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00:00:10
Speaker 1: In ohio for that matter trying to throw everything at the wall including tax relief to bring everything down uh i think it's a good time to examine how we got where we are and maybe some of the big questions you have in an FAQ form. He is Mike Summers, president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, one of the oil industry's top lobbies, joins the show now.
00:00:30
Speaker 2: Mike, welcome. How are you?
00:00:32
Speaker 3: Hey, how you doing?
00:00:33
Speaker 2: I'm doing good. I'm doing good.
00:00:34
Speaker 1: We're watching gas prices go up and down and fluctuate, and it's all over. You guys at API, you study this stuff, and there are a lot of questions people like me, common people, have, and one of them would be the... All right, so We know we pay the pump as related to what's going on abroad. And how much today's $ 4. 50 a gallon roughly is Iran war versus, let's say, Ukraine and everything else?
00:00:56
Speaker 3: Well, the number one factor in gasoline and diesel prices is the price of crude oil. So when you have 20% of global supply constrained as a consequence of what's going on in the Middle East, and then another significant portion of global supply constrained, constrained as a consequence of what's going on in Russia and Ukraine, you're going to see increased prices at the pump here at home. But another key factor is lack of refining capacity. So, again, because of those two conflicts throughout the world, you're seeing about 10 percent of refining capacity down as well. And refineries, what they do is they take that crude oil and they turn it into the products that we use on a daily basis, like gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. So you have two really kind of a perfect storm going on right now. Limited supply of crude oil in addition to refining capacity that is down. And hopefully, over the course of the next few weeks, we're going to start to see some downward price factors happening at the pump, really because we're starting to see more crude flow through the Strait of Hormuz, And we're starting to see more refining capacity come back online.
00:02:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is great, except until it isn't.
00:02:07
Speaker 1: Of course, you know, it's been up and down now for, well, much, much longer than anyone thought, including the president, would be. In regards to that, you hear about, well, we've just got to crank up more production here stateside. And I think a lot of Americans believe that, too. It's like, well, we've got all this surplus. We're a net exporter of oil, and therefore we export more than we consume. Why don't we just keep it for us? You hear that question a lot. Why isn't that– in the next well there are a couple.
00:02:32
Speaker 3: Of key factors there first of all the kind of uh... production that we have a united states so we are the number one producer of both oil and natural gas natural gas is what we use to eat our homes and uh... provide electricity with a number one producer in fact we're up about a million barrels a day just in the last two years of production for crude oil so the cruel that we produce here in the united states isn't necessarily the kind of crude oil that we were fine in the united states Let's put this in perspective. So the refineries that we built in the United States, we haven't built a new refinery since 1977 in this country. So think about the oil market that we were in in 1977, where we were importing most of the crude oil that we used. Now we are in that oil exporter. And so a lot of those refineries were really tooled for a different kind of oil that we now get from Canada and increasingly Venezuela. So unfortunately, we're still subject to a global price of oil. So the impacts of that oil that comes out of the Strait of Hormuz, while we don't use a lot here in the United States of Middle Eastern oil, it is a global price. And so unfortunately, even though we're the number one producer and we've increased production significantly in the United States, The impact of the global price still affects us.
00:03:52
Speaker 1: At the pump. You hear Venezuela people go, yeah, we get all the oil now from Venezuela. That should start lowering prices soon. It won't because it takes a long time to rebuild that infrastructure. And if you're a petroleum company, to try and get them to invest in that infrastructure might be a hard sell because things fluctuate. You want to put billions of dollars into something that you may not wind up getting back if the climate changes over there.
00:04:17
Speaker 2: It's going to take a while, right?
00:04:19
Speaker 3: It is going to take a while, but I've actually been shocked at how much oil we're getting from Venezuela already. So if you think about the president decided to go get Maduro in February of this year, we were only importing about 100,000 barrels a day of Venezuelan crude at that point. We're over 600,000 barrels now of importing that Venezuelan oil that's going into American refineries. The other thing that you need to remember, though, is that these refineries are running all out right now. So at 98, even sometimes over 100% capacity, they're doing everything they can to supply the American market with gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. The one factor that you're dealing with right now in the Midwest is that there's a big refinery in the Midwest that went down because of a power outage. They're going to get that back up within the next couple of days, and you will start to see some decreases at the pump as a consequence.
00:05:13
Speaker 2: He is Mike Summers.
00:05:14
Speaker 1: He's president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute. Good time with gas prices doing what they're doing, and the focus with our wallets is on that primarily, driving past the pump and cringing. is to get some of these FAQs out of the way. Basically, some of the things you hear relative, well, Venezuela, when the prices get in town for that, why do we pay what we
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pay at the pump?
00:05:35
Speaker 2: And in particular, if the U.S.
00:05:37
Speaker 1: Is the world's largest producer of oil and natural gas, why are we still beholden to the foreign markets and why is it impacting us so much? Those are great questions and time for a little bit of a reset. Relative to refinery, that's something else here as well. We don't have enough refinery capacity, capacity, capacity. Why aren't more refineries coming online sooner? You think they, I guess you would see why under a Democratic administration, but under Trump and drill baby drill, you think we'd have a contest to see how many we could build.
00:06:03
Speaker 2: Why isn't that happening?
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Speaker 4: Well, as I.
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Speaker 3: Mentioned earlier, we haven't built a new refinery since 1977. And the biggest issue that we face is just an inability to get permits done to build a new refinery. Now, existing refinery have been expanded, and so you can build in kind of these brownfield properties, but there are very few new greenfield properties that are coming on board that would allow us to expand refining capacity here in the United States. The key thing, is that we got to get these other refineries, particularly throughout the rest of the world, back online, particularly in Russia and in the Middle East. In addition to that, China, for example, has a tremendous amount of refining capacity that they're not using. Chinese were just in Washington, D.C., meeting with President Trump. Hopefully, we will get them to open up their refineries again to supply the world market. But the United States still has The most sophisticated, best refineries in the world. We just don't have enough of them because they're hard to permit. Okay.
00:07:06
Speaker 1: We'll pivot, and you kind of touched on this a little bit, the other thing, and most of us use gasoline. Diesel is setting records almost every week. It's a couple bucks above gasoline, and it's getting hit so much harder.
00:07:18
Speaker 2: Why is that?
00:07:19
Speaker 3: So the biggest issue with diesel is, you know, one, we're entering into a period where we're going to be using a lot of diesel fuel. It's harvest season in Ohio and throughout the Midwest, and those big tractors, they all run on diesel fuel. In addition to that, northeast, it's heating oil season. Heating oil is very similar to diesel fuel, so you're seeing an increased price as a consequence of just seasonal factors. But in addition to that, again, we just have a lack of refining capacity in And if you think of one barrel of oil, what you're getting from that barrel is gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. Most of that barrel is going to gasoline because that's what we use on a daily basis. So a smaller portion of that is going to diesel and jet fuel production. So what we have is every refinery does all of these same things. They all refine those three products plus other products that we use on a daily basis. So when you have a lack of refining capacity and the price of oil is elevated as it is today, you're going to see impacts with the price at the pump. And we're seeing, of course, very high demand just because of where we are.
00:08:30
Speaker 1: Mike Summers is our president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute. Some FAQs as to why gas is where it is and diesel in that case. And would a temporary ban on diesel exports lower prices? You mentioned farmers in Ohio and Kentucky and Indiana and elsewhere, if you did that, would it work? Is that going to work? Or is this more like the Strategic Petroleum Reserve where we release 170 million-odd barrels and it really doesn't do much for us?
00:08:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, in fact, what a ban on exports would do is actually increase prices. If you think about, again, if you think about a barrel of oil, you get three big things out of it, diesel, gasoline, jet fuel. if you back one of those things out uh... if you back diesel out and just say we're not going to export it anymore a lot of refineries will make the decision to cut runs and stop production that means increase increase prop prices of gasoline diesel and jet fuel at the pump the simple fact is the infrastructure that we have to move these products particularly in the gulf coast where most of our refineries are the pipelines are completely full storage is full and so once that storage filled up refineries won't have a choice but to shut down. And so the impact is going to be increased prices, not lower prices for American consumers if they were to pursue an export ban.
00:09:50
Speaker 1: So the export ban will actually raise the prices of everything it do when it seeks to remedy, which is just so government, is it not?
00:09:58
Speaker 2: I know the Secretary of Rights says.
00:10:00
Speaker 1: The administration's looking for the most efficient way to get more diesel into the market, to the U.S. market, possibly through voluntary measures. What the hell does that mean?
00:10:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, we don't really know what that means either, unfortunately. The truth is there's no way for a refinery to cut uh.
00:10:18
Speaker 5: run uh.
00:10:19
Speaker 3: to stop production or that re divert that production you know to other parts of the country the system just doesn't work that way still we think that there are a couple of other things that they can do you know one uh... there's this you know law that's anachronistic law called the jones act that you know i'll really increase the price of shipping So we need to have some Jones Act waivers so that we can get products from where they are, particularly in the Gulf Coast, to the East Coast and the West Coast. So that process has to improve. We think that we should be working with our allies overseas that have significant diesel reserves, like in the EU, where they've benefited from United States production. They should release some of their diesel reserves as well. And again, working with China. to get them to increase their
refining capacity during a time of a world energy crisis. So there are a couple other things they could do. We should look at the gas and diesel tax. The federal gas tax is 19 cents. The federal diesel tax is 22 cents. We should look at waiving that for a short period of time to help consumers at the pump. So there are a couple of big things that the United States could do that could help reduce pressure at the pump But I'm hopeful that over the course of the next couple of weeks, you are going to start to see some declining prices that consumers have to pay.
