicans going to get off the couch? Are they going to go pull the lever? And what we're hearing a lot now, and I say this all the time, you say it, if you're 80% aligned with somebody, it Don't wait until you're 100 percent aligned. It's never going to happen to allow socialism to continue to creep and make no mistake about it. That's what Republicans are up against. You're dealing with creeping socialism.
02:00:27
Speaker 1: Well, and, you know, Sherrod Brown's a liberal guy. He isn't on record with radical, you know, let's destroy the Constitution policies. But his voting record suggests that it doesn't matter what they're voting for. If it's Democrat inspired, he's going to vote for it. Ninety nine percent of the time he never bucks the system. And this is where I worry. The DSA is making great inroads in the Democratic Party. They're taking over. They're running the show. They got regular mainstream Democrats running scared with the exception of Fetterman. Where do you think Sherrod Brown would vote on this? And if you're concerned about the DSA, and you should be, a vote for Sherrod Brown will be a vote for these damn policies.
02:01:04
Speaker 4: You're 100% accurate. That is the part about Sherrod Brown that I think is really tricky. He has political acumen. I always say campaign Sherrod is wholly different then D.C. Sherrod votes with the radical left. If the DSA takes over the party, Sherrod Brown's going to stamp it with approval by voting yes. And by the way, I thought this was interesting. One of the polls that came out, you may find this a little comical, one in four voters actually still believes that Sherrod Brown is the incumbent.
02:01:35
Speaker 1: Holy cow.
02:01:37
Speaker 4: Isn't that crazy?
02:01:39
Speaker 1: Well, he's been in politics for 50 years.
02:01:40
Speaker 4: I might ride that pony for a while if I were Husted and say, I haven't even been here long enough to find the bathrooms. A quarter of you still think that Sherrod's the guy. So I need some more time here.
02:01:50
Speaker 1: That's a very good point, man. That is a reflection of political ignorance that I, I don't think I can quite cope with Jack.
02:01:56
Speaker 3: Yeah.
02:01:57
Speaker 4: Well, it's a little unnerving, isn't it?
02:01:59
Speaker 1: Well, when half of our school children in K through 12 can't identify the three branches of government, we know we got problems on our hands. That just illustrates it even further to a specific race point. Speaking of specific races, I, Jack Windsor from the Ohio Press Network is going to shed some light on State Representative Ishmael Muhammad, who's been struggling with Jack Windsor's questioning of late. Also has some residency problems. We'll learn about that with the Ohio Press Network's Jack Windsor next. Don't go away. 55KRC, the talk station. It's 847 and 55KRC, the talk station. It's Friday. Hope you've got some great plans for the weekend. I'm going to be at the Parkinson's Steady Stride event at the Linder Family Tennis Center tomorrow beginning at 8 o'clock. It's a great event. The biggest fundraiser for the Parkinson's Wellness and Support Group that they have all year. Fun and games, food, music, and activity. It's good for Parkinson's. It's good for the organization. So join me there tomorrow after 8. And Jack Windsor, you can join him online every single day, and I recommend you do. Bookmark the site, theohiopressnetwork.com, where you can read about the antics of State Representative Ishmael Muhammad. What's with this guy, Jack?
02:03:05
Speaker 4: Well, he has a bevy of issues, Brian. One is a home. By the way, let me go back. State Rep. Ishmael Muhammad is a Democrat. He represents House District 3, which covers Linden, part of the University District, for those of you in Cincinnati, northern Columbus, okay? It's all in Franklin County, his district. Well, Delaware County auditor records show Muhammad and a woman named Hoda Adhiz bought a nearly $ 587, 000 home on Heather Ridge Drive in October 2025. And the records list an owner occupancy credit. And that credit applies to a person's main residence. That's problematic because Delaware County is not in his district. So his opponent, Bernadine Kennedy Kent, challenged his voter registration. And the week before the hearing, Muhammad changed his registration from one in-district address to another And the challenge named the old address. So on Monday, the Franklin County Board of Elections dismissed the case unanimously. Ken's attorney, Kurt Hartman, came on my show.
02:04:14
Speaker 1: We talked.
02:04:15
Speaker 4: He says he will refile. He has refiled against the new address. The hearing is scheduled for September 28th. Muhammad and Adhiz were both in the room, sat on opposite sides in that hearing. His office will not comment. I've sent them two series of questions, about 20 questions total. Now, here's why this is problematic. The law, two separate rules. Article 2, Section 3 of the Ohio Constitution says a representative must live in the district for one full year before the election. Ohio Revised Code Section 3.15 says he must stay a resident for the whole term or forfeit the seat. The house was bought October 2025. The election, of course, is November 3rd of this year. He has a money problem too, but I'll let you marinate in that for just a minute.
02:05:02
Speaker 1: Well, I want to understand, the first filing shows him outside of the district. The second, the revised filing, is it also outside of the district, the second residence he identified?
02:05:15
Speaker 4: So his, initially, the contest was against an address that he had on record. He said it was address A, and they said, well, you signed documentation saying that this Delaware County residence is your residence, which is it.
02:05:30
Speaker 1: You only get one primary residence. Like if you have a summer home in Florida, you either pick Florida as your domicile state, you pick Ohio, but bottom line, you only have one. So the filing, it wasn't in his filing to state his declaring for the race. It was independent of that. So in one record, he says he's in the district, and in another, he has identified it as his primary residence outside of the district.
02:05:56
Speaker 4: Correct. And to make matters more confusing, when the complaint came to the Board of Elections, he listed in a third address, a separate address in the district, not tied to that home, that $ 587, 000 home that he bought in Delaware County. So the contest now is against that new address that he listed, and they're contesting that he lives in Delaware County. And oh, by the way, I should mention this. Because he is required to file paperwork with an ethics committee on his assets as a lawmaker. The last time that he did that, he did not list the home in Delaware County on the form. The only time that you don't have to do that is if that home is your primary residence. His wife slash girlfriend, we have not been able to determine which she is because she lists herself as both, sent a letter to the Board of Elections and said, this is my boy or says that she's a girlfriend. that she lives in a separate place and that Delaware County is an investment property. Well, if that were the case, he would have and should have and must have listed that property as an investment property on his financial filings, and he didn't do that. So he has a lot of things going on where he says one thing here, another thing there. They're not adding up, and it could be extremely problematic.
02:07:12
Speaker 1: Well, I imagine this all would impact his taxes too, would it not, Jack?
02:07:19
Speaker 5: Yes, yes.
02:07:20
Speaker 1: So there's a tax that there's an IRS person out there, maybe somebody within the state of Ohio that's responsible for collecting Ohio taxes, property as well. You know, you get a substantial discount, primary residence, like the homestead exemption, Jack. I mean, that comes into play, doesn't it? Are there school districts and teachers unions out there wondering why in the hell you didn't pay? This is a complicated mess. Well, hold your beer.
02:07:47
Speaker 3: Oh, good.
02:07:48
Speaker 1: It's worse.
02:07:49
Speaker 3: So, yeah.
02:07:50
Speaker 4: So there's a campaign finance complaint that was filed by Lisa Chafee. She's secretary of the Franklin County Republican Party. Per the complaint in the filings, the committee, his committee. reported a balance of ninety seven thousand dollars in change on a twenty twenty four post general election report. The twenty twenty five annual report carries forward only three thousand dollars. So now the question is, where did ninety four thousand dollars or ninety three thousand plus dollars go? By the way, this is the same time. that if you look at his mortgage documentation, he put $ 58, 700 cash down on the payment for the Delaware County House. So people are going, okay, we're not saying that some of that money came from the campaign coffers, but they have not accounted for the money in the campaign coffers. What's going on here? And I will remind you, if you're buying an almost $ 600, 000 house, you can run the mortgage calculation on that.
02:08:42
Speaker 1: Brian, what is that?
02:08:43
Speaker 4: $ 4, 000, $ 5, 000 a month, probably just ballparking it. If you're a state representative, what do you make, 70? So the math ain't math in there.
02:08:54
Speaker 1: Maybe he's a Nepo baby.
02:08:57
Speaker 4: Well, perhaps.
02:08:59
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just throwing it out there.
02:09:02
Speaker 4: You know, I got to be careful what I say, but when you talk Nepo baby and you're talking about the Somali community, there is a lot of money sharing that has gone on in other parts of the country. Not saying that's going on here, but if it were going on, it might. It might make a lot more sense. Well, this all seems at least worthy of investigation. Jack, when's he been trying to? He just won't answer any questions. Do you know if any authorities are involved in this by any chance?
02:09:28
Speaker 1: Yes, they are.
02:09:29
Speaker 4: I can say now here's the part, the campaign finance part.
02:09:32
Speaker 1: I will tell you this.
02:09:33
Speaker 4: The secretary of state has an investigative unit. Generally, though, they work with candidates and committees to bring them into compliance.
02:09:40
Speaker 3: Right.
02:09:40
Speaker 4: They're not trying to do a gotcha. They're trying to say, listen, here's how you have to do it. If you're going to do it, if you can account for it, this is what you need to do. But the Secretary of State's office is looking into this matter. The Board of Elections is looking into this matter. I have every indication now that the mortgage company is looking into this matter because when he signed the mortgage document, he pledged to be in that home within 60 days in order for that mortgage to be in effect and that it would be his primary residence. If he's saying it's not his primary residence, he now has a problem with the mortgage company.
02:10:10
Speaker 1: I just wrote Attorney General down. So you may have a problem with the Attorney General too, Jack Windsor.
02:10:15
Speaker 4: And maybe the FBI.
02:10:16
Speaker 1: There you have it. We'll get everybody involved. Ishmael Muhammad, state representative, state of Ohio. Jack Windsor, theohiopressnetwork.com. Bookmark it. You'll be glad you did. And you can read more about Mr. Ishmael or Mr. Muhammad down the road because I'm sure Jack will answer all the questions that are pending. Jack, we'll do this again next Friday, my friend. Have a wonderful weekend.
Speaker 1: 505-555-KRC, the talk station. Yay, it's Friday. It's Friday. There it is. Confirmation. Always looking forward to that on a Friday and a very happy one to you. Brian Thomas right here. Glad to be. And a phone number you can call. 513-749-5500, 800-823-TALK, or pound 550 on AT & T phone. I guess that's phone numbers. Three of them. Got something you want to talk about? Feel free to chime in. Today, it is Friday meeting Tech Friday with Dave Hedder coming up at 630. We will be talking about artificial intelligence CEOs saying, we got to slow this thing down. Rand Paul, uh, nixed a AI kill switch bill the other day. Maybe dig into the details on that a little bit. Not a whole lot to talk about on that, but slowing down the pace of development and more and more people chiming in. And this is something I called on day one, kind of swirling concerns over, oh my God, we're all going to die announcement from the various CEOs and these artificial intelligence mega companies. I pointed out antitrust. It was the first thing that kind of popped in my head. They want to coordinate. In the name of protecting us all, they will work together in coordination, which red, red, red, red flags. They know it's coming, Sherman antitrust law. So they're trying to get ahead of that. I think that's the nefarious element looming in the background. It's not about you and me. It's not about saving the world. It's not about we're all going to die. It's about their legal liability. Anyway, we'll talk about that with Tech Friday's Dave Hatter, followed by how our digital devices are putting our right to privacy at risk. There's a great.
00:01:59
Speaker 1: The article sum and substance, just the point it makes, Republicans and Democrats finding strange bedfellows with each other because everybody hates flock cameras, and I kind of laugh about that. Yeah, you can make a great argument about flock cameras invading our rights of privacy and the abuse of the data that flock has collected, and go ahead. Just one little tiny slice of our privacy being at risk, and we embrace privacy. all of these Orwellian devices, and we voluntarily enter into the surveillance network when we bring them into our house. Hey, Alexa.
00:02:35
Speaker 3: Bing!
00:02:37
Speaker 1: And for those of you thinking that those devices just aren't listening to you all the time, you've got a bridge I want to sell you. The funny thing about that, you know, that the device is really ignoring the content of everything you say until the moment in time when you utter the device's name, at which time it starts listening and ferreting through what you're trying to get out of it, like play this particular song? Play Tool Enema. Okay. I choose not to go down that road. I don't invite that kind of technology into my home. Big Router is watching you. That's the third topic with Tech Friday's Dave Adder. Apparently, Wi-Fi could be secretly tracking you even if you have left your phone at home. Going back to, go ahead, focus on flock cameras that are outdoors recording information that pretty much anybody with a cell phone could record at any given moment in time. No privacy guarantee there. You got a router in your home? You got Wi-Fi? Right. 705, Congressman Warren Davidson missed having him on because he was traveling yesterday. I texted him yesterday.
00:03:44
Speaker 3: I'm worried.
00:03:44
Speaker 1: I just say, Hey man, we haven't talked in a while. Everything.
00:03:46
Speaker 3: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:03:47
Speaker 1: Can I, can you, you got time tomorrow? Hell yes. For Congressman Warren Davidson, we'll make time seven Oh five. Thank you. Just record for lining that one up on the fly yesterday. Got a variety of topics to go over with Congressman Davidson, which is not surprising given what's going on, including his vote, maybe to stop the end or end the Iranian war.
00:04:05
Speaker 4: Hmm.