00:11:39
Speaker 1: Well, Ohio is talking about doing that this week, as a matter of fact, fast-tracking legislation that's going to push back or at least suspend for 90 days temporarily the state gas tax. Federal gas tax would be a different thing. But again, it treats a symptom is my problem. Prices are high because of our energy policy, because of global supply, because of regulation, as you mentioned, because– of war, a state or federal tax doesn't do anything about the cause. I mean, it might feel good. It feels like if you're a Republican, it's buying votes. You've got the midterms kind of. So you're suspended for 90 days, get through the midterms, and then, you know, it goes away and the price jumps back.
00:12:14
Speaker 2: To where it was.
00:12:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, the thing is, there's a saying in the oil business that the cure to high prices is high prices. So you generally do start to see increased production of both refined products and crude oil during a period of high prices. So we're already starting to see it. You know, the United States, we're producing almost a million barrels more per day just in the last two years. So, you know, we started at about 13.3 million barrels at the beginning of the Trump administration. We project that we'll be over 14 million barrels a day of production today. sometime next year. So we're starting to see that increased production. These refineries are running it all out right now, and they will continue to. This will sort itself out, but that doesn't give a lot of comfort to consumers who are paying. a lot at the pump now. So some temporary provisions to help the American economy, I think, is appropriate right now.
00:13:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I typically ask you, well, when do you think the misery ends? And if you knew that, you wouldn't be talking to someone like me. You'd have all the answers. You'd be on Wall Street. He is the president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute. Mike Summers, thanks for the time.
00:13:28
Speaker 3: Great to be with you.
00:13:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, obviously, the biggest part of.
00:13:31
Speaker 1: The economy would be what you pay at the pump, and that's a bad advertisement for Republicans. And a good one for Democrats when you drive by and see north of four bucks a gallon, regardless of what we do with getting rid of the gas taxes and now the diesel gas tax, which we'll get into more in later and
what that actually means. And also something missing in this whole equation, which I think is really interesting, is the notion that farmers and agriculture will pay less because of this. It's not true. They use off-road diesel. It's called off-road diesel. You may say it's actually tinted red, I believe.
00:14:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's red.
00:14:06
Speaker 1: Because you can use that in construction equipment as well. So anything that doesn't drive the road, you don't have to pay the road tax. So if you're a farmer and you have a big combine, you would fill that up with the red diesel. There's no federal gas tax on that or diesel tax. Also, if you're in construction and you've got the big graders and things like that, you wouldn't use that either because obviously that's not being used on the highways.
00:14:27
Speaker 2: And therefore, it'd be silly for you to pay the tax. So it impacts them.
00:14:32
Speaker 1: Obviously, it's a trickle down, too, because you're still filling up your your big trucks that you use to haul the equipment and everything with on-road diesel. And so that's negligible there. But the big heavy equipment uses the red diesel. So typically you're not paying for that. And if you're in a non-rural area, an urban area, you don't see that as much around here. So just a little, I guess, a nuance there when it comes to farmers, but of course with tariffs and everything else, still paying a lot of money. Anyway, we'll get a news update in. And I think this is part and parcel for the real problem. And if you're a Republican now, You have to be nervous. When this election season started, the Democrats were given very little chance of winning anything. And now the table has turned and they're predicting a, I don't know, blue wave. We've heard that before. And it turns out to be a nothing burger. But, you know, if you just simply impartially read the tea leaves here, look at how things are playing out. Every time the president says we're winning tremendously, we have total control of the Hormuz Strait, the Strait Hormuz Strait. And it's like the 25th time you've said that, and the gas prices still are where they are. That's reality, regardless of what you're saying, that we're winning tremendously. It doesn't feel that way when it comes to your wallet, and that is how we vote. Plus, the trickle-down from all that is starting to affect Republicans, and a great divide is occurring, even right here in the tri-state. We'll get to that next after a quick timeout for news. On the home of the best Bengals coverage, this is 700 WLW. Scott's Loan Show, this is 700 WLW. Back at it on this Monday. It was tough after the Bengals take one on the chin, and that they did. And one of those games, I watched and went, how the hell did they lose that? They had that game well in hand most of the day. Just right at the end there, the fumble, the strip sack, and next thing you know, it's over. And it doesn't end, not like the defense had a great day. They were outright terrible yesterday, especially against the run. And now you've got Jacksonville coming to town, who is just red hot on fire. So that is going to be a real test. Later in the show, Austin Elmore, right before you go to lunch, you get a little fallout from all the talking heads and licking your wounds this morning as the Bengals now 2-1. And now every team in the division has the same record. It's not where you want to be right now. But it's just one loss. Not a trend, to be sure. And a lot upset with this ball club. So we'll see how they adjust coming up against Jacksonville. here on the home of the best Bengals coverage, 700 WLW. What else is going on? We have this to be expected. I saw some comments from Pope Leo yesterday about, and he was talking about the clergy sex abuse, and he got to give Pope Leo credit because unlike his predecessors, he is not just paying lip service. He's actually doing things about the ongoing abuse scam, especially it was in Lourdes where they had a huge, I mean, that's been an issue for a long, long time as far as sex abuse there goes. And he addressed that and met with people and I think has gone farther than any Pope has relative to embracing that and saying, hey, listen, we own this thing and it's incumbent upon us to make us right in the future. But at the same time, he did mention something about medically assisted death as false compassion. I'm not sure how far he goes in that, and saying that, you know, certainly euthanasia, medically assisted suicide, things like that. But, um, when you talk about it, he was talking to kind of broadly about it, um, about false compassion. It's a false sense of compassion when you allow someone to die and, you know, the debate will continue and probably more so, um, with the way technology improves and advances in medicine that we're just going to live longer and longer and longer. Um, that's what we're seeing right now. And in fact, just not long ago, um, You wouldn't live to these ages.
00:18:17
Speaker 2: It really is.
00:18:18
Speaker 1: It's incredible the times in which we live. We often don't recognize that, but we're dying of things now that are largely of our own doing, right? And so we're going to live longer and maybe more painful in those waning years. And I guess that's the thing for me is, all due respect to Pope Leo, I think it's easy for someone and even the Pope to say, you know, you shouldn't do that. When you witness somebody in extreme pain, You'll do anything to relieve that pain. And my mom passed about six years ago and she developed cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which to this day, I have no idea how that wound up of all things. One of the most healthy people. I mean, she had no fun in her life at all. Didn't drink, didn't smoke, ate like really boiled chicken breast and vegetables every day, apples. She had an incredibly clean diet, would work out very active and healthy. And all of a sudden within six months, she was dead. But
that is a scourge of cancer, right? And that made it especially difficult because some of us, the way we treat our lives like an amusement park, you expect that. But for someone healthy and vibrant like her at 72, no idea. Nonetheless, just watching her in her final week or so, after we tried all the treatments and CAR-T and all these things, and finally it was like, yeah, it just perforated her bowels and things like that.
00:19:36
Speaker 2: She was in just such intense pain. Now they did give her.
00:19:39
Speaker 1: Something to relieve that and essentially gave her enough drugs to keep her pain-free and sedated but you know still took her a few days to finally pass um Is that extreme? I mean, you're keeping you're not killing someone. Certainly you're allowing them to not be in pain. But for some people, those drugs don't touch that. And, you know, I could see for someone going, I listen, you know what? It's been a good run or maybe too short a run. And I'm tapping out here. I think it's just always difficult for someone who's not been in those shoes. And I'm sure the Pope's been around people who have been in those final stages of life. I would defer to the individual. And like I said, just let them deal with the consequences of that in the afterlife, so to speak. But yeah, I saw those comments yesterday. It seems like everyone who says that is someone who has never been through that before.
00:20:31
Speaker 2: But I don't know. All right.
00:20:33
Speaker 1: So when the election season began, Democrats were given little or no hope whatsoever of capturing the Senate. Now, there's like a three-seat advantage in the Senate. But as we get closer and closer to midterms and the campaign enters its final month, those odds are shifted strongly in favor of a Democratic takeover. Now, we've heard this before, the blue wave, which is more like a blue sprinkle, and the red wave, which sometimes is like a red sprinkle.
00:20:59
Speaker 2: And they can be wrong. The pollsters can.
00:21:01
Speaker 1: But I guess the problem is when you have your standard bearer, when President Trump keeps saying how we're winning tremendously with Iran and that we have total control of the Hormuz Strait. I mean, I've heard that and you've heard that, what, 15, 20 times now? And, of course, you look at that price you pay at the pump and you go, that's not reality because that's the direct correlation. I mean, I follow the intricacies of negotiations and the what-if-isms and the long play and all this stuff. It's your pocketbook and it's right here right now. Which is not on, I don't think, Trump at all. I think that's on us as consumers and as Americans is we want a quick fix.
00:21:38
Speaker 2: We have.
00:21:40
Speaker 1: An attention span like that of a gnat. And we're not in it for the long play. The rest of the world kind of deals. I mean, look at China. China just grinds. The Middle East, you know, you've got things going on there thousands of years. It's the long
play for them. But we are capitalists. We're used to things moving quickly. You know, the idea a New York minute has overtaken the entire country over the last 50 years. We are in a hurry to do everything. We want it right now, and we don't want to wait. That's just part of our DNA. And it also, at the same time, is part of our DNA, and you can admire that and go, that's why our GDP, that's why we lead the world, that's why, that's why. Okay, but I guess when it comes to politics, that's a little bit of a different thing. Because if you look at the structure of politics, it's totally different. that politics moves at glacial speeds. I mean, just look at trying to get anything done with the federal government or the government in general, you know, business, AI, technology, augmented, all these things that we have.
00:22:39
Speaker 2: And, you know, you try to deal with the government, you're still writing checks, right?
00:22:43
Speaker 1: It's like the IRS, all of these, all of these government bureaucracies move at glacial speeds. And that's by design because the bureaucrats designed it that way. Cause they're the only ones that know how things work and they don't want it to be innovative and user-friendly. They lag behind and every day they get further and further behind. And how that comes to play in this conversation relative to the statements about, you know, the hormones, straight hormones, we're controlling all this stuff. This all builds into our attention span. And when you look at the gas pump and it's about four bucks a gallon, that hurts. When you're a truck driver and you're paying close to seven for diesel, that is not hurtful. That is almost a mortal wound. And so President Trump is saying he expects more talks with Iran this week.
00:23:33
Speaker 2: We're going to clean it up. We're going to make a deal on the war. We've got to get this thing done.
00:23:36
Speaker 1: But, you know, when you say we have total control of the Strait of Hormuz, you rejected a proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. You know, we may have short attention spans, but we're not dumb. And the main reason is obvious. We have this deeply unpopular war with Iran. It's driving the cost of everything up, especially the gas pump. um and how it affects the midterms of course is we're already starting to concede races in georgia north carolina republicans are and now they're moving campaigns i mean hell ohio texas is in play that's that's unheard of um and granted you know there's that core maga supporters that are going to go down with the ship um and republicans do enjoy a huge money advantage i mean if you're a loyal if you're trump loyalist you're maggie you're not going to go anywhere else it's like phil castellini where else you're going to go that's true that's also true with core.
00:24:25
Speaker 2: Progressive voters.
00:24:28
Speaker 1: But I think for the, you know, roughly 80 to 70, 80 percent of Americans in the middle are like, I just want relief
at the gas pump. And when you hear we're winning and we're not, there's going to be things to pay there. And I think this goes part and parcel. We'll get into this later in the show because we spent a lot of time talking about the Ohio gas tax and getting rid of the tax. And now on the table, and this is leaked out by Politico, which seems to me it's more of a, you know, Someone leaked it to Politico. They reported it. And, of course, there was backlash to it. And they go, well, they're just making the news up. That's as old as politics itself. Both sides play that game where they leak something out to see what the reaction is going to be from the typical American. If it's negative, they just deny and it's false, false reporting. That's how they test stuff out. Nothing new there. However, this one would prevent producers from exporting diesel from the United States for 90 days. And now I thought of that and went, okay, well, what does that do in the short term? It might drop the price a little bit, but again, it's like relieving the gas tax in Ohio. If you do that, you're just going to increase prices down the line because it's a scarcity issue. Where's the impetus for exporters or, I guess, producers to pump more diesel in the flood.
00:25:43
Speaker 6: Of the market?
00:25:44
Speaker 1: You're not going to be able to recoup those costs. Eventually, what you'll do is you'll decrease your production. And that ultimately drives up costs. So why would we do this? Well, the answer would be we have midterms coming up. And so it's not as much as concern. And this is the problem with government. It's not a concern about me and you and the voter, the taxpayer that we just were in pain because of the prices of stuff. It's because of the manipulation that goes out to get votes. And then once the votes come in, it's like, well, we're going to do what the hell we want. I mean, a great example of that would be back here in the Buckeye State where whether it's marijuana or, you The abortion argument, whatever it might be, the voters were very clear in their message about what they wanted. And yet we have a legislature that says, well, we're going to do what we want anyway. And I don't think that that's– we're in deep red Ohio and maybe not deep red any longer if you believe these polls. But in deep red Ohio where I figure, hey, we got you anyway. You're not going to go anywhere else. That's why I like divided government is because they're at each other's doors all the time fighting each other. They're not fighting with us. It makes things a little bit easier. But anyway, Michelle Schultz is a trade law attorney. She'll be on the 11 o'clock hour to talk about the diesel thing. We've been spending a lot of time about the gas tax relief. That one, to me, I look at and go, eh, I know about that. But they call it a win for, obviously, anyone who drives a diesel, but also for farmers. But here's what I can't understand. I'll ask Michelle this later in the 11 o'clock hour. Correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I think don't farmers use the red diesel, which is the off-road diesel, basically? And what off-road diesel is, if you don't know this, farmers– so let.
00:27:23
Speaker 2: Me back up.
00:27:23
Speaker 1: So diesel, you know, it's obviously like the gas tax. You pay a tax on diesel for a truck to fund the roads. That's how we fund our money, which to me, of all the taxes, that's the fairest tax. The more you drive, the more you pay. You don't use the roads, you don't pay. And on that note, farmers use red diesel, which is just regular diesel, only it's tinted red. And– The reason I tint that red is because you use that, you can only use that for agricultural work or construction. You have a big construction like the Brent Spence Bridge project. The tanks that you see on Saturday Road filled with the red diesel, it's not the diesel you would put in a over-the-road truck. It's just specifically for construction equipment or it's for agricultural vehicles like combines and big things like that that run on diesel. But Because they don't use the roadways, they don't pay the tax. Ah, so you're saying there's an alternate form of diesel out there. I am.
00:28:16
Speaker 2: It's the same gas.
00:28:16
Speaker 1: It's got red tint. The reason they tint it red is if you're caught driving on the road with that red tank of gas, tank of diesel, you pay.
00:28:25
Speaker 2: I don't know.
00:28:25
Speaker 1: I think the fine is like it's like a thousand. It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money if you're caught.
00:28:30
Speaker 2: But I don't. Do they go around checking that? I don't know.
00:28:33
Speaker 1: Do they go to do we have the diesel police out there or will we? The other thing that made me think of is, isn't this just going to be a new black market? If that's the case, if there's off-road diesel out there, isn't someone going to go, hey, you know what? For the cost of diesel, you do the price difference, do a little math here. I can make a couple bucks putting diesel and diesel vehicles that are meant to be on the road. Who the hell is going to check? I mean, hell, we're not checking if you pay your taxes now.
00:29:03
Speaker 2: Right?
00:29:04
Speaker 1: Who's going to be rocking around with a dipstick checking your tank? I don't think anyone is. Sounds like maybe there's a black market opportunity there. Like, you know, every time something like New York, we're going to put a new tax on cigarettes. More cigarette tax. Yeah, it's $ 84 a pack. And $ 80 of it is a tax. Well, why do you think people sell cigarettes and stay without the tax stamp on it? It's been going on for a long time. Yeah, just something to consider. I might be wrong about that, but I don't. As much as I know about the building industry and the like, and certainly a lot less about the agricultural stuff, but I believe there's the off-road diesel that you have that, I don't know why you couldn't put that in your regular car.
00:29:45
Speaker 2: Wouldn't somebody do that? It's like, wait a minute.
00:29:50
Speaker 1: Hopefully I'm inspiring a whole generation of entrepreneurs. You may call them criminals. I call them street entrepreneurs. Just trying to help you save a couple bucks. But one of the big questions, okay, well, this isn't really– now, is it going to help farmers when they're driving their– are you taking your cattle to market, for example? You're going to have to pay a highway tax there, getting your crop to market?
00:30:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, I suppose.
00:30:16
Speaker 1: And certainly the transportation costs are baked into that as well because it comes out of the farmer's end as well. So, yeah, maybe, but the idea that farmers are going to– this is a big boon for– I don't know if it really is, is it?
00:30:27
Speaker 2: It strikes me as that's not the case.
00:30:29
Speaker 1: Maybe, again, an area I'm not certainly an expert on like a lot of things, but John and Dayton, maybe you are.
00:30:34
Speaker 2: What do you got, buddy?
00:30:36
Speaker 4: Yeah, I have a lot of trucks, a lot of machinery on-road, off-road that use diesel. They do check if you get pulled over a lot of times. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah, and so we've had it checked before, and it could be up to.
00:30:52
Speaker 2: A $ 10, 000 fine.
00:30:52
Speaker 4: So you got to watch it. I don't think it's worth the risk of trying to, you know.
00:31:00
Speaker 2: I got you.
00:31:01
Speaker 1: For the amount of money you're trying to save versus the fine. So the fine, I thought it was like $ 1, 000, but you're talking like an 18-wheeler, right?