00:04:06
Speaker 1: But, uh, We'll be talking about with Congressman Davidson a whole bunch of different things, including the National Taxpayers Union. Warren Davidson is, and congratulations, Warren Davidson, the National Taxpayer Union Taxpayer Defender of the Month. So we'll start off with that, and we'll continue that topic of conversation at 8.05 with Brandon Arnold, the Vice President of the National Taxpayer Union, on the reason they selected Congressman Warren Davidson to be the Taxpayer Defender of the Month, preceded by... Vivek Ramaswamy. You got to vote Vivek. Disturbing phone call yesterday suggesting race is a reason not to vote for him. That is sick and pathetic. Sick and pathetic. So after Brandon Arnold on the National Taxpayer Unit 805, we'll hear from Jack Windsor, which is typical on a Friday 830 with Jack Windsor. We'll get the latest. Amy Acton hiding in her basement, not taking questions. We got video of that. You can have a whole lot of video of Amy Acton dodging questions. Brown versus Husted race and comments on the continuing saga of State Representative Ismail Mohamed and his residency status. Fun and games closing out the Friday with Jack Windsor. Of course, Monday means Christopher Smitherman and Money Monday. All right. I've been saying, and it's something that the dots are easy to connect. People are angry about the price. I understand. We know it's expensive. The inflation is going up. Everything has gone up. Obviously, the price of gasoline and diesel has gone up. A whole lot of reasons for that, like refining abilities, and we don't have enough, especially when you have supply disruptions like the war. That's something I mentioned in Napolitano the other day. Listen, when you're considering the high price of gasoline and you're angry and you want to blame Donald Trump, and you, of course, can blame him. One of the reasons we have higher prices is because of the war. Now, you can argue all day long it was a necessary war, that we needed to do this. Fine, go ahead and make that argument. But the reality is the action of bombing and engaging the Iranians has obviously led to this. So you want to be angry at Trump for that, and I understand that. But if you are voting for a Democrat, you are an idiot if you think that, what's the point? Why would you go against pretty much everything you believe in politically because you're pissed off at Donald Trump because of the price of gasoline and diesel? What are you going to get in return? Oh, look right here. California diesel is $ 8. 35 a gallon. This is something I've been saying. They're desirous of higher fuel prices. This is the global warming crap that's been shoved down our throat now for how many years? I'm sorry. It used to be warming, right? No, it was global cooling preceded by warming. And then the ice age was supposed to come in the 70s, and that didn't happen. And so, right, it's nonsense. I argue. But the war and its impact on global fuel prices, you can obviously see that. And I've harped on this for a while, and now you know what I'm going to say. As soon as it's over, when it is over, the price will come back to stability. But not if you vote for Democrats who want it to be higher. And that's why California diesel is $ 8. 35 a gallon when everybody else in the United States is paying $ 6. 40. Still outrageously priced. Legislation, global warming, climate change, whatever, forcing the price of gas off. And it's just stupid. But ultimately, what California does obviously has an impact on the rest of the United States because a lot of stuff comes from California. We end up having to pay more for whatever it is because they're paying $ 8 plus a gallon out in California. So we got $ 6. 40 nationally. Result of a global diesel shortage, of course, the war. Acute in California. Because of politicians. Climate policies and taxes forcing the price of diesel and, of course, gasoline up through the roof. The diesel premium in California is $ 1. 95. Every single gallon you're paying $ 1. 95 more because of climate policies. California's low carbon fuel standards intended apparently to increase production of diesel from non-petroleum sources, vegetable oil, animal fats, and, you know, I haven't heard any studies to know if you're burning a diesel made from vegetable oil or animal fats, if that has less of an impact on climate. Does that mean there's no carbon dioxide associated with burning vegetable oil and animal fats as opposed to diesel? Of course there is. I don't think you can get rid of the chemical process that allows carbon dioxide to be released as a form of, if you want to call it a pollutant, I don't believe it's a pollutant. It's a naturally occurring part of the air that we breathe. Anyway, the regulation requires refiners and importers to reduce the carbon intensity of their fuels. So maybe vegetable oil produces less, but not zero. So you must reduce carbon intensity, they say, under the regulation, typically by using these renewable fuels. Or, here you go, buy credits from renewable fuel suppliers. That's the most nefarious element of all this. You can buy your way out. So when you pay for something, I guess the carbon dioxide disappears. Or you're going to supplement with this tax somebody who's making something that produces just less carbon dioxide.
00:09:41
Speaker 5: It's a scam.
00:09:42
Speaker 1: Anyway, that regulation adds, they say, about 29 cents to the price of Ghana diesel and acts as a subsidy, of course, for the renewable fuel producers. You're just robbing from Peter to pay Paul. Anyway. They say the value of the compliance credits can exceed that of the actual commodity, the regulatory subsidy. has prompted some California refiners to switch to producing renewable diesel. And here's what you get when they do that. Wall Street Journal citing two refinery complexes in the San Francisco Bay Area previously produced crude at a capacity of 280,000 barrels per day. What do they do? Well, the incentive resulted in them, because of this financial incentive, they converted to making renewable fuels. Now, they're only getting about 100,000 barrels per day in terms of production capacities. You've taken 180,000 barrels off the market because they want to make vegetable oil fuel as opposed to just using crude. Ergo, California lost refining capacity and became even more dependent on, are you ready, foreign oil.
00:10:51
Speaker 3: Huh.
00:10:53
Speaker 1: Are you telling me that California's need and demands for crude and basically the things made from it, like diesel fuel, didn't reduce, were not reduced, mean they have to continue to use diesel of some sort? They need fuel to move from point A to point B?
00:11:11
Speaker 2: No kidding.
00:11:12
Speaker 1: No kidding. You've taken away a domestically produced source of that fuel, and you've now started having to source it out from foreign entities.
00:11:21
Speaker 2: Huh.
00:11:22
Speaker 1: I thought we were energy independent here in the United States. California, in addition to that nonsense, also has a 13% sales tax on diesel on top of the 24.4% federal excise tax. In addition, what's more, the state imposes a 48.2 cent a gallon excise tax. all of which is passed on to their customers, including those out of the state of California in the form of higher prices. So go ahead, vote Democrats, and you get this on a national scale, not just California, mind you. This is the kind of crap they will embrace and have been embracing because the price of gasoline and diesel will necessarily increase in order for us to achieve our zero-carbon goals.
00:12:09
Speaker 5: Yay!
00:12:10
Speaker 1: Oh, that's right. A volcano just blew up, negating every damn effort we have engaged in since this whole idea of eradicating carbon dioxide from the planet was a gleam in someone's eye. 517 right now. 55KRC Talk Station. Plenty to talk about. I'd like to hear from you, too. Don't go away. 55KRC.
00:12:29
Speaker 4: Don't miss our.
00:12:32
Speaker 1: Only 74 degrees at 55KRC Talk Station. I'm Donald J. Trump, and I approve this message. Thank you, Don.
00:12:37
Speaker 3: 521.
00:12:40
Speaker 1: The 55K RC detox station.
00:12:49
Speaker 3: Lemmy?
00:12:58
Speaker 1: Hey, Joe. Lemmy was a drinking man, wasn't he? Just a skosh. He lived in that bar down the street from where he lived. Well, I mean, It was a second home, kind of like Christopher Smith and second home is Jim and Jack's, which will be after listener lunch next month. First Wednesday of the month, Jim and Jackson, the last event before last listener lunch before the election. I sure hope to see you there and, of course, get the benefit of Christopher Smith on here on Mondays on the 55 KRC morning show. And I am joking. He doesn't live there. But the only reason I bring that up on the heels of let me. Since it is the weekend. New Gallup poll says 54% of Americans say they drink alcohol.
00:13:37
Speaker 3: 54%.
00:13:37
Speaker 1: It's like, okay. But that's a decline of 10 points since January, or since 2023, last time they did this poll. And Gallup said alcohol consumption is at its lowest level it has ever been since it started the poll back in 1939. Alcohol falling out of favor. Local news, Alex Cruz over at, I believe it was.
00:14:03
Speaker 1: WXIX, I apologize. Box 19. Talked to UC Health physician Dr. Michael Bender, who said, you know, a Surgeon General report came out last year linking alcohol to cancer as the reason some people are quitting drinking. This is his theory, at least, why the numbers have really dropped precipitously. Also, there it is, that I word, inflation. And this is something I certainly have noticed. You go to a bar, it's like 15, 16 bucks for a cocktail. Since when did a margarita cost $ 16? Anyway, so it's more expensive, and, of course, people are budget-minded, so you've got health and budget all falling into place here. Gallup found 17% of Americans say they have substituted non-alcoholic beverages for alcohol, another phenomenon I've noticed, the mocktails that have crept in. Mocktails. So, anyway, just a little fun fact for a Friday. That's alliterative, isn't it? And here's a thought question for you. I know everyone appalled, outraged, heartbroken over the Charlie Kirk assassination. And their family, the Charlie Kirk family, sued a whole host of people in connection with the assassination. Utah, Utah Valley University, Utah Valley University Police Department, Police Chief Jeffrey Long, claiming that their failures led to the assassination of Charlie Kirk and that they were negligent in providing security for the event where he was killed. And I thought about this. In the context of the Cincinnati Police Department, for example, where we're about 200 officers short, overtime is necessary to serve the bare minimum needs for security in the city of Cincinnati, generally speaking. Now, go ahead and throw an Oktoberfest on that. An additional half a million people descending in a concentrated area in downtown Cincinnati. You're in charge now. How many police officers do you need? Yeah, you don't know, do you? And what about the needs of every other community that is, well, being policed by the Cincinnati Police Department? There are a whole bunch of neighborhoods in downtown Cincinnati that haven't gotten a memo on that. So a whole bunch of people focus on the greater, the central business district showing up at Oktoberfest. The obvious needs are there because of the mass amount of people and the uncertainty in connection with crowds gathering these days. So what about the other neighborhoods? What if someone got assassinated in another neighborhood? What if there is another event in a different neighborhood where someone is speaking? How do you know how many officers you're going to need? Is that person going to be the target of an assassination attempt? I don't know. I don't know about the folks in Utah if they had any idea. And what are the obligations of any person speaking? Let's say Abdul El-Sayed. You know that guy. Let's say he was speaking there. And it was he who got assassinated and not a conservative, Charlie Kirk. How many people do you need? Is he the target? Would he be a target of assassination? I certainly have no one who comes to my mind that I'd like to assassinate. I don't think it's the right thing to do. But who is... I guess, is law enforcement supposed to be able to see into the future and know one way or another? And do we want to hold law enforcement accountable for not seeing into the future? And can you not make the argument? And I'm not saying that the family's at fault here, but if you know your loved one, the person you are supporting, the organization that is paying for Charlie Kirk to fly around all over the place and provide these wonderful education opportunities and exchanges of ideas, Should they be more forward-thinking? Man, this guy's controversial. There's a bunch of left-wing nutcases out there, and a whole hell of a lot more left-wing nutcases than right-wing ones these days. Maybe we should do something to bolster his security. Maybe we need to take it upon ourselves. And step back from that and ask yourself this question. If you were going out in public speaking, I'd do it all the time. Do I have an expectation that the Cincinnati Police Department is going to provide me with armed guards?
00:18:26
Speaker 5: No.
00:18:27
Speaker 1: No, this is why I'm an advocate for concealed carry and the right to self-defense given to me by my Second Amendment, or at least protected by my Second Amendment.
00:18:37
Speaker 3: I don't know.
00:18:38
Speaker 1: I struggle with this because I feel badly for Charlie Kirk. It sucks that he got assassinated. It is an awful thing. It's revealing of the violence that the left wing will unleash on the world. See Stalin and all the other commies that have gotten into power and purged, they thought they were trying to anyway, purge their societies of all the dissenters. What obligation does a police force owe in this regard? And can we really ever, ever have enough law enforcement officers in the world to prevent this kind of thing from happening? I don't really think so. 528, 55 KRC, the talk station, local stories or phone calls, either way, we'll get going after these words. 55 KRC.
00:19:29
Speaker 5: The NFL is back.
00:19:30
Speaker 1: Sunday, it's currently 74 degrees, 55 KRC, the talk station.
00:19:34
Speaker 5: Don't vote Democrat.
00:19:36
Speaker 1: Tom's not here. He said yesterday he was not going to be on. No, we don't put Tom on the rundown. Joe Strucker doesn't put Tom on the rundown. Joe Strucker, executive producer. So you can feel free to to take Tom's place if you like. I always enjoy hearing from listeners. 513-749-5500, 800-823-TALK, or pound 550 on AT & T phones. People freaking out about measles. And we got a measles exposure reported in Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center after two out-of-state patients confirmed with measles went to the emergency room while contagious. Apparently occurred in a shared public areas of the hospital's emergency department. So were you at Cincinnati Children's Hospital in the area of the emergency department on September 4th or early on September 15th, specifically between the hours of 5.40 p.m. to 7.48 p.m. on September 14th, 11.15 p.m. to 1.15 a.m. beginning the night of September 14th into September 15th. So Apparently, that's the exposure period of time where these two out-of-state individuals with measles were in Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. Health officials say there are currently no active measles cases in Cincinnati. Not just at Cincinnati Children's, the entire city. They say testing completed Wednesday confirmed that both patients did, in fact, have measles and were, in fact, contagious when they were at the hospital. Patients have been exposed to measles in their home state, as I mentioned previously. Exposure limited to these public areas, so if you were not in the public areas, I get the impression from the reporting here that, well, you needn't worry about it. So if you visit an emergency room during the identified exposure hours and you have not received a call to contact the Cincinnati Health Department, and I just, I pause on that. How would they know who to call? I guess the employees, but... Are there video cameras? Are they using facial recognition software, Joe, in the hospital emergency room area to see who's in there and who's not at any given time? Anyway, a health official said, I'll also advise people who have developed symptoms after a potential exposure to please contact their own health care provider before going into a medical facility, I guess, and exposing others. Look for high fever, cough, runny nose, red watery eyes, and rash, which symptoms typically develop several days after exposure but can take as long as three weeks to show up. We go to Oxford where Oxford police detained a man Tuesday evening after receiving two separate calls about a guy walking around University Avenue with a knife. Videos taken by neighbors show the man walking up and down the street Tuesday evening with this large knife in his hand. Lieutenant Adam Price of the Oxford police said they were called to the 200 block of East Seymour Avenue after the first call came in about 6 p.m. The caller told police they came into contact with this person with a knife and felt threatened by the person's actions. Price said the person ran off. Police could not locate him. Price said that the man also had growled at the caller. A little bit later, about an hour, 7 p.m., a second call came in, University Avenue, regarding a man with long hair, wearing pajamas, carrying what was described as a large kitchen knife. Hey, it's that guy. Price said the man was on one side of the street, said something to a resident, then crossed the street and approached her and sat down on her porch. Man detained down the street from the scene. Price said he lives nearby and he was taken to the hospital for treatment because they suspected he was having a mental health crisis. Drugs are bad. Joe may be on to something. 1 p.m. Monday, Timothy... Wrigley, I think I got that right, 20 years old, just been sentenced for assault and failure to comply with the order of a police officer. Well, according to the video that was taken, sheriff's deputy walking him out after sentencing, Wrigley broke through his handcuffs, punched the deputy in the throat, described as bulldozing his way through another deputy while making his escape, heading down the courthouse stairwell and into the arms of another deputy. He made a break for the front door when an officer used a taser on him, and that was the point when he was brought down before he got outside, taken back into custody. Meanwhile, first deputy was still on the ground while all this was going on, holding a paper towel to his bloody face, and others came to help him out. Both deputies taken to the hospital, conditions unknown. Injured officers described as recovering at home. 535 right now, 55 KRC Detox Station, life of a law enforcement officer. Jeez Louise. God bless each and every one of you. Don't go wagging. Can you play John the Fisherman? Got to be a Friday.
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Speaker 6: 540.
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Speaker 1: The 55 Care CD Talk Station.
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Speaker 3: 513-749-5500. 800-823-TALK.
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Speaker 1: Or pound 550 on.
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Speaker 5: AT & T phones.
00:24:48
Speaker 1: 55krc. iheart. com for podcasts and other information and books. Get a copy of Bill O'Reilly's book, Confronting America. It's a good read. Plus, Jeff Scherr, local author. His book, Shots Fired on Redding Road, 42-year-old cold case that former detective Scherr, along with another former detective, solved. Never too late to solve a case, most notably those involving the murder of a police officer.
00:25:11
Speaker 4: So check it out.
00:25:12
Speaker 1: Also, Dave Williams, the Taxpayer Protection Alliance. And later in the morning, you'll have the opportunity to listen to what Dave Adder has to say. And Warren Davidson, and Vivek Ramaswamy, and Brandon Arnold, President of the National Taxpayers Union, and Jack Windsor. Full show lineup this morning. God bless you, Joe Strecker. Three-sentence article here in the Stack is Stupid. Not a whole lot of details, but I do know. that Elmer Dan Harline Jr., who's 64, from the city of Rome, was arrested at a place called Tasty Cakes. After reports said he exposed his sexual organs, according to the arrest report, he was viewed on surveillance cameras at the Tasty Cakes, removing all of his clothing, and then defecating in the parking lot. Whoa, that's a lot of feces. Charged with public indecency and a probation violation. No charges related to the defecation. That's all the information in the article. Wilkes-Barre. Police responded to several 911 calls and arrested. What day is it? Right. Naked guy in the area of South Washington and East Ross Street. Happened Tuesday of this week. Officers dispatched the scene after the call came in, claiming a naked guy was walking around on South Washington Street. Passed, of course, St. Nicholas Elementary School. Fortunately, it was after school hours, 6.30 p.m. That's when officers encountered Theodore Macajack. Close enough. 45 years old. He was completely naked when police found him. He told officers, are you ready to, quote, call Donald Trump at the White House? Why are you doing that? And then identify himself using a different name than his actual name. Police records say this guy struggled when being placed in a prisoner transport van. he was arraigned by the judge on charges of indecent exposure, open looseness, and disorderly conduct. Drugs are bad. Oklahoma City got a guy taken into custody there after an armed disturbance and pursuit involving damaged police vehicles. Officers initially dispatched to a residence after receiving a report that an armed individual was making threats against his relatives. That guy, Johnny Kemp Johnny Kemp subsequently fled the scene in a pickup truck. And while attempting to escape in that truck, Kemp hit multiple police vehicles. He kept on driving, hitting additional vehicles before ultimately colliding with a shipping container located on the premises. He was apprehended. And at the time of his apprehension, he was entirely naked. Currently held in a wide array of criminal counts. That's all you get for the reporting on this one. A wide array. Oh, wow. Could result in someone getting shot. We go to McGregor, Texas, where a 28-year-old man now facing multiple felony charges after the father of a boy and a girl found him naked in the kid's bedroom. David Refugio. Joe, what would your reaction be? Right? I know what mine would be. Listen, we have a castle doctrine. There's some naked guy in my young kid's room? Anyhow, David Refugio Lopez, lucky to still be alive, booked into the McLennan County Jail. This is Texas, remember? This after McGregor police were called to the home on Garfield Avenue. Police found him naked, locked in a closet. The girls blocked into a closet. He'd been allowed to get dressed before the officers showed up. I guess dad let him put his clothes on. Father said he and his wife woke up saying someone was in their daughter's room. His wife told him. Rest affidavit said that when the father went into the room, he found the naked guy in a closet and that his daughter and son were also in the room and creepily gross, also naked. Affidavits say the police were told that the daughter had let the man into the house without the parents' approval and that she stated repeatedly there had been no sexual contact. Thank God. Police said the man refused to provide any full identity information, was originally listed as being 19 years old. He's 28. Jail records indicate that he remained there the next day with charges including two counts of indecency with a child, exposed, purgatory of a habitation with failure to identify. Jail records indicate that an immigration detainer had been added later in the day. Add another one to the list of illegal immigrants committing horrific crimes or maybe have committed horrific crimes. Maybe he just didn't have the opportunity to close the deal. Either way, I don't know what your reaction would have been, but there's a total stranger in the middle of the night locked in a kid's bedroom with the kids naked. I know which direction I'm leaning right now. Anyway, 545, 55 KRC Talk Station. More stupid coming up.
00:30:18
Speaker 2: Or phone station.
00:30:19
Speaker 1: 550, the 55 KRC Talk Station. Oh, look who it is.
00:30:27
Speaker 3: 513-749-5500.
00:30:27
Speaker 1: 800-823-TALK. Feel free to get behind him, but he's first in line. He is my submariner friend, Cribbage Mike. Good to have you back on, Mike. Happy Friday to you.
00:30:37
Speaker 5: Happy Friday, Brian. And right at the top, I want to thank you and Joe for promoting last night's wonderful Navy Week event out at the USS Cincinnati Memorial. The turnout was unbelievable.
00:30:48
Speaker 6: Good!
00:30:49
Speaker 5: Especially to you because you had some dedicated listeners. If you remember Colonel Randall Fannin that was in studio with me promoting the BFW Memorial team.
00:30:58
Speaker 1: Of course I do.
00:30:59
Speaker 5: He was there with his wife and a lovely couple, and I told him I was going to mention them, Pam and Jerry from Landon, and hopefully there are going to be some upcoming listener lunch attendees.
00:31:10
Speaker 3: Oh, that's great.
00:31:11
Speaker 5: You know, because they said they've always heard about it because she's a daily listener. And she said, I can finally put a face with Cribbage Mike again.
00:31:20
Speaker 1: Well, at least unlike me, you don't have a face for radio. Unlike me. Well, that's fantastic. Good morning to those folks. And thank you for listening to the program. That's great.
00:31:32
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
00:31:33
Speaker 5: We had two parachutists, one coming and carrying the Navy flag and one with the American flag. The Navy band ensemble was entertaining for almost an hour, and the drill team from the Great Lakes Recruit Training Center was there. And if anybody wants to check them out, they're going to be down at Oktoberfest all weekend long. There's going to be a booth, but I can't thank you, Brian, once again, and you and Joe for putting it on the website because I know they had a lot to do with getting people out there.
00:31:58
Speaker 1: Oh man, it's, you know, Joe Strecker is the one that is responsible for keeping the website updated and God bless him. And thank you, Joe Strecker for doing that every day. But, you know, it's the least we can do here in the morning show. I mean, what a great opportunity. I encourage everybody to get out the voice of America park to checks out the USS Cincinnati submarine memorial. And it's just the neatest thing. And. Of course, someday, Mike, you and I are going to meet out there and you're going to give me.
00:32:19
Speaker 2: A personal tour of that.
00:32:20
Speaker 5: Absolutely.
00:32:20
Speaker 1: We'll hook up a date.
00:32:22
Speaker 5: And the turnout has been so overwhelming because we initially, especially with our first year, we're just going to be there for the holidays. But the turnout has been so overwhelming. So if anybody wants to come out and would like a tour from a submarine veteran to explain a lot of the placards that are there. Every Saturday and Sunday, all the way through November, every Saturday and Sunday from 1 to 6, an actual submarine veteran will be there, very recognizable in our red shirts, red hats, red vests. So pull us aside because we'd love to share. If we're going to give you a good two or 45 minutes to an hour and you'll come away, I think, for a greater appreciation than what our men and women are doing underneath the seas.
00:32:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Cold War era submarine and, of course, going to Voice of America Broadcast Museum and see what it was like during the Cold War when they were operating out of Voice of America and broadcasting the radio signals into the Russian territories and everything. That is the just wildest, wildest place out there. Just walking back in time, it's like it hasn't even changed. It's really neat.
00:33:20
Speaker 5: It couldn't have been a better location because about 15 years ago, we were going to be down on the river, but we would not have near the expansive area that we have now, the parking. And as you mentioned, we highlight that right at the beginning of the tour, the synergy between Voice of America and USS Cincinnati and what our submarine force and all our military did to defeat the Cold War. It's a perfect synergy.
00:33:41
Speaker 1: It is, and that community is filled with American patriots, too. Thanks again, Brian. You're welcome, Mike. I appreciate you and what you do, and everybody who was involved in that. And it is a better location. I'm glad he brought up the free parking. Can you imagine having to pay like $ 27 to see the USS Cincinnati Memorial if it was downtown Cincinnati? Anyway, back to the stack of stupid. Got a woman allegedly high on drugs. There's the answer, Joe, right out of the gate. He was walking into the Watertown, New York business naked. Police charged Cherry Teal, she's 32 years old, with harassment, exposure, resisting arrest, and appearing in public under the influence of drug. Walked into the smoke shop on Factory Street naked about 1.30 in the morning on August 10th. Court documents say she was also on a public sidewalk causing numerous people to call the police. Of course, because she's naked. Police got there. She allegedly kicked one of the officers in the leg and stomach multiple times, also accused of striking a second police officer while slamming her body into him. After being restrained, she spit in the face of an ambulance worker who was just simply trying to help her. They say police have dealt with this woman before. Police officer said Teal's boyfriend told her that she was high on Oli. O-L-L-Y. Officer said Ollie is the nickname for a synthetic drug with similar effects to MDMA and causes hallucinations and erratic behavior. Drugs are bad. Taking to Samaritan Medical Center. Police arrested her about 2.30 in the morning on Wednesday.
00:35:19
Speaker 3: The aristocrats.
00:35:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know illegal drugs don't come with a warning label. But Maybe I'm just being too logical and reasonable, but this is the way I've operated throughout my life. If someone's going to hand you something, and you're going to get high, man, but it also comes with losing your mind, death, doing things that you have no control over, losing your sense of perspective and understanding about what's real and unreal, anything like that, how about no? 555, 55 cares to the talk station. Oh, by the way, it makes you take your clothes off, too, for some reason. Don't go away. Six o'clock hour includes, of course, Tech Friday's. Dave had lots of great stuff to talk about with Dave at 630. Opportunity to call here between now and then. I'll be right back after the news.
00:36:01
Speaker 5: Did you hear about it? Did you hear that story?
00:36:03
Speaker 1: Talk about it. It's 606-55-KRC, the talk station. Brian Thomas right here. Joe Strecker, executive producer in there. Phone number right here, 513-749-5500, 800-823-TALK, 9550 on AT & T phones. Coming up, it's Friday, 630 every week with Tech Friday's Dave Hatter. We'll be talking about artificial intelligence CEOs saying we need to stop the pace of this development. We're all going to die. That'll be one topic. Followed by how our own digital devices are putting our right to privacy at risk. Oh, I guess people got the memo. Continuing the theme on Tech Friday with Dave Hatter. Big router is watching you. Apparently Wi-Fi can track you even if you leave your phone at home.
00:36:46
Speaker 3: Good.
00:36:47
Speaker 1: Congressman Warren Davidson at 7.05. Fast forward an hour. We've got a whole bunch of things to go over with Congressman Davidson. A whole bunch of things. Vivek Ramasamy, he's running for governor here in the state of Ohio. He'll be on the program at 7.30. And Brandon Arnold, which is timed great because Brandon Arnold happens to be the vice president of the National Taxpayer Union. Congratulations to Congressman Warren Davidson because they named him the Taxpayer Defender of the Month. So we'll get a word or two from Congressman Davidson, probably in appreciation for being awarded the Taxpayer Defender of the Month. And then Brandon Arnold can explain all about what goes into the selection process. 805 with that. And then Jack Windsor from TheOhioPressNetwork.com. Amy Acton's hiding. We have the latest video of her refusing to take questions. Jack's all over that. Brown versus Husted. Huge race. John Hughes said, I think last time I saw a poll behind a couple of points in the polls, and I'm just scratching my head over that. Going back to the point I started the program out with, if you want to pay $ 8. 95 or something for diesel fuel like they're paying in California, go ahead, be angry with Trump because it's $ 6. 50 here, recognizing that if you vote for the Democrats, it'll be $ 8. 50 here because they will institute their global warming policies here and across this country, forcing the price up. Have I made that point enough? And that just seems so reasonable to come to, to come to the conclusion that's going to happen. I mean, we've been dealing with this for years and years. So I go back to my conversation with the Paul town. He just kind of stopped and said, I don't think people will put the dot. We'll connect the dots on that. I don't think people going into vote can put past them the anger they have over just having paid four and a half bucks a gallon for gasoline. You go into the, in the poll, ah, orange man. Okay. And then vote for the communists. That makes sense, doesn't it? No, it doesn't. Anyway. Jack Windsor on that. And then finally, continuing saga of State Representative Ismail Mohamed and his residency status. I'm looking forward to hearing what Jack has to say about that. Excuse me. Using the cough button. Good morning, Andrew Pappas, who brought this to my attention yesterday. Act Blue. It's this massive... Democrat fundraising machine, major political fundraising organization for left-wing candidates and causes. Now, they're having a congressional hearing on this, and they brought some ActBlue folks and principals in, including previously they brought in ActBlue's CEO. This happened in June, second week of June, where ActBlue's CEO, Regina Wallace-Jones, would not answer any questions, including not even answering what her name was, yes or no. she asserted her Fifth Amendment right to be free from self-incrimination. Well, why would you do that? Well, here's some details behind it. In fact, Attorney General Ken Paxton in Texas has already sued ActBlue. This happened back in April of this year, which, of course, led to her testimony. Now, ActBlue is saying, oh, no, Congress can't investigate crimes, which is an outright lie. And that's, in fact, what the CEO said when she asserted her Fifth Amendment right to be free of self-incrimination in an explanation. I'm allowed to do that, and the reason I'm doing that is because this is a politically motivated act by, well, the congressional panel. They're only doing it to go after me. It's targeted. It's political retribution. She said asserting her Fifth Amendment right is the only reasonable response to a proceeding that from the beginning has been about harassing political opponent fundraising platform. It's not genuine oversight. She also claimed that Congress has no constitutional authority to even look into this. Well, that's not true. So we got Ken Paxton's lawsuit against the group for, and you'll get some of the details here. I'll just give you a minute of some of the things that they were doing. Bottom line is it appears as though they were overlooking some really concerning and troubling donations from foreign individuals, which is illegal. Foreign powers and folks cannot contribute to political campaigns here. But they were facilitating that according to the allegations, and this is what the reason for the congressional investigation is. Now, there can be a criminal investigation by the Department of Justice. They can start that on their own. If they have probable cause to believe a crime has been committed, that's what the Department of Justice does. Congress, in doing an investigation related to its congressional role, can refer matters to the Department of Justice to the extent they encounter criminal activity. They can't prosecute, but they can refer. And then sometimes there is a criminal investigation going on over at the Department of Justice or by, again, Ken Paxson, Attorney General. He's got a criminal investigation. He's filed a lawsuit against this organization. Congress can engage in oversight parallel to a criminal investigation, and to the extent they uncover any evidence of crimes or information relating to the separate criminal investigation, they can send that evidence over and let the prosecutors deal with it. So this is all on the up and up. But they asserted their Fifth Amendment rights. The principles that have been hauled in, the CEO previously in June, Their allegation is that this is all politically motivated, that there is nothing to see here.
00:42:04
Speaker 2: Huh.