00:31:09
Speaker 4: Yeah, a dumb trunk, 18-wheeler.
00:31:11
Speaker 5: Okay.
00:31:12
Speaker 4: I mean, you save a little bit.
00:31:13
Speaker 7: But, you know.
00:31:14
Speaker 8: It's not worth it?
00:31:15
Speaker 4: Yeah. If you're pinching that many pennies, maybe you should be doing something else.
00:31:21
Speaker 8: Well, but I'm saying the greater the dispense, you know, John, if there's a, the bigger the gap between what the diesel costs and what the, you know, the tax or whatever it might be, there's a greater opportunity to incentivize somebody to do what I'm talking about here.
00:31:34
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying?
00:31:36
Speaker 4: I get it. And also at the same time, our roads need a lot of work. They're not like Indiana or Michigan, but The roads do need a great deal of work, you know, so the taxes.
00:31:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got you. I got you.
00:31:48
Speaker 4: All right.
00:31:48
Speaker 2: Well, thanks for clearing it up. But again, it's the off-road diesel. It's the off-road diesel.
00:31:52
Speaker 1: So this is not going to, you know, farmers are like, oh, yeah, we don't want diesel the prices that they are. But when it comes to agricultural equipment, not so much. And so don't buy the propaganda if they're trying to sell that to you. Let's get a news update in. And that happens in about five minutes here on The Big
One, 700 WLW. And when returned on the show, what are we doing on the show?
00:32:10
Speaker 2: I believe.
00:32:11
Speaker 1: Coming up next, I don't know. I had it in front of me here. We're kind of today, Monday, we kind of play it by ear.
00:32:18
Speaker 2: A little bit. A little bit.
00:32:23
Speaker 1: We have some crime issues in Cincy I wanted to get to as well. I'm going to do that a little bit later in the show. So, anyway, let's do that news update. We'll get a forecast in, and we'll figure it out at 10.06.
00:32:33
Speaker 2: How's that? Sloany, 700-WLW. All right, welcome back to it. And finally, a little break in the weather action.
00:32:41
Speaker 9: Love it.
00:32:42
Speaker 2: Feels comfortable. I've enjoyed it.
00:32:44
Speaker 1: Back half of the week, Sloney here on 700 WLW. And it was five years ago that residents were fighting Duke Energy Central Corridor Pipeline. So that was a big gas pipeline. It was running from, because they're doing it now, Gulf Manor to Sycamore Township. So Gulf Manor, Cincy, Amberley Village, Evendale, Blue Ash, Sharonville, Redding, those areas. That was a fight and a half. They had a group of local groups concerned about that pipeline underneath their feet. And now Boone County is facing the same thing today. So this new proposal would run a gas pipeline from Indiana to Ohio right through the backyard of Commissioner Jesse Brewer. And they've already told Washington thanks, but but no thanks on this. Jesse Brewer, Boone County commissioner.
00:33:25
Speaker 2: Welcome to the show. How you been, brother?
00:33:27
Speaker 5: Hey, I've been good.
00:33:28
Speaker 6: Thanks, Loney. Just finally enjoying a break in the heat, and, you know, life is good.
00:33:33
Speaker 1: So this is called the Texas Gas Transmission Line, and they want to build what's called the Dearborn County Lateral. So about 12 miles, it's a 20-inch pipe, gas pipeline, going from Dearborn County, Indiana, through about three miles of your territory in Boone County and into here in Hamlin County as well. So I'm sure we'll be hearing about this, too. and this would cross the Ohio River just north of Petersburg, Kentucky, if you know where that is. And so you had a meeting, the Boone County Fiscal Court met, and the residents were concerned about groundwater, the river, emergency response, what happens if there's a rupture. I know that Judge Executive Gary Moore backed those concerns, saying, well, there's no benefit directly to us in Boone County, so to hell with it.
00:34:12
Speaker 2: Is that smart thinking?
00:34:14
Speaker 6: They're taking the Miami Fort power plant over there and going from coal to gas. And it's to service customers from Ohio and Indiana. Well, for whatever reason, they want to run it across the river through Petersburg and then back across the river into Ohio. So while there's no benefit for Kentucky customers, it's going to come through our yard. And they're not really giving us any answers to why. What we're asking for is like, hey, pump the brakes here. Let's get engaged. Let's answer our questions. You know, they give us a 70-page packet of a boilerplate information that looks like someone whipped it up, some intern whipped it up on chat. GPT is what it looks like to me. It was frequently asked questions in a very crude map. But from what we could tell, like, you know, Petersburg's got a lot of history. I don't know if you're familiar with Petersburg or not, but it's a point little town. It's kind of isolated by stuff. It's like you're stepping back in time. It's very beautiful and peaceful. The site has about, you know, we think there's about 20 or so Indian burial mounds. They're going to have to disrupt for this thing. Multiple, you know, a lot of Revolutionary War soldiers settled in the area. And there's cemeteries with those remains in there.
00:35:34
Speaker 2: A lot of.
00:35:35
Speaker 6: Historical sites, a lot of historical homes down there. To give us a month's notice and want to disrupt that and not even bring any real tangible benefit to Boone County. Like, what's going on? Why is it economically sound to cross the river twice? They've got to cross the river twice. In their own FAQ, I can send this to you, in their own public record, there's no hiding it, but in their own FAQ, it talks about how it's not even economical or makes sense to go across bodies of water to build these lines. Why the hell are we doing this now? You know, I think there's bigger ploys here. You know, we have a change in our Congress. We're having a change in the U.S. Senate. Our federal voice right now is kind of up in the air. And they're going to cram this down our throat, why maybe we don't have as much representation in Washington as engaged as we need right now.
00:36:28
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's legitimate to go, look, OK, well, why do you want to do this through Peterson? Maybe there's a reasonable explanation why.
00:36:34
Speaker 2: I don't know. Yeah, yeah. That's reasonable.
00:36:37
Speaker 1: I don't know if you look at it and go, well, there's no benefit to us. Therefore, we don't want it. If that were true, you wouldn't have gas or electricity because there's plenty of pipelines that run to Petersburg and into where you are in Boone County, all over Boone County, that pass through areas that don't tap into that. That's just how the network works. It's like saying I can't drive over. Well, it's kind of like Mike DeWine's thing here in Ohio when it comes to THC beverages. Like if you if it passes through the state, you could be in violation of law. It's like, well, we still have to use the roadways to get from point A to point B.
00:37:08
Speaker 6: You're not wrong there, Sloane. I think that's all part of it. It's like you tell us on June, they told us on June 29th this is happening. No community engagement, no town halls, no interfacing with anybody, no explanation, just here you go, we're cramming this down your throat with the big,
and we just want to know, okay, why?
00:37:26
Speaker 1: All right, so we'll table that question for a second, say, okay, well, we'll find out, and then we'll go from there, but there are many people in Petersburg coming forward saying we don't want this at all, obviously, and they're worried about private wells and groundwater and leaks and things like that. How big a concern is that, considering the alternative, and I battled the NOP people on this one five, six years ago, and saying, well, you know, you want to turn the switch on and have electricity, you want to You know, have your furnace go on in the winter and have heat. You're telling someone else they can't have that luxury. You know, we have you're using the same gas pipelines passing through someone else's backyard is not tapped into it. That's not the way infrastructure works. You know, it's there's a whole network of this. I mean, literally millions of miles under our feet all over this whole country are pipelines. And there's some of them are 100 years old. And so it's more dangerous not to replace those mains that are in danger of failing. The technology has gotten a lot better. It's much safer. It's not completely safe, but it's a hell of a lot safer than, say, I don't take in liquid natural gas and transporting it over the already overworked rail lines on surfaces through neighborhoods and villages. I mean, you want more of that or do you want it under your feet? I think under your feet is better.
00:38:35
Speaker 6: I don't disagree with you on that, Sloany, at all. And I think, you know, there are concerns. And, you know, like I said, the residents that are voicing those concerns, they got the same packet of information that we got on June 29th. So there's this like, hey, well, it needs to be explained how it is safe for how the technology is improved. It's not going to impact your water. There's just a lot of unanswered questions. And we're just trying to make as much noise to get them to pause and pump the brakes to get these answers to these questions and talk through it. Because most of the conflict with government can be resolved with good, proper communication and engagement. And they're obviously failing at that within.
00:39:12
Speaker 1: If you think that maybe what's driving this is fact, hey, you know, Kentucky went heavy for Trump and we don't have to ask their permission. We'll just do it and I'll go along with it because this is what the administration wants. Were they expecting some pushback on your part?
00:39:24
Speaker 6: You know, I don't know if it's that or if it's easier to push Kentucky around or if there's other legitimate economical, logistical reasons to run it this way. I don't know the topography of the land, if they were to stay on that side of the river. So I'm assuming there's a lot of variables here. But the biggest thing is, and I keep beating a dead horse with it, we have been told why. And why are we told about it with only one month to respond when they've been working on this thing for a few years? I mean, the government doesn't do anything quick.
00:39:54
Speaker 2: No, that's true.