00:42:06
Speaker 1: Well, and whatever reason I'm thinking of Amy Acton hiding, if you've got a point to make, if you believe this is all politically motivated, if you can explain away what has been revealed so far in the investigation, what Paxton has shown and what the Republicans and, well, I guess what the evidence is reflecting and the reason for the congressional oversight, Why wouldn't you do it? I mean, the CEO is kind of acknowledging, well, if in fact what she is saying is true, the Fifth Amendment has no connection with this. She's just saying out loud, I'm only asserting the Fifth Amendment because I don't want to engage in this process. She's trying to suggest she's not or has not engaged in criminal activity or something that might suggest she has and therefore would be prosecuted based upon her own testimony. No, she's just saying this is all motivated by politics and that there is nothing wrong with what they do. That's the point, isn't it? If there's nothing wrong with what you have done and all these illustrations that have been popping up about them massaging the rules and relaxing protocols and standards to make sure that foreign donors can contribute to political campaigns here in the United States of America... then why don't you show it and say it? So the Republicans have accused ActBlue of weakening the safeguards that they actually had in place, the fraud safeguards, also accepting suspicious contributions, as well as misleading Congress on how it screens donations. There are laws on the book. This is one of Congress's role, keep foreign money out of our elections. This is being led by... Brian Steele, who's a Republican from Wisconsin, along with, yes, Jim Jordan here from Ohio, and James Comer, Oversight Committee Chairman. The latest report alleges ActBlue repeatedly relaxed its fraud prevention standards, even as internal reviews warned that the changes could allow for more fraudulent donations to come through. The report states, citing ActBlue's Staff report they've got information from within the organization, which serves as the basis and predicate for these allegations that have been levied against ActBlue. The committee oversight has found that ActBlue, in its own words, decided to take a more lenient approach to fraud prevention in 2024, weakening its fraud prevention policies at least twice, even though internal ActBlue internal assessments showed that the changes would result in a measurable increase in fraudulent contributions. Huh, how do we get more money in? Relax the fraud standards. Just don't look for it, and it won't be brought to your attention. According to the report, similarly, internal trainings directed ActBlue's fraud prevention team to, quote, look for reasons to accept contributions rather than to examine them closely for indicators of fraud, as required by the federal regulations. They say ActBlue took this lax approach to fraud prevention, even though it had detected at least 22 significant fraud campaigns on the platform in recent years, including several from foreign sources. Look, there it is. Well, it doesn't happen that much. Just a little bit of foreign money came in. Well, that's because you just didn't pay attention to look for it. Committee now accusing ActBlue of potentially accepting illegal foreign political contributions and attempting a subsequent cover-up when congressional investigators started digging into the platform's practices. Major porn dispute involves the way ActBlue verifies donations from people using addresses outside of the United States. ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones previously told Congress that those donors were required to provide a passport number. Are you ready for this? change in ActBlue policies regarding passport numbers? Apparently, the ActBlue check system merely looked into whether the number contained the required number of characters. Didn't verify whether it was an authentic U.S. passport number. So apparently, let's just say there's 15 characters in a passport number. All they did was count what the passport number characters are, number, not the characters themselves to determine whether it was a passport. number. Valid one. It's got the right nine in numbers. It may be okay. Well, clearly it could have been a fraudulent one or one that was stolen. Anyway, report also includes internal communications that Republicans say show staff approving donations despite potentially suspicious signals. Again, relaxed standards allow you to overlook this kind of stuff. One memo praised transaction as quote, great except while noting, quote, donors sometimes has an IP address in Hong Kong, but none of their other signals raise eyebrows. So, wow, giant red flag. This donor has a Hong Kong address on this one? Well, but the other ones didn't show a Hong Kong address. Well, I guess they just dropped the ball and said the silent part out loud on this most recent donation. You think we should look into it? No, they didn't. There are multiple allegations along these lines. So you've got all the documents, internal memorandum with quotes, Regarding the lax standards, and then you call them in to talk to them about, and they all take the fifth. No, nothing to see here. 617 right now, 55 KRC, the talk station. Time to mention Gate of Heaven Cemetery. The value of life. It can't be understated. A fond appreciation for life at all phases. That's Gate of Heaven Catholic Cemetery's mission, is to honor life at all stages.
00:47:59
Speaker 2: 55 KRC, the talk station.
00:48:03
Speaker 1: 622-55-KRC-D Talk Station. Tech Friday with Dave Hatter coming up next. Always enjoy hearing from Dave. I hope you do, too. And I hope you heed his words.
00:48:15
Speaker 3: David?
00:48:18
Speaker 1: Different David. Bipartisanship on full display is a 417 to 3 in a vote to require artificial intelligence centers to, well, ensure that they can cover their own energy costs. It's a Republican-inspired measure, but obviously he enjoyed almost complete support. Apparently he's going to impose new requirements that AI and other data centers make deals with local providers to cover, in the words of the legislation, the full incremental cost of any generation, transmission, or distribution upgrade necessary to serve their energy needs. And what do we got with AI? You got the wealthiest companies that generate the most revenue and now require the most energy. They're obviously huge users of energy to make this technology work. I don't know, percentage-wise, nationally, I think it's like 4%. But if there was any other industry that used a lot of electricity, and a lot of them do, have they ever been called upon to provide their own? own energy in advance? I'm just scratching my head. I know we're all worried about this. Ahead of the vote, it said it was unclear whether legislation could win the backing of progressive lawmakers. Apparently, they came on board because everybody's freaked out about AI.
00:49:32
Speaker 4: Ah.
00:49:37
Speaker 1: Estimates indicate currently data centers– yeah, I was right about that. I did read it here. Data centers use about 4% of the U.S. electric grid, and it's supposed to increase dramatically. Now, the parallel that's drawn here, drawing roughly 176 terawatts of electricity per year, the energy used to power these facilities could otherwise be used to power 16 million homes. That's according to this entity called Electric Choice. I We don't live in a static world. You know, the energy demands that people place on the grid increase literally every single year. One of the big impediments to going all electric in this country is because the power companies have not maintained or kept up with the electric grid, replacing old, depleted stuff that causes fires out in California or otherwise more transmission lines to reach other areas, more power generation, which seems to be the source of the problem. In this particular case, we've hobbled ourselves. You know, windmills can't power artificial intelligence plants. but neither can they power all of us and the otherwise 16 million homes that would be powered if the AI wasn't there. The demand is ever increasing. Our officials and the power company officials and the quasi-state private entities that usually are power companies owe it to us to think forward and allow us to continue to access the grid so people like AI can come in and pay the same damn freight we all are. It's the abundance in amount of electricity generated. Therein lies the major challenge. And if they'd have stayed up on it, there wouldn't be this massive spike when AI comes along and sticks a plug in the wall to power its facilities. And the one thing I can see here in the midst of all this is at least the benefit will inure to us. Because these companies are multi-trillion dollar companies or whatever kind of profit that they generate, they can afford to do it. If you're going to ask them to pay for what they do to not tax the grid, then they're going to say, well, can I put a small modular reactor here? And everybody's going to go, hell yeah, because if you do it, we'll get it. And they're powerful enough to have the regulatory skids greased, which should be greased anyway or never should have been an impediment for you and I enjoying cheap electricity. They'll get it done. Much in the same way, by all collectively freaking out in chorus, in unison, the major AI folks can all tell us we're all going to die so that they get special treatment under the antitrust laws. Yeah, it's amazing what big, powerful companies can do. 626, 55KRC, the talk station. Here, let me do a commercial for my friends at 223. Talk with Wendy. 631, Friday. It's that time. I always look forward to it. I know everybody does. Appointment listening with Tech Friday's Dave Hatter. This segment brought to you by Interest IT. Dave's company, employee-owned, as I understand it. The business carrier says they are absolutely the best in the business when it comes to your business computer needs. You're in the best hands with Dave Hatter and the team. Welcome back, my friend. Love having you on the program on a Friday.
00:52:35
Speaker 3: Brian, always my pleasure to be here and look forward to our conversation this morning and every Friday.
00:52:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do too. It's very informative and I implore my listeners to heed your advice. especially when it comes to the Internet of Things devices. We'll get to that. Apparently we've got a real hot one on our hands with Wi-Fi. But moving beside that, I guess we're all going to die, and therefore we need to free the artificial intelligence companies of any obligations under the law for liability and, I guess, more likely for antitrust. They want to collude together in the name of keeping us from dying, Dave. Any suspicions about this? Any concerns? Any raised eyebrows? Yeah.
00:53:11
Speaker 3: If you recall, Brian, ever since AI has been on the front page of really in the last four years or so. And I just remind folks, the whole idea of AI is not new. It's been around for a long time. Now, obviously, it's advanced a lot and much more capable now than it was four years ago or prior to that. But, you know, since then, we've had all kinds of apocalyptic warnings. And, you know, there's all kinds of theories. Now, I want to be clear. I'm not saying there's absolutely nothing to what these folks are saying. OK, I'm not saying that, but I'm also not saying I think we're all going to be dead by 2030. Like they're these guys are or at least insinuating could happen. It is interesting that this is not the first time someone has said we should slow this down. And then it's also not the first time that they've come out with these rather apocalyptic warnings. So, you know, all these guys are trying to IPO. There's definitely a race there. And I think you have to take into context the idea that other countries like China are also building this stuff. And, you know, I think it is a legitimate concern. Yeah.
00:54:22
Speaker 1: Dave, I must note that they are not subject to the Sherman Antitrust Act or America's tort laws.
00:54:28
Speaker 4: Right.
00:54:29
Speaker 3: That's an excellent point, Brian. And also, they typically don't operate the same way we do in the US. And that's kind of where I'm going. If they're not going to have any sort of restraints on what they're doing, and they potentially, you know, like in the nuclear arms race, you know, again, idea of mutually assured destruction, you know, arms gap and all this sort of thing. I understand the arguments for and against all that. But I think, We're in a place now where you don't want an adversarial nation to get too far ahead on this. It's a tricky problem. There's a lot of hype. There's a lot of hyperbole out there. It's hard to know what to believe or who to believe. But I will say this. When you look at some of the legitimate stories that have been out there in the news about things like the Hugging Face attack and some of the cases where agents have gone rogue. An agent is essentially– I'm trying to explain this in the most basic terms. An agent is essentially software that uses AI that can make decisions and do things on its own, right? It can act like a human being to some extent. And I would remind folks that these things still have a problem with hallucination, although it's gotten better. Hallucination is the idea that it will make something up, right? So do you want a process that can act on its own? So for example, you could create an agent and say, okay, here's my credit card number. search for the best price on this thing. And if it drops below a certain price, buy it. Okay. I can tell you, I'm not going to do something like that because unless the way these things work, they're probabilistic, not deterministic, right? You can go in right now. Anyone can try this, open up any one of these tools, ask a question. You will not get the same answer every time.
00:56:18
Speaker 1: So, and you might not get the same answer asking the same format, the same question multiple times.
00:56:24
Speaker 3: But, That's exactly right. It's so weird. And it might literally just make something up. So depending on your tolerance for risk and what you're asking this to do, especially if there's no human oversight of it, it can do things that you would rather it not do. Partially like some of these stories where these things have gone rogue and this agent works with that agent. I mean, there's some wild stuff out there. It is somewhat concerning to me. I don't think we're going to suddenly have Terminators fall out of the sky. But some of the things they're saying, I think there is a legitimate concern. How much? Is it 50%? Is it 80%? I don't know, because there's plenty of other people that know a lot about this who are saying this is more of a hype cycle. They're saying these things because it helps them build a moat around their businesses. So I don't know what to think, Brian.
00:57:17
Speaker 1: I think the hurry up, we've got to do something to save us from ourself is a mode of going back to the IPO. If you have this emergency crisis, oh, my God, it's an existential threat to humanity. Hurry up and free us from liability. Dave, if that actually happened, question almost rhetorical, if not absolutely rhetorical, would the price of the IPO share be more More if they had all that protection from antitrust liability and tort liability, or would the shares be worth less? I think it'd be a lot more. 53636, don't go away. We're going to talk about how digital devices are putting our right to privacy at risk. I guess we voluntarily enter into that, don't we? First, though, I want to mention 4NIC. 641-55KRC, VTALK station, Friday. Tech Friday, Dave Hatter, intrustit.com. That's who you need to get in touch with for your business computer needs. Hey, our right to privacy is at risk, Dave. You never talk about stuff like this.
00:58:16
Speaker 3: Never, Brian, never. In all the years we've been doing this, I never talk about it.
00:58:20
Speaker 6: Never.
00:58:20
Speaker 1: You've never mentioned the Internet of Things devices. You need to explain that someday because it's something that never comes across your field of vision.
00:58:27
Speaker 3: No, never. So Internet of Things, a.k.a. smart devices, things like your ring doorbell, your Nest thermostat, your refrigerator, your TVs.
00:58:36
Speaker 1: Your vacuum?
00:58:37
Speaker 3: Yes, your vacuum. I don't know if you've seen the story about the LG TVs. If not, we should talk about that one specifically next week because it really puts a super fine point on.
00:58:47
Speaker 1: … Is that like part of the LGBTQ agenda at the end of the day?
00:58:51
Speaker 5: No.
00:58:51
Speaker 3: No, in this case, it's LG TVs that are doing some insane data collection behind the scenes. And here's the thing, Brian. I know people will tell me all the time, hey, look, I don't have anything to hide. I don't care whether it's flock cameras or fill in the blank, right? Flock camera. That would be another example of an Internet of Things. device. You know, in the simplest of terms, if it has software in it and it connects to the Internet, well, that's an Internet of Things device. And increasingly, that's everything now, right? It's hard to even find a dumb device because everything has software in it. Much of that comes from China. It's often found to have security problems on top of the privacy problems, in some cases backdoors built into it. In the most layman of terms, a backdoor is either an intentional or maybe unintentional flaw in the software that would allow someone to take remote control of something.
00:59:43
Speaker 1: Well, quickly, can I just interject a very quick question? I don't need to labor on it, but I just want to know. Isn't that one area where artificial intelligence can be a wonderful benefit to humanity by finding backdoor access and by being able to just analyze the program and find out where the weaknesses are?
01:00:02
Speaker 3: That is, yes. But that cuts both ways. I don't know if you caught the headline.
01:00:06
Speaker 1: I did.
01:00:07
Speaker 3: Microsoft has this Patch Tuesday thing. Once a month on a Tuesday, they put out updates for their software to fix vulnerabilities, holes, backdoors, whatever, right? And in this last patch Tuesday, they patched almost a thousand problems. And that's because they're using AI to analyze all of this code and try to find these problems. So, yeah, that is one upside. But the flip side of that, Brian, is, of course, bad guys, including low skilled bad guys who would not know anything about this stuff, can use these same tools to find these flaws. And, you know, there's been lots of recent news, again, without going too far down this rabbit hole. And it's important for small businesses to understand who have this same mentality of, well, I'm too small. I don't have anything we're stealing. You know, I'm not P & G. I'm not CentOS. I'm not Kroger. Well, your money is worth stealing. And thanks to these AI tools, whether it's deep fakes or it's hackers using these tools to attack your environment to find these flaws, the frequency of attacks is increasing. The sophistication of attacks is increasing, not because the people behind them are more sophisticated, but because they're using these tools. But back to our IoT devices. You know, I hate this stuff. I have essentially none of this stuff in my house. And when people tell me why I have nothing to hide, I encourage everyone to go out and look into this LG TV thing. You know, if a device is connected to the Internet and especially if it has a microphone and camera in it, it can be used to surveil you. If you have an LG TV or any of these TVs, for example. in, let's say, a boardroom where you're having sensitive conversations about trade secrets or lawsuits or whatever, it's entirely possible that these devices are listening to you, collecting data, and it's being shipped off to some third party somewhere. And the more of these things you have, and this particular article we started out with, there's a book out there from a law professor named Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, who wrote wrote a book called Your Data Will Be Used Against You. And it talks about this and why you should care about these things. And there are folks out there like Mikko Haponin. I've brought him up on the show before. I'm a big fan. He wrote a book called If It's Smart, It's Vulnerable. If it has software in it, it is vulnerable. I don't care what it is. It's not possible to write software that is completely invulnerable. And we're seeing that more and more and all the attacks on critical infrastructure and so forth. So my point, Brian, is the less of these things you have, I get they're cool, I get the convenience, but they are increasingly putting you, your family, your business at risk. You should be divesting yourself of this stuff.