00:39:57
Speaker 6: This has been in the works for quite some time, and it would have been good practice to engage us early on. You know, our state delegation didn't know anything about this. You know, this is all a federal initiative. And what I like to remind everyone at the end of the day is the federal government is going to do what the federal government wants to do. We can have our input and make noise, but this does not require a vote from the fiscal court, a vote from the state. They're going to come in at the end of the day and do what they want to do. So we're just trying to understand it, get some answers. And if we can have some impact on the project to make the disruption as least as possible, we're going to have to take that win.
00:40:33
Speaker 1: Is there a scenario where Boone County supports the project? A different route easement or just an answer as to why they're going to do it this way? And do you think that's it?
00:40:43
Speaker 6: I mean, without having our questions answered, it's too early to tell that I would say anything's possible. But with the information we have right now, if they don't give us any more information, the answer would be no, because there's so much unknown. But I think if they take the time to engage us, explain that to us. I can't say that we wouldn't turn to a supportive, but with what limited info we have right now, it's hard to say. My biggest question is, well, wouldn't it be more efficient to go from point A to point B and not cross the river twice? You know, from a cost perspective, that's number one. But, you know, I don't know. I'm not an engineer. I don't understand the topography of the land, and they're not really taking the time to come and explain that to me.
00:41:24
Speaker 1: Is eminent domain a concern with this? Is maybe that why? That's what it is, right?
00:41:29
Speaker 6: That is a big concern. Eminent domain is a big concern. You know, eminent domain can be done by multiple different entities, the federal government, the state and the county. We have eminent domain rights. Now, we have a personal policy on the fiscal court that we never exercise in the domain. And in my tenure, we never have been stretching back a long time. We at the fiscal court won't do it. But that doesn't mean the state or the federal government won't do it. But that is a major concern on everybody's mind. They're just going to take it anyway. And then you get into the formula, well, they compensated properly and things like that, and you open up a whole other can of worms. We were dealing with a different in-the-domain issue for a state route that ultimately didn't happen. And one of the concerns that I brought up was, OK, you're going to give someone a fair market value for their home. But how do you count in that three percent interest rate they've
got? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:42:20
Speaker 2: Right.
00:42:20
Speaker 4: They go by.
00:42:21
Speaker 6: It's going to be seven. You know, now they're buying power. Yeah, you're paying them an appraised value. But what about that interest rate? And there's a lot of tangible value there and things like that. And I don't know if the government's warm enough to figure that out.
00:42:33
Speaker 1: Jesse Brewer is a Boone County commissioner and they're facing a battle we had here locally. just a handful of years ago, and that is a gas pipeline. And they want to run this thing through part of Boone County, about three miles of Boone County, and it's called the Dearborn County Lateral. So this would be a 12-mile, 20-inch interstate natural gas pipeline running from Dearborn, Indiana, into Cincinnati and Hamlin County to get a whole bunch more energy this way. We have to replace the aging infrastructure below our feet that we often don't think about, and the technology doesn't spend. The problem is the tipping point is Petersburg, Kentucky, a little town on the Ohio River, That to disturb maybe like, I don't know, less than 100 acres, a couple hundred acres or whatever it is. And they're not getting the answers, at least in Boone County, that they want from the federal government who's behind this project and saying we're going to pump the brakes until we find out why it's got to go through our area or across our river twice. as Jesse Brewer just said. How does the pipeline fight compared to others? I know you're also battling, as we are here in Ohio and in Indiana, that would be data centers or cell towers, for that matter.
00:43:35
Speaker 2: How does that fight? Is there a parallel there?
00:43:37
Speaker 6: You know, there is and there isn't. You know, I always say with the data centers, you know, we don't really want to. We've heard from our constituents loud and clear. We don't want them in Boone County. We don't want them here. But everyone wants to have their cell phone work, you know, and everyone wants the internet to work, and you kind of need a data center for that. But I'm a big free market guy. And Boone County, you know, one of the blessings and curses we have at the same time is our land is very expensive. And I always said, you know... If they're going to put a data center somewhere in Kentucky, they're going to look at the price per acre of Boone County. They're going to look down the road in one of these rural counties, maybe 50 miles away, and see the price per acre. They're like the one they're putting in Mason County, out in Maysville, and say, let's go there because it's a more economical fit. So while data centers are a concern for our residents because people just read the news and hear it online, I tell everyone, our land's too expensive, I think, from an economic standpoint. The free market protects us from that threat, in my opinion.
00:44:44
Speaker 5: Who knows?
00:44:45
Speaker 6: Crazy things happen, but they're putting a big one down in Mason County and Maysville, which they went through a lot of rounds and rounds and rounds about that. And they got the land, I think, for 30-something thousand an acre. That same land in Boone County would be over 100,000 an acre. It's just Simple math. So I am not overly concerned that we're going to get a bunch of data centers here for that reason. But it is a real threat and people are concerned about that. You know, people, that is a genuine concern of folks. They don't want to see a data center come here. And I get it. But that's not something we're being forced down our throat because of the sheer economics of it.
00:45:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think it's the same clause, right, is we want all this stuff. I want to be able to turn my furnace on in the winter when it's cold and have energy or my gas fireplace or whatever it is. I want to be able to download weird stuff on my phone in the middle of the night when I get up and I can't go back to sleep. I want to be looking at TikTok. I want all those things, but I don't want it in my backyard. That's always been the problem.
00:45:47
Speaker 6: You get that, and I'll give you– when Kentucky passed medical marijuana a couple years ago, And when they went through the process for licensing of dispensaries and processing plants, you know, there was a lottery. But then each county or city had to pass an ordinance that they would allow it. We didn't allow them. We allowed them. We didn't allow them in the unincorporated county, but the city of Florence allowed them. We allowed the processing. It doesn't mean we're going to get one, but we didn't allow the dispensaries or whatever. And we had folks showing up saying, yeah, we want them. We just want them over in Kenton County.
00:46:23
Speaker 2: Right, right.
00:46:24
Speaker 6: You know, so to that regard, and that's human nature. A lot of people just, I mean, human beings, we're a creature of habit. And at the end of the day, you know, we're all going to look out for what's best for ourselves and our neighborhood and our community. And we all want, you know, we all want to be the last house in the community. We all want to be the last, you know, shut the door after we get in. We want to be able to drive to Canes and get our chicken, but we don't want the development to come too close to our house. And there's got to be a balance, and I get that. There has to be a balance, but that's just with anything. Data centers are the hot topic today. And now we obviously with this pipeline, that's a very localized issue for us here. That's not a Campbell County issue or Canton County issue. That is a Boone County issue. But there's those issues like that. And it's the NIMBY, you know, not in my backyard. Some stuff I agree with them on and some stuff I don't.
00:47:18
Speaker 1: Finally, what happens if the feds just say, oh, screw you guys. It's Kentucky. It's a small little town. No one's ever heard of a Petersburg, wherever that is. A few
hundred residents. We're going to steamroll you and do it anyway.
00:47:28
Speaker 2: What then?
00:47:30
Speaker 6: Not much we can do. We've got to smile and take it. I mean, the federal government's going to do what they want to do, and there's not much we can do about it. We're just trying to slow it down, pump the brakes, get some answers, and maybe have some influence and impact. But at the end of the day, and that's why I trust our residents, this does not require a vote from Jesse Brewer in the fiscal court. This does not require a vote from the state legislature. This is the federal government, and they're going to do what they want to do ultimately at the end of the day, and they're going to take what they want to take. Our hope is that we can have enough influence and impact in conversation to make the disruption, A, as minimal as possible, and B, understand the why. That three-letter word, why. You'd be amazed at how much you can learn by just asking that word, why. Not enough people ask that question, and that's what we're doing right now. We're trying to understand it and figure it out.
00:48:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's reasonable.
00:48:22
Speaker 1: Jesse Brewer, Boone County Commissioner. Thanks for jumping on, my friend. Appreciate it.
00:48:27
Speaker 6: Hey, thanks. Have a good one.
00:48:28
Speaker 2: Take care.
00:48:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's I get it. It's just how about a answer is to. So why do you want to go under a river and then go back again the other side? Why don't you just it seems like a lot of extra work. I'm sure there's an engineering or geological issue with that. You know, it's a legitimate question and it seems like a simple one to answer.
00:48:47
Speaker 2: Answer that.
00:48:47
Speaker 1: Maybe more people get on board, but probably not. I think you're still going to have residents fighting because of fear of what that means. Even though we just had this pipeline, you know, it's underway right now and it's working. through the error we just mentioned and no issues so far. It doesn't mean you can't have one in the future, but again, a hell of a lot safer with the alternative. It's Scott Sloan Show, 700 WLW. Everyone needs help.
00:49:09
Speaker 2: Every now and then. And she's here to help us get our heads right. This is Mental Health Monday with mental health expert, Julie Hattershire.
00:49:18
Speaker 1: We are under a tremendous amount of stress. Our ball is like inside of a baseball or a golf ball. It's wound very, very tightly with all these different fibers and stuff coming at us all the time. What is that doing to our brain and what kind of science and research is behind trying to make those things complement one another as opposed to being in a constant state of strife. Julie Heddershire, our Mental Health Monday expert, licensed mental health therapist, she herself taking some mental time off on vacation. So today it's David Kipper on the Scott Sloan Show.
00:49:49
Speaker 2: Good morning, David. How are you?
00:49:51
Speaker 5: Good morning, Scott.
00:49:52
Speaker 4: Fine.
00:49:53
Speaker 5: How are you and your little brain doing?
00:49:55
Speaker 1: My little brain, among a lot of little things, we're getting along here. We're getting along. I'm just fascinated by it because of all the parts of our body, the brain is, I honestly think, is the least understood.
00:50:06
Speaker 5: This has been a passion of Dr. Cowan and mine for over 10 years now and trying to figure out how this little piece of tissue in the skull controls everything we do. And we're very excited about this book and the research and how we put it together clinically in our practices today. And we'd just love to share this information with your listeners. All right.
00:50:32
Speaker 2: So let's talk about that.
00:50:33
Speaker 1: And this is some breakthrough science, and it reveals the blueprint of our DNA and how stuff works and what's going on in our head. And if you know how your brain works, you know then how you can make your brain work better for you. Is that an issue in that you can, through behavior and modifications and such, change how your brain works? Or are you kind of stuck with the brain you're born with?
00:50:58
Speaker 5: Both, but we can, in fact, mitigate how this brain for each of us works. And what we've discovered, Scott, is that there are two different brain types. There's a brain type that tends to be more risk-taking and with issues with impulse control, needing immediate gratification. And more outgoing, these would be the type A people that we've heard about in the past. And then there's the second brain type that is more cautious. They are risk averse. They are far more meticulous in the way they study their environment and their issues. These were previously referred to as the pessimists. They have social anxiety. So there are a number of predictable behaviors in both brain types. What we've done in the book is that we've made it very simple in a little quiz that you can figure out which side of the equation you're on. Those people that are more aggressive or more outgoing tend to be shy in a neurotransmitter called dopamine. And they are seeking dopamine in what they do. And that seems to give them their incentive to keep going. And on the other side of the equation are the people that are a little shy in the neurotransmitter serotonin. And those are the more cautious types. these two types have been studied and identified in all animal species. And it's an evolutionary issue in that we need both types in order to have survived as a species. And so what we've done is we've given the reader a little test to identify what type their brain is. Knowing your brain type and knowing what drives you We are then able to create very specific strategies in order to help mitigate those behaviors.
00:53:03
Speaker 2: Okay.
00:53:04
Speaker 1: But I know that things like dopamine and serotonin can be, you know, chemically engineered and
synthesized, right? Because you can use dopamine, you can get serotonin tablets for crying out loud.
00:53:16
Speaker 2: They're pretty cheap. Is it easy?
00:53:19
Speaker 1: Is a pharmaceutical solution in play here, too, rather than changing your brain? It's like, well, I'll just take a pill. It's the American way, Doc.
00:53:26
Speaker 5: Well, it's a very smart question, and the answer is yes. We certainly can fill your tank with dopamine for those that are dopamine deficient, and we can fill your tank with serotonin in a similar way. The problem is once we've done that, then we do have to look at some behavioral modification because we grow up from the time we're born with these behaviors that come from these two different brain types. So we have developed habits based on that. Here's an example. You have a child in your class that is hyperactive or she's got ADD and they're running around the room, they're unfocused. Why in the world would you give that little kid a stimulant in order to treat them? The stimulants, of course, contain dopamine. And the reason that little kid has ADD is that they're shy in dopamine. So they're running around and all those behaviors are because of that lack of dopamine. So you give them dopamine and they calm down. If you give dopamine to the other side of the equation, to people that are shy and serotonin, well, they're very uncomfortable and they don't calm down. They agitate.
00:54:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, gotcha.
00:54:46
Speaker 1: So you don't want to misdiagnose this, although it sounds like it's a fairly simple diagnosis based on the brain type that you are. Now, when you get down to it, though, so many people are untreated for this disorder, right? And is this anything new? Has this been around since day one or is this like a modern invention, right? That, you know, we used to be fine back in the years, we never had ADD and all this nonsense. And now today it's just all fabricated nonsense. And it's just the science got better, right? It's science caught up with figuring out what else is. An excellent example of that, I think, is autism. We didn't have autism 30 years ago.
00:55:19
Speaker 2: Well, we did. We just didn't know what to call it.
00:55:21
Speaker 1: And now the research has gotten to the point where we're identifying it more and realize it's a spectrum. So that includes even more people under the autism spectrum.
00:55:30
Speaker 5: Yes, that's exactly right. Through a myriad of scientific research, we've found out why people that are shy and serotonin behave in the way they do. why people shy in dopamine behave in the way they do. So yes, we can supplement pharmacologically, but we also then have to, once we've done that, we then have to look at these habits that are formed. And these habits play out in everything we do. They play out in the relationships that we have. They play out in how we are at work with our bosses, with our employees, and they also play out in our health. Why is it that
we know that we should lose weight yet somehow just can't? What are those resistances from? So that's where the behavioral aspect comes in.
00:56:24
Speaker 2: Can we start then using this to profile?
00:56:25
Speaker 1: You know, for example, someone who is a, I don't know, like a mass shooter, do they tend to be dopamine or serotonin deficient?
00:56:34
Speaker 2: Can you categorize that or is it too general?
00:56:36
Speaker 7: No.
00:56:37
Speaker 5: Again, it's another very smart question. These things, people tend to be more dopamine deficient. To be that aggressive and to be that outwardly aggressive and to lack empathy in order to shoot or kill somebody, these people tend to be shy in their dopamine system.
00:57:00
Speaker 2: Okay.
00:57:01
Speaker 1: And then that would be treated with a chemical. We talked about the chemical intervention element of this.
00:57:07
Speaker 2: It's Dr.
00:57:08
Speaker 1: David Kipper on the show, by the way. override, discover your brain type, why you do what you do, how to do it better. It's really cool information here that you're either dopamine or serotonin deficient. And we've talked about that in that regard. But what's the percentage of the population that's that? Are there more normal people who are well-balanced with dopamine and serotonin versus those who aren't?
00:57:28
Speaker 5: Oh, we like to think that we're all normal people. But all of us do sort out into one of these two groups. We're all hybrids. So we're not all strictly dopamine deficient or serotonin deficient, but there is one predominant deficiency that plays out in our behavior. Again, dopamine deficient people are the more outgoing, aggressive, curious, risk tolerant. They tend to be people that need immediate gratification. They're people that in general, when they're angry, you know they're angry. And this is also a group that tends to make rather impulsive and quick decisions, not always right. I'm on that team. And then there are the serotonin deficient people, and they're more cautious. They're the opposite. They have social anxiety. They have They worry the most. They can't fall asleep at night because they lay awake worrying about things. They tend to solve their problems far more meticulously. Their decision-making is different. They tend to be right most of the time. They are not like the dopamine group where dopamine groups are multitasking. They're starting five different projects at once. They may finish one of them. The serotonin group will start one project, see it through, and move on to the next. So these behaviors are very specific.
00:59:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's tough.
00:59:04
Speaker 1: I think I probably relate more, identify more as a serotonin deficient, but there's elements of the dopamine deficiency involved.
00:59:10
Speaker 2: I'm deficient in both. Can I be deficient in both?
00:59:13
Speaker 5: Yes, as I said, we're all hybrids, but there is one group, one neurotransmitter group that sort of prevails in how we ultimately cope with stress in our lives.
00:59:26
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:59:28
Speaker 1: And when you see that, OK, you mentioned that typically mass shooters and the like. Does stress, what does stress do is an outside influence, right? Now, you're born how you're born. Your brain chemistry is wired how it is. We know that certainly your brain chemistry changes through stimuli. But throughout your life, there's different things that are happening and changing and in flux. And that then must influence your blame. Can you flip from a dopamine to a serotonin resistant person and vice versa?
00:59:55
Speaker 5: No, but your deficiency can get worse. And you asked, again, a very smart question, how does stress influence all this? When we are stressed, we're producing cortisol, which is the stress hormone. And the cortisol activates all of our systems to be fight or flight, ready to respond. And the cortisol that gets released causes more pronounced symptoms behavioral expressions of these two different deficiency syndromes. So somebody, for instance, that is more serotonin deficient, has some social anxiety, and you invite that person to a social gathering where there aren't a lot of familiar faces, that person is going to release a lot of cortisol. They're very stressed, aggravating and intensifying their Those behaviors, they're characteristic of the serotonin deficiency that they have. So it makes their ability to respond behaviorally much worse. So it accentuates all of these innate behaviors. Gotcha.
01:01:06
Speaker 1: So there's those influences outside the stressors, the external stressors that also impact it.
01:01:11
Speaker 2: And then there are ones you can't control.
01:01:12
Speaker 1: Like, for example, here in Cincinnati, we got a good four months where we see the sun, generally speaking. What about that seasonal affective disorder? We heard about that and moodiness and depression. Is that factor in as well here?
01:01:24
Speaker 5: Yes, it absolutely does. And seasonal affective disorder tends to actually affect more of the serotonin group. There's less sunlight. There's stress just from the holiday season that happens in the winter. The less sunlight, the less people are active. So there are a number of factors that happen in the winter that accentuate these behaviors. And people that have a tendency towards anxiety and depression are far worse during the winter months.
01:02:02
Speaker 2: Gotcha. It's Dr.