01:02:48
Speaker 1: Indeed, and for those who think they don't have anything to hide, just wait until we elect a bunch of communists, and then they start engaging in the purge, where they'll look for people who have political dissent, who are not ideologically wed to the party in power, and then you're sent off to the gulag. That has happened in history, has it not, Dave Hatter?
01:03:04
Speaker 3: I believe it has.
01:03:05
Speaker 1: It's just one moment away from them coming after you because of something that you said or did when it was normal and rational and logical to maybe say what you said or did. Futures, well, can learn a lot by studying the mistakes of the past. 646 right now. We will talk about a really freaky thing, your Wi-Fi.
01:03:21
Speaker 2: Talk station.
01:03:22
Speaker 1: 651-55-KRC-D. Talk station. Interest IT. where you find Dave Adder and his crew to help you with business needs. And, of course, LinkedIn.com is where you find Dave and the resources he relies upon throughout the week. And, of course, here on the 55KRC Morning Show on a Friday. This one is weird. Everybody's freaked out about flaw cameras. I know you're not a fan, Dave, in the interest of privacy protection and maybe people that are using it for nefarious purposes like tracking, stalking girlfriends or whatever. But that's nothing compared to what I'm reading here. Wi-Fi, I think, is pretty much everywhere, Dave.
01:03:56
Speaker 3: Wi-Fi pretty much is everywhere now, Brian. And maybe you recall that we have talked about this particular thing before, but as the technology progresses, of course, like so many of these things, it gets better in helpful ways and it gets better in potentially unhelpful ways like this. So this is a story from the New York Post. Big routers watching you. Wi-Fi could secretly track you even if you leave your phone at home. So I think anyone who's ever watched a crime show realizes that your phone is a source of tracking, right? And that's not necessarily nefarious. It's just the way the cellular network has to work, right? It has to know where your phone is in order to be able to connect to it, to send you a phone call or receive a text message, email, whatever, right? And I'm constantly surprised. If you watch a show like Dateline, it seems like people... generally criminals anyway, don't seem to get that like, hey, if I'm going to go out and get murdery, it's a good idea not to take my phone with me because it's going to tell the police where I was, that I was in the vicinity of the crime. But what this story is pointing out is that, you know, even if you don't have some sort of device like that on you, and to your point, Brian, Wi-Fi is pretty much, certainly at least in urban areas, everywhere now. Yeah. There's the capability through the radio signals that the Wi-Fi is sending out to make it possible to connect to the Internet over Wi-Fi to essentially in sort of like a radar-ish type of way, if you will. I think most people at least generally understand the idea of radar. You send out a radio signal, it bounces off something. You could tell how far away it is, how fast it's going, what it is generally, especially as the technology has improved over time. And that's essentially what researchers are pointing out here. So, I mean, I'll just read a couple of lines from the article. The finding raises the unsettling possibility that millions of Wi-Fi routers surrounding us could become a vast, invisible surveillance network, potentially allowing corporations, governments, and others to identify people without their knowledge. And then it goes on to say, connected devices routinely send back to routers to optimize wireless communications. These are signals known as beamforming feedback information and are transmitted without encryption, researchers found. So basically, you know, this in the most basic terms, this is just bouncing off of you. And it goes on to say further in here, you know, that this can essentially create. So quoting from the article, this technology turns every router into a potential means of surveillance. Warren co-researcher Julian Tote, if you regularly pass by a cafe that operates a Wi-Fi network, you could be identified there without noticing it and be recognized later.
01:06:40
Speaker 1: So they study things like, I mean, AI, your gate. your height, your weight, it immediately computes this and calculates it. And only so many people have the exact gate that you have, so they can narrow it down just by process or by, just by analyzing that kind of thing.
01:06:52
Speaker 5: Right.
01:06:54
Speaker 6: Exactly.
01:06:54
Speaker 3: And there's, you know, this, this goes even further. They're saying that basically, you know, this will almost create a picture of you, you know, quite not the same, like a camera would per se. Um, but yeah, it's, uh, It's interesting how, as this stuff advances, you see all these different ways that it can be used that aren't immediately obvious and aren't necessarily beneficial to you as a regular person. So, yeah.
01:07:21
Speaker 1: And, you know, the.
01:07:23
Speaker 3: Genie's out of the bottle on a lot of this stuff.
01:07:25
Speaker 1: It is.
01:07:26
Speaker 3: So, you know, one of the things I think we need to look at as a society, and, you know, the Supreme Court did recently weigh in on geofencing that potentially affects flocks. you know, the Fourth Amendment has been kind of upended by all this. And I think, you know, we need to, as a society, take a look at how is this technology potentially being used in ways that violate your constitutional rights now? You know, I'm not on the Supreme Court. I'm not making these decisions. You know, the old standards for so much of this stuff don't really apply anymore because the technology has changed so quickly and advanced in ways that Again, probably the average person is not even aware of that it's creating some real, at least in my mind, concerns.
01:08:12
Speaker 1: Legitimate ones. Well, and as you point out, I remember we talked about this several years ago about using Wi-Fi within someone's residence to where people are and just identify location. But that was just like location. There's movement over there. The Wi-Fi can recognize that. Now it can determine exactly who the identity of that particular person is, not just in that controlled environment, but literally everywhere. And about five minutes in tech time from now, it's going to be as if a photograph was taken without any devices on you, wherever you happen to be. I think it's going to get that smart, Dave. It just seems obvious right now.
01:08:47
Speaker 3: It's certainly headed in that direction.
01:08:49
Speaker 1: Yeah.
01:08:51
Speaker 3: Again, it creates interesting challenges that 30, 40 years ago, you wouldn't have even been able to predict. Unless, of course, you were working in that technology yourself and knew about the potential future advances.
01:09:05
Speaker 1: May you live in interesting times, Dave.
01:09:08
Speaker 3: Well, we do, Brian.
01:09:09
Speaker 1: Yes, we do.
01:09:10
Speaker 3: Very interesting.
01:09:10
Speaker 1: And that's not a good thing, necessarily. IntrustIT.com, LinkedIn.com to find Dave in the articles and find him here every Friday beginning at 630. Thank you, Dave, for being here for all of us and keep up the great work. Congratulations. You are the Taxpayer Defender of the Month. Warren Davidson, your reaction to this award? We're going to be talking to Brandon Arnold, the Vice President of the National Taxpayer Union, who bestowed this award on you. He'll have him on the program coming up at 8.05. So what did you do to deserve that?
01:09:38
Speaker 2: Well, I was just surprised somebody noticed, you know, you go through there and you're like, hey, people pay attention to these wonky things. And, you know, we're out there spending money like crazy and trying harder to spend even more. So back in July, they had a plan to spend ninety five billion dollars. And there's a rule in the House that says you're supposed to pay for the spending, either find revenue or cut spending elsewhere. And, of course, they waive the rules almost every time that would be an issue. So they just spend it. There's no way to pay for it. And so I offered amendments to pay for it.
01:10:21
Speaker 1: Well, you said there's a rule that you got to find the source of the money before you can spend it. How do we end up $ 40 trillion in the hole, Congressman Davidson?
01:10:30
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, they obviously waived the rules quite a lot, right? So this is the thing. You pass these rules. It's like, oh, no, there's a rule for that. We're not supposed to do that. And they waive the rules all the time. And in fact, this was the infuriating thing. The week before, we've got this Major Richard Starr Act, which is supposed to do a better job of taking care of veterans. There's an anomaly there where medically retired veterans aren't really cared for the same way. as fully retired veterans are. So they get shorted. And you're medically retired because you get injured and can't continue to serve what they believe. So anyway, the quirk there, to get it fixed, and to do that common sense fix, they're like, no, you have to have a pay-for. Well, the bill failed because we couldn't agree on the pay-for. So we still haven't fixed that. But then the following week, it's like, no, we need $ 95 billion for some Other purposes, we fund the war in Iran, subsidize some farm issues and pay for some disasters. And I'm like, well, I want to offer amendments to pay for it. And so I found $ 95 billion in spending, which is the most basic layup. But then I found three other amendments that could go all the way up. One went all the way up to $ 4 trillion of savings payments. So there's plenty of ways to cut fraud, waste, and abuse or things that aren't even constitutional that the federal government's doing. And it's not that they're not important if the states want to do them fine, but there's no constitutional role for the federal government in a lot of things.
01:12:08
Speaker 1: Fair enough. And congratulations again on Taxpayer Defender of the Month. Moving over to the freak out over artificial intelligence. And we get these corporate CEOs at AI companies coming out and saying, look, 10% chance we're all going to die within a decade and other nonsense like that. And Everyone freaks out and they collectively are demanding that you save them from yourself or from themselves. We need legislation passed. We need to coordinate efforts. It just seems to me after all the initial freak out happened that we got cooler heads and a moment later we're like, wait a second. This sounds to me like they're trying to avoid Sherman Antitrust Act because they need to work together in order to save us from these harms. It looks like they're trying to get some protections from product liability law because people know how dangerous AI can be when it's unleashed. And yet the Chinese Communist Party busily working away and has no problem with any of this because our liability laws and our antitrust laws do not reach into China. Is this all about the IPO and improving the value of the share price when they finally announce that they're doing an IPO? Congressman Davidson, where are you on this?
01:13:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think it's a coordinated op. I mean, in my view, there's already a little collaboration because they decided to launch this coordinated messaging program together. If you go back to May of last year, the House version of the Big Beautiful Bill had a 10-year blanket exemption for any liability for artificial intelligence companies. That was in the text, and that was one of the reasons I voted no on the House version. So we raised a stink over that. The public heard about it. They weren't real happy with it. We got the forced vote on removing that portion in the Senate bill. And it passed 99 to 1 because when people had to go on record saying, well, they know it's a terrible idea. And so we removed it. So that's a big deal. So then fast forward here this year, this is exactly what the AI companies are wanting, either blanket exemption from liability. But just yesterday, the CEO of Palantir said, hey, I think AI companies ought to be nationalized. And why? Because you get sovereign immunity. So they can still do all the things they want to do. So I think we're into kind of crazy land here with a lot of things on AI. And unfortunately, Congress really isn't taking action on this. And privacy really is the base layer for this because they're harvesting just massive amounts of data in every facet of your life, car, phone, Internet, bank, you name it. And then now AI will say, well, we don't have a database. Well, they don't. They have large language models that go out and harvest it from everywhere it's accessible. And the kind of things that you can pull up with a strong artificial intelligence tool, I've seen demos of it. I mean, you can even find, the most shocking thing was you could find maybe the last three or four phones that someone has had.
01:15:14
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
01:15:15
Speaker 2: The advertising for that phone. and literally essentially their browser history. What is it that you like to do with your phone? And it's all available out there. And so you know once you get access to those kinds of things, plus the ability to break encryption and do all kinds of other things that the leading edge of technology is capable of, I mean, there's going to be some liability for some things.
01:15:45
Speaker 1: Well, and the other component is, before we get into the break here, people are expecting Vivek Ramaswamy next. I recorded my interview with Vivek Ramaswamy after the show yesterday, so we're going to kick that off in order to keep you on. But I just have to comment, the other thing that AI is doing, it is monetizing. Because artificial intelligence, I mean, these corporations aren't doing this out of altruism. They're doing it for purpose of profitability, right? So when they absorb literally every single word of content out in the world, and they're doing that, they're monetizing copywritten and protected work that other people's work and effort and labor have created without compensating that person. That seems to be a problem. I mean, when we play songs on the radio, we've got to compensate the artist. It seems to be the same argument, doesn't it, Congressman Davidson?
01:16:27
Speaker 2: Oh, very much so. And they're malicious about it. I mean, they got caught buying rare books and destroying them. So they literally have machines that slice the binding off the back of the book, and then they're just scanning the pages of text in. And they want to buy up the book so the physical copy isn't even available. And this is truly Orwellian because then you're like, well, that's not what this book says.
01:16:51
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, it is.
01:16:52
Speaker 2: It's right here. They're like, no, no, I have a paper copy. Oh, those are illegal.
01:16:57
Speaker 1: We're getting rid of this. It's Fahrenheit 451. For whatever reason, there's a scene in Rollerball the medium popped in mind as well. Exact same kind of thing. We'll continue with Congressman Warren Davidson. We'll talk about the KRC, the talk station. It is 730, 55 KRC, the talk station. And a very, very happy Friday to you. Congressman Warren Davidson on the program. We'll get to Vivek Ramaswamy again, recorded yesterday, so I can't talk to him about his most recent endorsement. And good morning, Christopher Smith, and he let me know that Vivek Ramaswamy just scored the Carpenters Union endorsement, which is an interesting situation, Congressman Davidson, because they normally endorse Democrats. So that's, uh, you got any comments about Vivek being neck and neck with Amy Acton? I don't mean to put you on the spot. If you don't want to talk about that, it's okay. But I am really perplexed. This is Ohio. We are not even a purple state. We're blue. How could it even be possible? Congressman Davidson, do you mind?
01:17:56
Speaker 2: No, I'm a big Vivek Ramaswamy fan. I mean, he's a good guy. I've known him about 10 years. Brilliant, uh, phenomenally successful. I mean, grew up right there, uh, you know, Princeton high school, uh, area. And of course went to St. X and, uh, you know, people are, I mean, just odd whenever you see him speak. I mean, I look at him in a working crowds and he came up to the dark County fair, had hundreds of people coming out to see him. I think there's kind of an AstroTurf campaign out there saying people don't support, uh, Vivek. And I'm like, well, I mean, bikers for Trump support, Trump support Vivek. I mean, you get, uh, You get intellectual support in Trump or support in Vivek. So you look at it, and they have spun up some level of concern about Vivek. And Amy Acton is nothing. I mean, that's why she's avoiding a lot of things in public. She can't string two sentences together. And it's not just the ability to speak about things. It's just looking at, well, what have you done? So the resume isn't close. Who would you want to hire to run your state? And it's mind blowing to me that Amy Acton could could even be within, you know, 10 margins of error. But apparently she is on a lot of these polls.
01:19:18
Speaker 1: No question about it. And, you know, even I just I'd mean to be critical of her as a person because nobody's great at public speaking. But you're going to be governor of a state of Ohio. You better have some measure of skill in that regard. Her her own commercials with her speaking skills. Wait a second. This is the best they can provide by way of her articulating a word or two about her campaign? I mean, that would have been take one, but I can only imagine how many takes they did before they got the final one out on the air. It suggests something really bad is going on over there. Anyhow, vote Ramos for me. He'll be on next. Let's go back to the Clarity Act, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, which failed in the Senate the other day. What's your take on this?
01:19:58
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not surprised that it failed. The Democrats have never negotiated in good faith on this. We had a challenge in the House. And I think we ultimately reached a point where we just said, look, we're going to call the question.
01:20:09
Speaker 1: We're going to put it on the floor.