01:02:04
Speaker 1: David Kipper on the show this morning on 700 WLW. Override, discover your brain type, why you do what you do, and how to do it better. Two types of brains, a dopamine deficient, serotonin deficient. Now, you can have a combination or hybrid, as the doctor said, but generally, you know, we're one or the other, and there's a way to identify and then eventually treat that. Outside of drugs and pharmacological interventions, what do you do treatment-wise for stuff like that?
01:02:28
Speaker 5:
So, again, behavioral therapy. Behavioral issues. Let's take somebody that is dopamine deficient and they tend to, and let's use anger as one of their, which is one of their issues, their impulse issues. They can't control their impulses as well. And these are the people, again, when they're angry, you know about it. So something angers or stresses or upsets that person that is dopamine deficient. they react immediately. It just comes right out. They can't control it. Behaviorally, we teach these people how they should count to 10. We give them some tools. They're all in the book about how you can actually sit back, process this anger before you do something rash or you do something that you're going to regret later. People that are serotonin deficient, if something angers them, They tend to bury it. It doesn't come out. You don't really know that they're angry until they reach a certain threshold and then stand back. So we teach these people how to be a little more risk tolerant, how to be a little bit more outgoing and how to tolerate a little bit more of that discomfort. And it all really boils down, Scott, to allowing your system to be a little uncomfortable. And there are different strategies in the book that allow us to do this and change these habits very slowly to take the while to change these habits. But we give people a blueprint on how to do this.
01:04:05
Speaker 1: What's the long-term consequences of living with this as you get older? I'm trying to think as you age, you get that mental brain fog thing going on.
01:04:13
Speaker 2: Is that all related to what we're talking about here?
01:04:16
Speaker 5: So as we age, aging itself is a stressor. And so we absolutely do get, I would say, worse in these behavioral patterns. So it's just a matter of recognizing it and understanding it. The beauty of this book is that it's going to give the reader an understanding of why they behave the way they behave, where it comes from scientifically. And then we can tailor these strategies to help those people understand reorient their behavioral reactions to stress. If you think of a self-help book and you walk and you're reading this book because you want to lose weight, well, the therapies and the strategies for this are all generic. This is why there are so many self-help books that actually don't really survive. It's a different way to look at this. This is far more personalized. And it really does give you these behaviors. For instance, let's talk about weight. Somebody that is dopamine deficient, they eat to stimulate themselves. They eat in order to stay healthy. alert and in the game. People that are overweight at serotonin in that group, they eat to soothe their bad feelings. So when they're uncomfortable, they eat. When the dopamine people eat, they're trying to stimulate. So you have to teach both groups a different way to strategize behavioral change.
01:05:56
Speaker 1: Sounds like the dopamine group has more an addictive behavior. Would you find that true that people who may be addicted to substances or things of the such matter?
01:06:05
Speaker 5: Very, very smart question. People that are addicted to people in the dopamine group, they're seeking dopamine. So they're addicted to stimulants, methamphetamine, cocaine, cigarettes, caffeine, sugar, people in the serotonin group. tend to find their addictions more in the calming substances like alcohol and opiates. So the drugs that we abuse or the substances that we seek are actually looking for us. They're finding us. We're not finding them.
01:06:43
Speaker 2: Fascinating. Dr.
01:06:45
Speaker 1: David Kipper, Override, Discover Your Brain Type, Why You Do What You Do, How to Do It Better. That's fascinating, and it sounds like it's one of those rare things that's actually going to help people figure out who they are at their core. All the best, David Kipper. We've got to get to a news update. And David Kipper in for Julie Hattershire. Mental Health Monday returns next week at this time as Julie's on vacation, getting a little mental health day in herself.
01:07:05
Speaker 8: 700-WLW.
01:07:10
Speaker 1: Welcome back on 700 WLW Homestretch here on this Monday morning. We are filling up the equipment. You're filling up your truck. You're filling up. You're filling up. And gas prices still continue to be over $ 4 a gallon.
01:07:22
Speaker 2: Diesel much higher, obviously.
01:07:23
Speaker 1: We're talking about suspending the gas tax across the Buckeye State for 90 days and also banning exports of a diesel and maybe getting rid of the tax there as well.
01:07:32
Speaker 2: Who the hell knows?
01:07:33
Speaker 1: If this is going to do anything. And we're not quite sure if that's going to lower prices or not. Someone who has the answers on this, she is a trade attorney, founding and managing partner of the Schultz Trade Law Firm. She's Michelle Schultz back on the show.
01:07:45
Speaker 2: Michelle, welcome.
01:07:46
Speaker 6: How are you?
01:07:47
Speaker 8: Thank you.
01:07:48
Speaker 7: Thanks for having me back.
01:07:49
Speaker 2: Sure.
01:07:50
Speaker 1: Gas prices going down any day, any day now. These prices are going to come down. I saw that the White House, there's a Politico report that came out about what's going on with diesel right now and whether or not we're going to ban exports. And the Treasury says a full or partial ban is still on the table. What's really going on here?
01:08:11
Speaker 7: Well, it's really up in the air. I think that there is so much pushback that we may not see a ban on diesel. That's just my suspicion. But essentially, diesel has never cost this much before. We're up to $ 6. 52 average for a gallon at the pump. And that was last week. So several lawmakers were proposing that we put a ban on exports of diesel. That would be for 90 days.
01:08:45
Speaker 3: Yeah.
01:08:45
Speaker 1: Now, here in Ohio, we're talking about 98 ban on the tax. This would be a federal ban on exports. So we
just wouldn't export it at all. And well, I guess I'd brag about this as an attorney. What legal authority is the president used to ban diesel exports? Is that within his purview and executive privilege?
01:09:04
Speaker 7: It probably will fall under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or at least that's what they will cite most likely. That is the act that was used for the tariffs. statute that covers exports from the U.S. So when we have export controls, the IEPA controls that and the Export Administration Regulations, the U.S. government is allowed to place restrictions for things like short supply or national security under the Export Administration Regulations. So it's possible this could happen.
01:09:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, but someone may say national security, that's– I mean you could stretch it to Iran, but we started that, and this is what happens when you do those things. And so this certainly would– not that anyone feels it, but it hurts exporters of diesel and production as well to keep it in-house.
01:09:58
Speaker 2: I don't know the long play. Does it actually lower the costs?
01:10:03
Speaker 7: Not in the long term, no. And that's where it gets confusing. There's a lot of talk about short-term savings, and there may be a short-term decrease in the price of diesel. However, long term, the price would certainly spike. We're going to see more diesel here in the U.S., and exports would be decreased. which essentially is going to increase prices long term, increase transportation costs. Those would spike and we would have issues with production and storage here in the U.S.
01:10:44
Speaker 1: I'd imagine this would get challenged in court. Who would have standing there? Would it be refiners? Would it be exporters, foreign buyers?
01:10:50
Speaker 2: Who winds up taking this on?
01:10:53
Speaker 7: I expect it would be exporters that would take it on. The U.S. exporters need those exports and they've relied on them for years. And we haven't seen a ban like this in 10 years or more. So exporters probably will speak out. And I imagine they will dealing with exporters on a daily basis like this. I hear that they are not happy with the concept of additional restrictions on exports.
01:11:21
Speaker 2: What's their beef? What's their argument?
01:11:23
Speaker 1: Because, you know, obviously, you feel like it's anti-business, anti-ola, anti-capitalism.
01:11:31
Speaker 2: Is that essentially the crux of their argument?
01:11:33
Speaker 7: Yes, exactly.
01:11:35
Speaker 5: The U.S.
01:11:35
Speaker 7: Is the largest exporter of diesel in the world. And we export $ 1. 4 million in barrels a day.
01:11:41
Speaker 3: So....
01:11:45
Speaker 7: This is really one of our major exports. I'm here in Texas where oil and gas are the center of most everything. And the oil and gas business would be impacted long term. Diesel may be costing farmers and truckers more now, but I don't think they're going to be willing to take a short term savings in exchange for long term. I would say long term setback.
01:12:13
Speaker 6: Yeah.
01:12:14
Speaker 1: So you mentioned farmers and the like. What about off-road diesel? And for those who don't know, it's essentially the same fuel as you would put in your truck for on the road. But if you're in construction, I'm talking about the big equipment here, not filling up a, you know, if you're a landscape or something like that, probably not. But You know, you're doing a big construction project with graders and earth movers and things like that, farmers with combines and more. That diesel is dyed red. Same diesel, they just put red dye in it, meaning if you're caught driving it on the highway... you pay a huge penalty because it's illegal. You don't pay taxes. There's no tax on that. Would this whole thing just essentially then force more of an underground market that people who have access to the off-road diesel will just start using it to fill their road vehicles and say, hey, if you catch me, I'll pay the fine, but you're probably not going to catch me.
01:13:05
Speaker 7: You know, that is such a great point because what I see in every aspect of trade that's currently being restricted is there's more and more effort to circumvent the rules. And that's one thing that I deal with every day. So I can imagine that folks will try to find other ways to obtain diesel. They'll try workarounds and they'll try to not get caught. I think that's a great point.