01:20:11
Speaker 2: And, you know, it was an issue that unites Republicans and divides Democrats. In the House, Democrats did not stick together and just refused to break ranks. The Senate has kind of become that way. There's only, you know, 47 of them over there. So they just stick together. And in the House, we had about 70 Democrats just say, well, I think this is a common sense bill. And we had no problem passing it in the House and in a bipartisan way. But the Senate's basically just dug in over there and on all kinds of issues. And if they think it might mean that Donald Trump should get credit for some sort of win, they're not giving they're not giving ground. If they think that's it is a good. That's 100%. I mean, it's a lot of it's anti-Trump. But I will say Elizabeth Warren is a ringleader over there. She used to control Sherrod Brown. She really ran the Senate Banking Committee that Sherrod Brown was officially in charge of. And she had this anti-crypto army. So everything on financial services and banking, Elizabeth Warren really is the ringleader for Democrats and has been for years. And Sher Brown was over there doing Elizabeth Warren's bidding the whole time, which is why two years ago, he lost. I mean, Bernie Marino had lots of support from a lot of industries. The crypto fintech area was one of the big ones that supported him because Sher Brown had been working to kill this industry. And the main reason they're trying to kill it, frankly, is the biggest banks and government surveillance. Freedom is something that Democrats have decided is a bad thing. They don't want you to control your own payments. They want everything to stay account-based. One of the provisions that they insisted in getting in the bill, still didn't get them to yes, was Section 305. It gives the government the ability to freeze your bank account, as if you're a Canadian trucker. And it gives the liability shield for the financial institution that's just following orders from the government. This isn't orders as in, well, we had an order from a judge. There was some due process.
01:22:36
Speaker 1: You could appeal it.
01:22:37
Speaker 2: It's a civil asset forfeiture. We're going to take your stuff and then get around to due process later. And so there's provisions like that in this bill, and it still didn't get Democrats' T.S.
01:22:49
Speaker 3: Wow.
01:22:50
Speaker 1: I guess we can chalk that off as a good thing. Congressman Warren Davidson, I know it's in your district. I believe it is. 22-3 on Route 42 between Mason 11 and the NRA. Gun bus is going to be there on Thursday between 10 and 2. And by good word, and I didn't ask him yesterday when I interviewed Ramos, apparently he is likely to be there. And Eric Conroy also, I was told, is going to be there. If you've got any time between 10 and 2, I plan on showing up at 22-3. That's my favorite gun store, Congressman Davidson. So if you've got some time, I just wanted to let you know that that was coming to the area. Apparently a very popular thing. Congressman Davidson, I want to thank you so much for joining the program and spending time with my listeners and me. And congratulations again on being the Taxpayer Defender of the Month. Well-deserved, and you can keep up the great work along those lines.
01:23:30
Speaker 2: It's an honor to join you, Brian. My apologies for the tardy start here. Thanks for highlighting Vivek and Eric Conroy, two really strong candidates. And I hope folks will go out and support him. But thank you for doing so.
01:23:42
Speaker 1: Happy to do it.
01:23:43
Speaker 2: God bless you and all your listeners.
01:23:44
Speaker 1: And to you, sir. Thanks again. 737 Vivek Ramaswamy. Coming on next. We'll talk to you. Hi, it's Brian Thomas. Pleased to welcome back to the 55 KRC Morning Show. Love when he's on. Vivek Ramaswamy. He's got my vote for sure. Mr. Ramaswamy, you can find online at Vivek4Ohio. V-I-V-E-K for Ohio. And I recommend you do that because you can get his entire platform. Vivek Ramaswamy, it's a pleasure having you back on the show. Can I ask you right out of the gate? Yeah, you've gotten many endorsements. Who got the Ohio State Medical Association endorsement, Mr. Ramaswamy?
01:24:15
Speaker 5: It just came out this week, and I'm proud to receive the endorsement of the Ohio State Medical Association. That's the leading group of Ohio's physicians, the doctors of this state, which.
01:24:27
Speaker 7: Is obviously an honor in any race. But in this particular race, it means a lot. Where I'm running against the state's former health director, Dr.
01:24:36
Speaker 5: Amy Acton. And to receive their endorsement in this race, I think, speaks volumes.
01:24:41
Speaker 1: And I think that.
01:24:42
Speaker 7: It's an indication that people who have really vetted both candidates have.
01:24:47
Speaker 5: Really, and they went through a rigorous process. The fact that they landed where they did, I.
01:24:50
Speaker 1: Think, means a lot. Well, it really does. And I just was going to jokingly say, you haven't gotten a medical degree since the last time we talked, have you?
01:24:58
Speaker 5: No, my wife has had one.
01:24:59
Speaker 7: And she's the real, she's the person who saves lives every day.
01:25:03
Speaker 5: And she's the real hero of the family.
01:25:05
Speaker 7: But No, I think it's the fact that, look, a lot of these groups from FOP, law enforcement, to the state physician's body, to a lot of even the labor groups that have endorsed us, understand that even above right versus left disputes, what we really need at the top is somebody who is competent and capable of leading the state, someone who is able to make tough executive decisions and able to understand and process the issues. And I do think that for a lot of these groups, and I think for a lot of voters, The fact that Amy Acton refuses to show up for a debate, I think, is a very telling sign that she is just unable to do this job.
01:25:46
Speaker 5: But let's put her to one side, Brian.
01:25:47
Speaker 7: I think one of the things that I want to do in this state is improve health care delivery, improve the quality of health outcomes, bring down health care costs, prosecute Medicaid fraud, bring some health care price transparency. And those were some tangible policies that we talked through with this group as well, making it easier and simpler to practice medicine and focus on patients instead of paperwork.
01:26:09
Speaker 1: Those are important factors as well.
01:26:11
Speaker 7: That I think are going to allow us to make this a great state to not only practice medicine, but a great state to get affordable health care. And that, too, is a big part of the reason why they endorsed us.
01:26:20
Speaker 1: Well, I know we're involved in a great discussion on class warfare brought to you by the DSA and everybody else who can use greed and envy as a vehicle against their opposition. But I keep hearing people have problems with your being so wildly successful and so wealthy. Honestly, Mr. Rimes, I mean, I take great comfort in that because you at least aren't getting into elected office for the purpose of padding your own financial book, for not making money. You don't need it. And that leads me to the question, why, sir, because you don't need this job, are you willing to take on the incredible challenges of being the governor of the state of Ohio? What's the point of all this, sir?
01:26:55
Speaker 7: Well, look, I think that there's two parts to that. I mean, the first is that I can't be bought. And I think that's really important in reforming the way the state is run for the better and taking Ohio to the next level. The only interest group I report to is the voters.
01:27:09
Speaker 5: I'm self-funding my campaign. I'm matching every dollar that we raise.
01:27:12
Speaker 7: And that has me putting many tens of millions of my own money into the campaign. But one of the things that that's good for is that it means that no special interest group can really influence or buy me off. And I think that that's different from the historical class of politicians who usually run not just in Ohio, but in state government generally. But one of the things I'll say more generally, Brian, is on a personal level, I feel a moral duty to do this because I have been successful and I owe it to this country and to our state to really pay forward what opportunities I've been given. My parents came from Southwest India to Southwest Ohio with nothing to their name. I went to public schools, as you know, and greater Cincinnati through eighth grade, I eventually ended up becoming an entrepreneur, ended up founding successful companies, the largest of which, Roivent, has developed six FDA-approved medicines, which are.
01:28:03
Speaker 5: Life-saving therapies for patients today. And now we're raising our kids in Columbus in circumstances that neither of my parents or my wife's parents would have ever imagined possible. That is the American dream.
01:28:16
Speaker 7: And I think that with that American dream also comes a responsibility. To pass that American dream on to our kids and their generation, that is why I'm in this. I mean, there's no other reason that you should run for governor, not for fame, not for fortune.
01:28:31
Speaker 5: We've been blessed beyond our wildest imagination.
01:28:34
Speaker 7: The only reason that I want to do this job is I know we can have an impact. I know that we can create a state. where every kid in Ohio has a shot at success, the same level of success or more than I have achieved. And I wasn't born into wealth, unlike my opponent, whose running mate.
01:28:51
Speaker 5: Really went to some of the most expensive schools.
01:28:53
Speaker 7: In Ohio that my family couldn't have dreamed of sending me to at that same point in time, Trust Fund Inheritances.
01:28:59
Speaker 5: No, that wasn't how I earned my wealth. I earned my wealth through hard work, entrepreneurship, ingenuity, through the opportunities that this country uniquely gives to people like me and to hopefully to like all of the kids growing up in this state.
01:29:14
Speaker 7: And so I wasn't born a millionaire or a billionaire or anything air. I was born an heir to nothing. But I understand what economic mobility looks like. And I want every family in this state to enjoy that upward economic mobility.
01:29:28
Speaker 1: Yes.
01:29:29
Speaker 5: And my basic view is pretty simple on this, Brian. The more we celebrate success in Ohio, the more of it we're likely to have. The more we penalize success, the less of it we're likely to have.
01:29:41
Speaker 1: That's the fork in the road.
01:29:42
Speaker 5: That's the choice on the ballot in less than seven weeks from when we're having this conversation. And I believe people are going to choose economic success for themselves, for their families and for our state.
01:29:53
Speaker 7: And that's what we're going to win.
01:29:54
Speaker 1: Well, the foundation of that economic success, and I know educational achievement is one of the key components to your platform, sir. What can we do to improve the quality and maybe just improve education, generally speaking, to benefit our children? Because as I've come to conclude, and maybe it's too much of a broad-brush statement, I think the modern education system, at least K-12 public education, is failing our children. As demonstrated by class scores, we need to change that trajectory. What do you, knowing the value of education, what it did for your success, what do we do in Ohio? What more can we do?
01:30:27
Speaker 5: I think we have to just double down and focus on the fundamentals of both math, reading, writing at an early age. And then as kids get into high school, also incorporating skills, real world skills. If you think about many of these students, if you want to pursue a four-year college degree, that could be great, and we want great universities in Ohio. But many of them also can pursue alternative careers in the trades as welders or electricians or carpenters or even plumbers or mechanics. This is something that we can foster starting at a younger age too. But right now, our education system isn't doing a great job of preparing our kids for the workforce by the time they graduate from high school. By bringing some basic standards back, I do think we can fix that. Now, one of the things that does bother me, and it's a motivation for me to run and hopefully serve as the governor of the state.
01:31:18
Speaker 7: Is how much the very people who pay lip service to public education hurt public education itself. And my opponent is the prime example of that. She's the archetype of that. We're the number one thing that hurt public schools and public school education in Ohio. Number one thing we can point to in the 21st century was the COVID school shutdowns. Ohio was unfortunately the first state to shut down our public schools In Cincinnati, think about where I grew up. Cincinnati public schools were closed for nearly two years, whereas St. X High School, where I had a chance to go to high school, was closed for five days. Those kids in those public schools will never get those two years of their education back. And so I don't have a lot of patience for those like Amy Acton who will preach about inequality. but created the very inequality that they complain about.
01:32:09
Speaker 5: So I want actual solutions. I believe those kids in the inner city of Cincinnati deserve access to the same education that every kid in the state, including myself, enjoyed by going to places like Sanex High School. I want every kid to have those opportunities. I want our public schools to perform. I want our public schools to serve our kids. I want to support our teachers. Our teachers in those public schools are Starting salaries should be higher than what they are right now, and that includes some level of parental accountability as well. I think parents need to have real responsibilities and real accountability. So all of that is part of our vision for educational reform, and we owe it to our kids, Brian, in Ohio to ensure that they're able to compete in the workforce of the future and that they're educated and prepared to do it.
01:32:56
Speaker 1: He will answer questions. He will appear in public. You can ask Vivek Ramaswamy a question when you see him out at some event, and he's not afraid to talk about the issues. That's why he's right for Ohio. That's why you need to check out VivekForOhio.com. Check out his entire plan. And, of course, vote for him in November.
01:33:13
Speaker 3: Mr.
01:33:13
Speaker 1: Ramaswamy, Vivek, it's my friend. I'm glad to have you on the morning show, and I appreciate your willingness to talk about policies and what your vision is for the state of Ohio. And I hope my listeners embrace it and get everyone and their friends to head on over to the polls and vote for you in November.
01:33:27
Speaker 5: One more thing, Brian, just before we wrap.
01:33:29
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
01:33:29
Speaker 7: I still think it'd be great if we have a debate in this race. And CNN and NBC, local, and WWT and Cincinnati included, offered to host a debate. I accepted both CNN and WWT. I respectfully challenge Amy Acton to show up. And for either candidate, if you can't show up to debate, that means you're not fit to lead this state. You've got to have what it takes to lead, and I think that will be such a positive thing in the weeks that we have ahead. And if someone doesn't show up, my opponent has refused, I think that should affect the way people think about who they're voting for.
01:34:02
Speaker 1: You're going to have a hell of a lot bigger challenges as the governor of the state than a simple debate with your opponent. I've been calling her a coward.
01:34:11
Speaker 5: Yeah, you can get out of the game.
01:34:13
Speaker 7: That's what I would say.
01:34:14
Speaker 1: Hey, man, thanks for your time today, sir. I'm anxious to vote for you, and again, I encourage my listeners to do so. If you have any doubt in your mind, I don't know where it's coming from. Vive4Ohio. com is a place where you might get those questions answered. Thank you, sir, and I appreciate you running for office. I really, truly do. 8.05, the 55KRCD talk station. Happy Friday. Bottom of the hour with Jack Windsor. A bunch of stuff to talk about with Jack. In the meantime... We had him on early in the program, Congressman Warren Davidson, the recipient of the Taxpayer Defender of the Month from the National Taxpayers Union. And congratulations to Congressman Davidson on that and joining the program now to talk about that and what they do, the National Taxpayers Union, is the Executive Vice President of NTU. You can find the National Taxpayers Union online at NTU.org. Brandon Arnold is the Executive Vice President. He is, well, you probably know him. He's testified before Congress. He's written for all the major publications. He's been on all the major news programs on television. And fun fact, one of his prior positions, and he's got an impressive resume, Director of Government Affairs at the Cato Institute, who recently crunched numbers on the cost of the Democratic Socialist of America platform, which only comes in between $ 30 and $ 70 trillion over 10 years. Brandon Arnold, welcome to The Morning Show. It's a pleasure to have you on today.
01:35:28
Speaker 6: Thank you. It's my pleasure to be here.
01:35:29
Speaker 1: And I appreciate what you're doing there, shedding some light on factual reality over the realities of what our government does. And let us talk about Congressman Davidson. What led you to select him, and what factors did you look at in selecting any given taxpayer defender of the month?
01:35:46
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, Congressman Davidson has just a spectacular record going back to his early days in Congress, being a champion of limited government, cutting spending, reducing taxes, free markets, all the stuff that we love and we work for at National Taxpayers Union. But what really stood out was a courageous vote that he took this July when the budget resolution was moving and basically all Republicans were supporting a plan to boost spending by about $ 100 billion without a single penny of offsets. And not only was he just in a small handful of Republicans that opposed this resolution, he was actually crafting amendments to try to improve the bill from a fiscal perspective, ways to offset some of that higher spending so that future generations of taxpayers are not burdened by the debt that we are putting on their backs and shoulders right now. So he really took a leadership role, not surprising for folks who knew Warren Davidson, but still something that deserved an award and a great deal of recognition for.
01:36:49
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I'm glad you mentioned the words future generation because, you know, when you stare at $ 40 trillion in debt, it's just, it's mind-blowing and your eyes glaze over and we even, we lose track. When someone says, we found a fraudster that bilked the government for $ 10 million, we're like, what's the big deal? It's only $ 10 million in a country that literally spends extra billions per day in deficit spending, but Our future generations are going to have to eat all that. They're going to have to tighten their belts because we lived way, way larger while the federal government printed money than we should have. And that dovetails nicely in a conclusion you reach at the National Taxpayers Union about the $ 5, 000 checks from Trump. I mean, that's going to fuel inflation and debt. How can you come to any other conclusion? And it's difficult to be critical of Donald Trump because people freak out and pull their hair out, but I share your position, the National Taxpayers Union position, on this $ 5, 000 dividend payment. As you crunch the numbers, $ 1. 85 trillion when you add in the cost of debt service, additional debt.
01:37:49
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely. You know, the first thing we have to do, the old Dave Ramsey strategy here for getting out of debt is cut up those credit cards and stop spending more. Unfortunately, I don't think we're moving in that direction. We're talking about boosting spending through this reconciliation package. Again, thanks to Warren Davidson for voting against that. You know, we're talking about these stimulus checks, these $ 5, 000 checks. We just don't have the money for it. You know, maybe in a different scenario where we had trillions of dollars of surplus, we could be having that kind of discussion about giving money back to the people. But right now, we need to batten down the hatches. We need to make spending reductions. We need to bring our budget closer to balance because we see what's taking place.
01:38:30
Speaker 2: Place.
01:38:30
Speaker 6: It's driving up borrowing costs if you want to buy a house or finance an automobile. It's creating havoc in the bond markets that create some serious economic disruptions. It's really starting to take an enormous impact on everyday Americans. This isn't a theoretical problem. It's a real problem. and it'll get worse unless we do something about it.
01:38:50
Speaker 1: Well, if you just look at the value of the dollar that's been eroded over the years, I saw someone that posted a U.S. gas prices since the 1970s calculated based on the adjusted to approximately $ 20, $ 26. I mean, sure, we're paying $ 4. 50 a gallon today, but if you factor in the discount value of the dollar, thanks to the printing press, we were paying effectively about $ 5. 50 a gallon when Obama was president. So We've been through these times before, but if we hadn't watered down the dollar, we'd kind of have a better understanding of the reality of where we are and what the printing press has done to us.
01:39:22
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, hopefully with Kevin Warsh at the Fed, we'll have a little bit tighter monetary policy and we won't be pumping as much in the way of cash into the economy. That's one of the ways. That inflation has increased, not the only way. We need to spend less.
01:39:37
Speaker 5: We need to be.
01:39:37
Speaker 6: Better stewards of taxpayer dollars. There's a lot of things that need to take place. But until we, again, cut up those credit cards and start to be actually responsible with taxpayer dollars, this battle is going to be a losing one. Unfortunately, we're taking more steps backwards than we take steps forwards. We need more people like Warren Davidson, Jim Jordan, other great Ohioans that are in Washington to actually... get a handle on our federal deficits and start turning things around.
01:40:06
Speaker 1: Well, I think COVID was a real eye-opener for so many people. We feel like we were lied to. There was a bait and switch going on. Oh my God, never let a good crisis go to waste. And have we ever seen a crisis like COVID-19? And they used every form of alchemy to get us to all freak out and do stupid things. And they also used it as a vehicle to throw money at a whole bunch of cities. The city of Cincinnati was complaining because they're having a budget issue because, well, they ran out of COVID money. I'm thinking, what? What would you have done without COVID for the past several years without that money? But I saw that you gave Representative Greg Stubbe from Florida the Taxpayer Defender of the Month because he was behind and introduced the Government Bailout Prevention Act, which apparently is establishing safeguards or will if it's passed against federal funds being used to bail out state and local governments in financial distress. Isn't that exactly what the PPP loans and all the other money that was thrown at cities was all about? All these cities that were underwater already immediately found themselves awash in COVID dollars. I draw a straight line between the two. Any comment on that, sir?
01:41:08
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the problem, there are many problems, but one of the big problems from a fiscal perspective with COVID was it created this ratchet effect for spending. We increased spending to weather the storm. That's what we were told. Hey, we just got to get through this crisis. Let's print all this money. Let's push all this money out into the economy. But then when COVID ended, we didn't revert back to where we were in 2019. We just kind of built that into our baseline for spending and then constructed additional spending on top of that. And I'm speaking mostly of the federal government. But as you said, that was happening at the municipal level. It was happening at the county level. It was happening at the state level. All of these entities were just building that extra spending in. And then when it started to go away, they clamored and they got a lot of that money from the federal government in many instances. So, yeah, COVID created this enormous ratchet effect on spending pretty much at every level of government. And now we do have to worry about bailouts because the especially poorly run states and localities, think Illinois, think California. You know, a lot of these areas are in even worse fiscal shape than they were prior to the pandemic. And of course, they're going to come knocking if they haven't already to the federal government looking for funds. So thank you to Congressman Stubbe of Florida for pushing that very, very important bill. But unfortunately, I think we're going to see that problem materialize more. as we start, hopefully, to cut back and move back to where we were in 2019 in terms of spending. Incidentally, spending was too high back then, but we've ratcheted spending up. Now it's approaching a quarter of the economy, which is well above historic norms. So don't let anyone tell you that the taxes are the problem. Spending has increased as a share of our overall economy, and that is what is driving the primary driver of budget deficits and debt.
01:42:58
Speaker 1: Well, no party has a lock on spending too much. We can blame Republicans, not quite as equally as Democrats, but this overspending, and I always like to turn my head toward the Democrats whose response and plan for everything is a new government program with more spending or more spending in any given program that's already there. I keep looking at it going, look, we are on a highway to hell with the debt. Our credit card bill's racking up, as you pointed out. Every year we have to spend more and more on debt service, and we can't let the creditors of the world down because, well, we own an obligation or the whole world would collapse economically. But the spending is really going to have a profound impact on people, and I'm thinking about Social Security. All this great grand program, we're going to protect you in your old age, it is on. That trajectory is looming large. Within the next several years, my senior friends and the listening audience are going to have to take a 22% cut in their monthly nut. But then come the calls for some measure of reform, I guess maybe doing a means testing thing or no more cap on income in terms of Social Security tax levies. It's not going to solve the problem. All of these programs have really an existential threat, and that is government runaway spending. The people who are dependent upon them, the Democrat base, if you want to be so bold as to say that, they're facing a real collapse. Is it going to take a calamity like the Great Depression to get these people to wake the hell up and cut off the spending machine, Brandon Arnold?
01:44:19
Speaker 6: I don't know what it'll take at this point. I'm hopeful that people are seeing that check engine light flashing on the dashboard right now with bond markets being in a state of flux that they're in. $ 40 trillion of debt, as you mentioned earlier. We're about to hit the debt ceiling again early in 2027, and all likelihood we're going to need to lift that debt ceiling. Again, that may actually happen in the lame duck session of this current Congress. So all of these warning signs are going off right now. You talk about the 22% cut. Absolutely terrifying. And it's going to take place in about six years. That date could actually be accelerated if things don't go our way. If we extend the no tax on Social Security, the senior deduction that was passed as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill, a bill that we supported, but certainly has... more work to be done in the deficit space after passing that legislation. So if that date does move up, what is Congress going to do about it? We are literally on the Hill every day saying the time to act is now. The time to act was decades ago, but given that we didn't do that, the time to act is now. And unfortunately, we get a lot of cold blank stares from most members of Congress when we talk about touching the third rail that is Social Security or any of the entitlement programs really. But putting your head in the sand is probably the least responsible thing you can do at a time like now. So hopefully that tide will turn. They need to hear from more constituents saying, hey, what is your plan for Social Security? Because time is running out.
01:45:47
Speaker 1: Well, as a young man, when I became of political age during the first Reagan administration, I don't know how old you are, Brandon Arnold, but I'll be 61 in a week. I remember Ronald Reagan complaining about the national debt when it hadn't even reached a trillion yet, if I recall that correctly. Look where we are.
01:46:04
Speaker 6: Yeah, unfortunately, a lot of politicians have realized that you get a lot more ticker tape parades by spending taxpayer money than you do from cutting federal spending. And that has led to this really untenable debt situation that I think most Americans get, but most members of Congress don't, unfortunately.
01:46:26
Speaker 1: Brandon Arnold, he is vice president of the National Taxpayers Union, NTU.org. I recommend you check it out. Lots of fantastic information there and enlightening information like the bill that I found out Representative Stubbe was behind. Sounds like a fantastic idea. So I'll encourage my listeners to check you out and support your organization, and I'll applaud you for what you are doing. We have a real problem on our hands, and I thank the National Taxpayers Union for regularly reminding our elected officials they've got a job to do. Brandon Arnold, it's been great having you on the show.
01:46:55
Speaker 6: It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.
01:46:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, I look forward to doing it again sometime. Coming up at 818 right now, 55KRC, the talk station, a couple minutes before we get to Jack Windsor, Ohio Press Network. We'll come out of the gate with Jack talking about the latest Amy Acton video of her, of course, not taking questions. That after the challenge from Vivek Ramaswamy earlier to do a debate. Don't hold your breath. 818, 55KRC, the talk station.
01:47:18
Speaker 5: 55KRC.
01:47:18
Speaker 1: Don't miss it. It is 822-55-KRCD Talk Station. It's Friday, and a happy one to you. Jack Windsor coming up next. Yeah, we'll talk about Amy Acton. We'll talk about the Brown versus Houston race. And who is Ishmael Muhammad, and why does he have residency status problems? Jack will enlighten us on that. I was talking, and we were talking there with Brandon Arnold, and I mentioned the gas prices. I saw this thing, and the moment of shock for me when gasoline went through the roof was the early 80s, the first time it went over $ 1. And at the time, I was driving a Caprice Classic Convertible, a 1973 Caprice Classic Convertible. And no, it did not have the massive V8 that it possibly came with, the 454. It had a 350 with a two-barrel. I got like eight miles of the gallon in that thing. And that's on a good day. Today's dollar value, it was about what we're paying today in 1981. today in 1981, $ 4. 44 or $ 4. 50 roughly. And so I feel the pain. I remember the shock of that, you know, because when you're 16 years old and you don't have a whole lot of money, it's impossible to fill a really big gas tank like that and more effectively what was then $ 4.
01:48:35
Speaker 5: 50 a pop.
01:48:37
Speaker 1: So it's been a lot worse. We can complain about it, and we can, and it's worthy complaining about it because it shouldn't be this high, but you were paying more under Biden. Middle of the term, 2022, it was $ 4.
01:48:49
Speaker 3: 65.
01:48:51
Speaker 1: Today, $ 4. 32, at least when the chart was printed. Under Obama, that was the most anybody ever paid, and he told you it was going to be that way. Something I keep going back to. Price of gasoline necessary will increase. And over the first several years of his administration, it went from what was effectively around, oh, let's say about $ 3. 75 all the way up to $ 5.
01:49:20
Speaker 2: 41.
01:49:20
Speaker 1: That was 2011. That's how much you were paying in 2011 dollars. So two terms for Obama. And isn't it wild? Someone also observed about this. If you look at the chart, The price of gasoline dropped pretty dramatically during the end of Obama's term. It went from $ 5. 41 in 2011, in today's dollars, and magically got down to $ 3. 14 ahead of the election. Huh, Trump won. Elections have consequences. Please don't let the price of gasoline impact your vote. There's no correlation between the gasoline price And the gubernatorial election in Ohio. Zero.
01:50:07
Speaker 5: 825.
01:50:08
Speaker 1: 55 KRC Talk Station. Looking forward to Jack Windsor joining the program. Coming up next, we'll start off with Amy Acton. Where in the hell is she?
01:50:16
Speaker 2: KRC The Talk Station.
01:50:17
Speaker 1: 830 on a Friday. It is that time of week I look forward to. I look forward to a lot of times during the week. Special guests on the program, but regular guests included. And thank God for them. And it's time. For TheOhioPressNetwork.com, Jack Windsor. Jack, good to see you this morning. I get the pleasure of seeing him on video. And, of course, my listeners get the opportunity to hear him talk about the issues that he brings up all the time on TheOhioPressNetwork.com. Jack, always good to have you on the program.
01:50:44
Speaker 4: Brian, always an honor to be here with you and Joe and the listeners. And your listeners are lucky. They only get to hear me. You have to see me on the face for radio.
01:50:52
Speaker 1: I have one, too. Although I have a new headshot on my blog page because the old one was like 10 years old. And no, I don't look like that anymore. So I had to update that. The prior one, I looked like I was 10 years old. So a little slow keeping things up to date. But that's about all anybody needs to see of me. Jack Windsor, somebody needs to see more of Amy Acton except on her television spots. I know she's been hiding in the basement. And I guess... I brought this up earlier because Vivek Ramaswamy is on the program, and he did say out loud, I want to debate her. Listen, I'll debate her anywhere. CNN, NBC, MSNBC. Basically, he threw out a bunch of left-wing. He doesn't care. He wants an opportunity to engage in a back-and-forth, and who wouldn't want that opportunity? But Amy Acton's television commercials, her own produced television commercials, Jack, you see the one they run on TV? I'm just wondering, when we get that, and that is the best they could hopefully come up with, that's as polished as we're going to get, she is not exactly confidence-inspiring, I have to observe.
01:51:53
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I don't know. So I say this now because someone said this to me earlier in the week. They said, Jack, you're not normal. And what they were trying to say is I'm a little more of a politico, I guess, and you and I probably fall into that same striping.
01:52:08
Speaker 1: As too many of the listeners. Yeah, we dwell on it. Yeah.
01:52:10
Speaker 4: And so, you know, I don't know, usually after Labor Day, people kind of start tuning in, but we're about, you know, 50 plus days away from the election. And I think people are starting to pay more attention today than they were say 60 days ago. And I think that's bad for Amy Acton, frankly, is, is how I'm going to boil it down. I emceed the Ohio Christian Alliance event last night. Vivek Ramaswamy was there. I was able to introduce him and he said, you know, I'll take a couple of questions, but we were tight on time. We only, only, uh, got to ask, or excuse me, answer to. And one of the questions was from somebody that was not hostile, but was basically, hey, you know, I voted for Trump. I'm really dissatisfied, really kind of pissed off. Are you going to sell this out like Trump, essentially? And Vivek Ramaswamy thanked him, you know, took the question, and he answered it. And I remember standing there thinking, can you imagine if Amy Acton was asked a question and Joe Biden or the Democrats or Amy, are you going to sell us out? I would almost fully expect her armed guard to come over and apprehend the person and say, no more questions. But one thing, regardless of where you stand with his political ideology and his policy positions, Vivek Ramaswamy is not afraid to take questions. And he's not afraid to take questions from people who are not just there to appease him or to give him praise. And I think there's something to say about that. I think voters are starting to see that.
01:53:36
Speaker 1: Well, I would hope so. And who cannot see her outright refusal to debate him? What possible reason would a candidate have for not doing so? Has she articulated anything that she could possibly hang her hat on along those lines, Jack?
01:53:51
Speaker 4: Well, you know, it's a lot of political posturing. And frankly, I don't know if it's Amy Acton doing it. You've heard me say, I think you and I might agree on this, David Pepper's running that show. If she wins, he's going to be running the show.
01:54:02
Speaker 1: Puppet master.
01:54:02
Speaker 4: And she's the out front dog and pony show performer, right?
01:54:06
Speaker 3: So.
01:54:07
Speaker 4: Really, Vivek said it last night. She's not afraid of him. I think she's afraid of voters. I think she's afraid of handling the hard questions. And I've got to give you my lived experience again. Go back six years to her being right in the middle of the state's COVID response. And on at least two occasions, I asked some really hard questions. And by the way, I wasn't mean. I just asked questions because the data and scoreboard that they used wasn't adding up to the policies and so on and so forth. And any time that I asked a hard question, she would miss the next day's press conference. And so I think that there is just kind of this baked-in sensitivity. I don't think she's cut for this. I don't think she's hardwired for it. And therefore, they're going with the Joe Biden strategy, keep her in the basement, talk a lot of smack about her opponent, and just hope that her likability is high enough that voters push the button or pull the lever for her.
01:54:58
Speaker 1: Well, she wasn't up to the task of the medical director. She walked off that job, Jack.
01:55:03
Speaker 4: Yeah, less than 100 days in. And by the way, I think she's quit every job she's had. If you remember, she didn't want to be front and center. DeWine, during a state hiring freeze, hired her for $ 230, 000 a year as his personal advisor. That lasted not very long. And then she went on to some nonprofit and then another and then another. And if you remember, I think it was 2022, she was going to run for U.S. Senate and didn't do that. She walked out on that opportunity, went somewhere else, quit that job. And, you know, one of the things I've been trying to determine is does she or has she ever practiced medicine? I don't have any evidence to say that she has. So I'm really at a loss other than being a professor of public health. What has she done? And when she did do something where the going got tough, as you said, less than 100 days in, she quit.
01:55:54
Speaker 1: Quit and won't debate. Not exactly a profile in courage, Jack Winters. Don't go away. We're going to get your thoughts and comments on the Brown versus Husted race and how that one can be close is another one that puzzles me. Plus, the tail end of the program, the continuing saga of Representative Ishmael Muhammad. He's got some real problems on his hands, and Jack has been hounding him and riding him like a circus pony. Don't go away. More with Jack Windsor after these words.
01:56:19
Speaker 5: 55KRC.
01:56:20
Speaker 4: Nope.
01:56:20
Speaker 1: 839-55KRC, the talk station. Continue to talk this morning. A man who can talk and articulate better than me today, Jack Winterson. Jack, pivoting over to the Sherrod Brown-John Husted race. They haven't got a debate scheduled for that one either, although I haven't heard either side say they don't want a debate. Is that still a possibility?
01:56:45
Speaker 4: I think it is. I really think it is. I had someone in my studio earlier in the week, a Republican strategist by the name of Bob Clegg. And because, by the way, there are some accusations floating around on social media that from people on the left who say, well, why are you so mad that Amy Acton isn't going to debate? Because John Husted is not going to debate. His campaign has not told me that. There just is not something scheduled. We'll probably get into this. There was a poll, two polls that came out recently, one last night, one earlier in the week. And I'm trying to find it here. A good number of people, a majority of people say that a debate is important. 55% say a televised governor's debate is very important. 87% say it is at least somewhat important. So I'm assuming there may not be that much crossover for U.S.
01:57:37
Speaker 2: Senate.
01:57:37
Speaker 4: But my guess is a majority of people probably say, yeah, it's important to hear from the candidates directly on certain issues and to allow them to address issues. some of the skeletons in their closet, if you will, the stuff that always comes out down the stretch here.
01:57:52
Speaker 1: Well, and that's exactly why you would want to debate. If a candidate is being targeted and attacked in these PAC, political action committee ads can be really harsh. I mean, if a candidate doesn't have to approve them, they can pretty much say anything. Because these folks are public figures, you get away with a lot. So with that stated, if I am... am running for office and I'm being publicly attacked and I know that these are demonstrably false claims or at least hiding the reality of what is being asserted, I would like to get out in the open and talk about it. I mean, why wouldn't you avail yourself to any possible opportunity to do exactly that?
01:58:26
Speaker 3: Yeah.
01:58:28
Speaker 1: And what other conclusion can one draw is maybe perhaps the candidate that doesn't want to debate perhaps is concerned about the truth of some of these allegations being stated. There's an option.
01:58:39
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, some people would argue that Sherrod Brown has some stuff, but he's had some stuff for several decades. He continues to carry it with him every election cycle. Of course, you and I both know what John Husted would be attacked on, the House Bill 6 stuff. So that would be fresh. Well, that might be tricky there for him.
01:58:58
Speaker 1: Go ahead.
01:58:58
Speaker 3: Sorry.
01:58:58
Speaker 1: Oh, it's the Larry. Just to remind my listeners, that's the whole energy Larry householder thing.
01:59:02
Speaker 3: Right. OK.
01:59:03
Speaker 6: Yeah.
01:59:04
Speaker 4: And I don't know, by the way, if if if those there are certain investigations on a on a state level that are still going on. I don't know if John Husted would would be able to comment on some of that. Frankly, I know that he had been subpoenaed. I don't know where that is in the process. That might make it a little trickier. Going back to the polls, what we're seeing, other than the Fox poll that came out late in the summer that had Brown plus eight, this latest series of polls has Brown somewhere between three and four. You had the Bowling Green State University poll earlier in the week with YouGov, and then last night, Trafalgar, which I think most people consider a little bit right-leaning, also had Brown between 3% and 4%. And a couple of interesting things in both of those polls, Democrats are more motivated almost by a 2 to 1 ratio. And I think that's going to be the tail of the tape, Brian. Are Republicans going to get off the couch? Are they going to go pull the lever? And what we're hearing a lot now, and I say this all the time, you say it, if you're 80% aligned with somebody, it Don't wait until you're 100 percent aligned. It's never going to happen to allow socialism to continue to creep and make no mistake about it. That's what Republicans are up against. You're dealing with creeping socialism.
02:00:27
Speaker 1: Well, and, you know, Sherrod Brown's a liberal guy. He isn't on record with radical, you know, let's destroy the Constitution policies. But his voting record suggests that it doesn't matter what they're voting for. If it's Democrat inspired, he's going to vote for it. Ninety nine percent of the time he never bucks the system. And this is where I worry. The DSA is making great inroads in the Democratic Party. They're taking over. They're running the show. They got regular mainstream Democrats running scared with the exception of Fetterman. Where do you think Sherrod Brown would vote on this? And if you're concerned about the DSA, and you should be, a vote for Sherrod Brown will be a vote for these damn policies.
02:01:04
Speaker 4: You're 100% accurate. That is the part about Sherrod Brown that I think is really tricky. He has political acumen. I always say campaign Sherrod is wholly different then D.C. Sherrod votes with the radical left. If the DSA takes over the party, Sherrod Brown's going to stamp it with approval by voting yes. And by the way, I thought this was interesting. One of the polls that came out, you may find this a little comical, one in four voters actually still believes that Sherrod Brown is the incumbent.
02:01:35
Speaker 1: Holy cow.
02:01:37
Speaker 4: Isn't that crazy?
02:01:39
Speaker 1: Well, he's been in politics for 50 years.
02:01:40
Speaker 4: I might ride that pony for a while if I were Husted and say, I haven't even been here long enough to find the bathrooms. A quarter of you still think that Sherrod's the guy. So I need some more time here.
02:01:50
Speaker 1: That's a very good point, man. That is a reflection of political ignorance that I, I don't think I can quite cope with Jack.
02:01:56
Speaker 3: Yeah.
02:01:57
Speaker 4: Well, it's a little unnerving, isn't it?
02:01:59
Speaker 1: Well, when half of our school children in K through 12 can't identify the three branches of government, we know we got problems on our hands. That just illustrates it even further to a specific race point. Speaking of specific races, I, Jack Windsor from the Ohio Press Network is going to shed some light on State Representative Ishmael Muhammad, who's been struggling with Jack Windsor's questioning of late. Also has some residency problems. We'll learn about that with the Ohio Press Network's Jack Windsor next. Don't go away. 55KRC, the talk station. It's 847 and 55KRC, the talk station. It's Friday. Hope you've got some great plans for the weekend. I'm going to be at the Parkinson's Steady Stride event at the Linder Family Tennis Center tomorrow beginning at 8 o'clock. It's a great event. The biggest fundraiser for the Parkinson's Wellness and Support Group that they have all year. Fun and games, food, music, and activity. It's good for Parkinson's. It's good for the organization. So join me there tomorrow after 8. And Jack Windsor, you can join him online every single day, and I recommend you do. Bookmark the site, theohiopressnetwork.com, where you can read about the antics of State Representative Ishmael Muhammad. What's with this guy, Jack?
02:03:05
Speaker 4: Well, he has a bevy of issues, Brian. One is a home. By the way, let me go back. State Rep. Ishmael Muhammad is a Democrat. He represents House District 3, which covers Linden, part of the University District, for those of you in Cincinnati, northern Columbus, okay? It's all in Franklin County, his district. Well, Delaware County auditor records show Muhammad and a woman named Hoda Adhiz bought a nearly $ 587, 000 home on Heather Ridge Drive in October 2025. And the records list an owner occupancy credit. And that credit applies to a person's main residence. That's problematic because Delaware County is not in his district. So his opponent, Bernadine Kennedy Kent, challenged his voter registration. And the week before the hearing, Muhammad changed his registration from one in-district address to another And the challenge named the old address. So on Monday, the Franklin County Board of Elections dismissed the case unanimously. Ken's attorney, Kurt Hartman, came on my show.
02:04:14
Speaker 1: We talked.
02:04:15
Speaker 4: He says he will refile. He has refiled against the new address. The hearing is scheduled for September 28th. Muhammad and Adhiz were both in the room, sat on opposite sides in that hearing. His office will not comment. I've sent them two series of questions, about 20 questions total. Now, here's why this is problematic. The law, two separate rules. Article 2, Section 3 of the Ohio Constitution says a representative must live in the district for one full year before the election. Ohio Revised Code Section 3.15 says he must stay a resident for the whole term or forfeit the seat. The house was bought October 2025. The election, of course, is November 3rd of this year. He has a money problem too, but I'll let you marinate in that for just a minute.
02:05:02
Speaker 1: Well, I want to understand, the first filing shows him outside of the district. The second, the revised filing, is it also outside of the district, the second residence he identified?
02:05:15
Speaker 4: So his, initially, the contest was against an address that he had on record. He said it was address A, and they said, well, you signed documentation saying that this Delaware County residence is your residence, which is it.
02:05:30
Speaker 1: You only get one primary residence. Like if you have a summer home in Florida, you either pick Florida as your domicile state, you pick Ohio, but bottom line, you only have one. So the filing, it wasn't in his filing to state his declaring for the race. It was independent of that. So in one record, he says he's in the district, and in another, he has identified it as his primary residence outside of the district.
02:05:56
Speaker 4: Correct. And to make matters more confusing, when the complaint came to the Board of Elections, he listed in a third address, a separate address in the district, not tied to that home, that $ 587, 000 home that he bought in Delaware County. So the contest now is against that new address that he listed, and they're contesting that he lives in Delaware County. And oh, by the way, I should mention this. Because he is required to file paperwork with an ethics committee on his assets as a lawmaker. The last time that he did that, he did not list the home in Delaware County on the form. The only time that you don't have to do that is if that home is your primary residence. His wife slash girlfriend, we have not been able to determine which she is because she lists herself as both, sent a letter to the Board of Elections and said, this is my boy or says that she's a girlfriend. that she lives in a separate place and that Delaware County is an investment property. Well, if that were the case, he would have and should have and must have listed that property as an investment property on his financial filings, and he didn't do that. So he has a lot of things going on where he says one thing here, another thing there. They're not adding up, and it could be extremely problematic.
02:07:12
Speaker 1: Well, I imagine this all would impact his taxes too, would it not, Jack?
02:07:19
Speaker 5: Yes, yes.
02:07:20
Speaker 1: So there's a tax that there's an IRS person out there, maybe somebody within the state of Ohio that's responsible for collecting Ohio taxes, property as well. You know, you get a substantial discount, primary residence, like the homestead exemption, Jack. I mean, that comes into play, doesn't it? Are there school districts and teachers unions out there wondering why in the hell you didn't pay? This is a complicated mess. Well, hold your beer.
02:07:47
Speaker 3: Oh, good.
02:07:48
Speaker 1: It's worse.
02:07:49
Speaker 3: So, yeah.
02:07:50
Speaker 4: So there's a campaign finance complaint that was filed by Lisa Chafee. She's secretary of the Franklin County Republican Party. Per the complaint in the filings, the committee, his committee. reported a balance of ninety seven thousand dollars in change on a twenty twenty four post general election report. The twenty twenty five annual report carries forward only three thousand dollars. So now the question is, where did ninety four thousand dollars or ninety three thousand plus dollars go? By the way, this is the same time. that if you look at his mortgage documentation, he put $ 58, 700 cash down on the payment for the Delaware County House. So people are going, okay, we're not saying that some of that money came from the campaign coffers, but they have not accounted for the money in the campaign coffers. What's going on here? And I will remind you, if you're buying an almost $ 600, 000 house, you can run the mortgage calculation on that.
02:08:42
Speaker 1: Brian, what is that?
02:08:43
Speaker 4: $ 4, 000, $ 5, 000 a month, probably just ballparking it. If you're a state representative, what do you make, 70? So the math ain't math in there.
02:08:54
Speaker 1: Maybe he's a Nepo baby.
02:08:57
Speaker 4: Well, perhaps.
02:08:59
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just throwing it out there.
02:09:02
Speaker 4: You know, I got to be careful what I say, but when you talk Nepo baby and you're talking about the Somali community, there is a lot of money sharing that has gone on in other parts of the country. Not saying that's going on here, but if it were going on, it might. It might make a lot more sense. Well, this all seems at least worthy of investigation. Jack, when's he been trying to? He just won't answer any questions. Do you know if any authorities are involved in this by any chance?
02:09:28
Speaker 1: Yes, they are.
02:09:29
Speaker 4: I can say now here's the part, the campaign finance part.
02:09:32
Speaker 1: I will tell you this.
02:09:33
Speaker 4: The secretary of state has an investigative unit. Generally, though, they work with candidates and committees to bring them into compliance.
02:09:40
Speaker 3: Right.
02:09:40
Speaker 4: They're not trying to do a gotcha. They're trying to say, listen, here's how you have to do it. If you're going to do it, if you can account for it, this is what you need to do. But the Secretary of State's office is looking into this matter. The Board of Elections is looking into this matter. I have every indication now that the mortgage company is looking into this matter because when he signed the mortgage document, he pledged to be in that home within 60 days in order for that mortgage to be in effect and that it would be his primary residence. If he's saying it's not his primary residence, he now has a problem with the mortgage company.
02:10:10
Speaker 1: I just wrote Attorney General down. So you may have a problem with the Attorney General too, Jack Windsor.
02:10:15
Speaker 4: And maybe the FBI.
02:10:16
Speaker 1: There you have it. We'll get everybody involved. Ishmael Muhammad, state representative, state of Ohio. Jack Windsor, theohiopressnetwork.com. Bookmark it. You'll be glad you did. And you can read more about Mr. Ishmael or Mr. Muhammad down the road because I'm sure Jack will answer all the questions that are pending. Jack, we'll do this again next Friday, my friend. Have a wonderful weekend.