01:13:31
Speaker 1: No, I mean, I think it's like a thousand dollar fine. But, you know, if I did that for at this rate for a few months, as much as much diesel as you use, if you're in the trades or you're a farmer, I'd take that risk.
01:13:41
Speaker 2: Wouldn't you?
01:13:42
Speaker 7: Oh, yeah, I would. I actually would.
01:13:45
Speaker 1: You probably already are. I'd take that gamble. It's a thousand bucks. That's like two tanks of gas. And, you know, you do this, and now I start thinking about it, it's like now you've got this whole black market that probably develops in rural areas. Some people are like, hey, I'll buy the diesel and start selling it for pennies on the dime. You know, I make money and... Yeah, I don't know if that's a thing or not. You're only talking maybe 70 cents is the margin here, or a couple bucks is the margin. But nonetheless, I mean, you've now created this whole thing. So she is Michelle Schultz. She's a trade attorney out of Texas, and we're talking about the political report that came out that said the administration is preparing to ban diesel exports for 90 days, kind of like our gas tax holiday in Ohio that's going to go any day now. They're going to vote on this thing as legislators come back to vote on this thing. So 90-day tax... suspension for gases on the table but so is a 90-day ban on exports of diesel uh now you know it may not survive a court fight constitutionally but secretary of energy uh right is floating a and this is cleaner i think legally
speaking he's floating a plan where uh it'd be it'd be a voluntary restriction but even at first blush um if if exporters And producers then get together and say, OK, well, we voluntarily not export.
01:15:09
Speaker 2: Is that an antitrust violation? Does it work that way?
01:15:13
Speaker 7: I would think so.
01:15:14
Speaker 5: Yes.
01:15:14
Speaker 7: And then you're going to see antitrust lawsuits coming out. So, you know, it seems to me that that was sort of a walk back of the initial idea for a complete ban, because I've heard the administration go back and forth. They've said, well, this isn't really going to happen. It's fake news.
01:15:31
Speaker 9: It's fake.
01:15:32
Speaker 7: Uh, but then they come back and say that, you know, well, they have been discussing it. So, uh, I, you know, I think it may not really happen, but there's been so much back and forth that I think they kind of walked it back and said, Hey, uh, well, we may make it voluntary.
01:15:49
Speaker 1: Hmm. Yeah, I mean, this is as old as politics itself is you throw something out like there and you see what the reaction is. And if people lose their mind, you blame you say it's fake news, basically. But but a plan B is it's not exclusive to to this administration. I mean, Democrats, Republicans doing that kind of thing for a long time, leaking something out and go, oh.
01:16:08
Speaker 2: You're out of your mind. What about Mexico and Canada?
01:16:10
Speaker 1: They're huge buyers here. What happens if we cut them off? Because now we're talking about the North American trade fair.
01:16:17
Speaker 7: Oh, yeah. There are two biggest trading partners, and we've already damaged the relationship with Canada, obviously. So we have really cut our own exports down already by interfering with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Free Trade Agreement and by imposing tariffs on Canada, which caused them to impose retaliatory tariffs. Now, if we ban diesel... we're going to see an even greater reduction in exports, and we need exports. That's the trade surplus, and that's where if we have more imports than exports, we're going to end up in a deficit.
01:17:00
Speaker 2: Yeah. She is Michelle Schultz.
01:17:02
Speaker 1: She's a trade attorney, and talking about the proposal here, or I guess the leaked proposal, that the administration is contemplating a 90-day moratorium on diesel exports to allegedly save us money, but does it because if you think through this thing, a ban. OK, so we may fill some storage. But if you're a producer now, you don't have to produce as much. And ultimately, down the line, doesn't that actually raise diesel prices or am I.
01:17:27
Speaker 2: Wrong about that?
01:17:29
Speaker 7: You're absolutely right. Down the line, the prices would go up. So this would be a very short term gain.
01:17:36
Speaker 1: Like short term, as you mean, just getting through the November midterm elections, because that wouldn't be driving this at all, would it?
01:17:43
Speaker 7: No no
no no no not at all no.
01:17:48
Speaker 1: No that just is that is that coming up already oh my god yeah no that is nothing that i didn't even see that on the kiln no one's been talking about that um it is something else how about that um so the refining as we know is on the gulf coast and the gulf coast is huge uh can these living get from let's say i don't know texas where you are or um Anywhere around there to Ohio or the East Coast efficiently if it can't go overseas?
01:18:17
Speaker 7: If they can't go overseas, we're going to see a problem because Texas, for example, is the largest exporting state. And that's because we're big on oil and gas. We have aerospace as well, but oil and gas would be one of our primary exports from Texas. So, yeah, if you see... If you see a ban on diesel, we're going to have higher prices. We're going to have less trade with other countries and they will work around us, just like you were mentioning. that individuals and companies may work around the rules themselves.
01:18:54
Speaker 1: Yeah and and um you know again this is russia's been doing this for quite some time banning its diesel exports in july because the war is such and so now we're stealing a copy out of out of moscow's play playbook um I guess in the long term, I guess they'd be more concerned about what this what this means for our allies at this point. As you mentioned, Canada, our biggest partner, Mexico, is there as well. And this to me is, you know, it's another I get why they're doing it. It's about the midterm elections, but we're cutting off our nose to save our face.
01:19:25
Speaker 7: Exactly. And that's what I'm seeing in trade. I'm seeing it in real time every day with real companies. where the Canadians are just saying, hey, I'm going to go somewhere else. And I had a case like that last week where they were asking about sourcing and the Canadian tariffs were posing such a problem. The company just decided to go somewhere else for sourcing. So that's going to continue. And we'll see more and more of that. We're seeing free trade agreements made without us. and exports happening from other countries. So we're going to shoot ourselves in the foot if we do this.
01:20:02
Speaker 1: All right, Michelle, what do you say to a truck driver, for example, listening to the show? Diesel here in Ohio, I think it's close to seven bucks a gallon, high sixes. Realistically, but a trucker in Hamilton, Butler, Warren, Claremont County, will they see any relief in 90 days if we did this thing immediately?
01:20:20
Speaker 7: I would say they may see some short-term relief, but The bigger problem for truckers is the tariffs because the tariffs are impacting every single aspect of transportation. And long term, this will be an increase in cost. So don't be fooled by the short term. I would keep my eye on the ball with those tariffs. That's what's increasing the price of transportation overall. And it's going to be increasing transportation by every mode.
01:20:51
Speaker 2: Well, I get the idea in initial.
01:20:53
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, let's see how this thing plays out when we started issuing the tariffs because of the large trade imbalance we have in America and the manufacturers getting screwed.
01:21:00
Speaker 2: I feel that. I understand that.
01:21:03
Speaker 1: Now that we've been doing this for quite some time, why doesn't it feel like that that is the successful strategy or the strategy we were sold anyway?
01:21:12
Speaker 7: It's because the U.S. exporter under the Code of Federal Regulations, the U.S. importer, I'm sorry, the U.S. importer is legally responsible for paying the tariffs. So what I think folks didn't understand in the beginning is this is not a tax on a foreign country by any means. We've got U.S. companies paying now sometimes double the tariffs that they paid before. And so it's not what it was initially presented to be. It's not a savings that we're getting from other countries. It's a tax we're collecting from our own people.
01:21:49
Speaker 9: Right.
01:21:50
Speaker 1: And when the federal government gets all this money back from other countries, which we've never seen before, it's not trickling down to us. I mean, it may go to companies, but they're largely keeping it and putting it towards our bottom line. It's not coming down to the consumer level.
01:22:04
Speaker 10: Right.
01:22:05
Speaker 7: Exactly. And companies may be able to keep their prices down a bit more if they can save this money. But it has been quite a process, even claiming refunds. There have been some delays and A lot of companies have received refunds, but many haven't just just because of technicality.
01:22:23
Speaker 1: Final point on this, Michelle, if you're advising the White House, what would you do? Nothing at this point. You go, hey, listen, this is not fixable because of terrorists, because of what's happening with Iran right now. It may sound good to ban exports of diesel to lower prices in the short term and probably wouldn't go down that much. But clearly, that's not the play in your mind. Is there one available here?
01:22:44
Speaker 7: In my mind, we need to increase exports. And if I were in the White House, which maybe I shouldn't be, but we should continue to increase exports because that's how the U.S. makes money. We should not be restricting exports. And We're also restricting imports at the same time. So I would pivot from this. I would not do this 90-day ban. I would not focus on, oh, now let's restrict imports. I'd focus on fixing the tariff problem.
01:23:19
Speaker 5: Yeah.
01:23:19
Speaker 1: She is trade attorney Michelle Schultz of the Schultz Trade Law Firm in Texas, who's literally right in the middle of this fight over oil prices and, in this case, whether or not the United States should ban the export of diesel for 90 days. A whole host of laws there preventing that from happening, but this hasn't stopped anyone in the past, of course, regardless
of where they are. And the relief would be very short-lived, minimal, but short-lived. Long-term effects would actually drive the cost of diesel up significantly. But, of course, this is about getting elected and reelected at the midterms and not about anything in the real world where we live, unfortunately.
01:23:52
Speaker 2: Michelle, all the best. Thanks again.
01:23:53
Speaker 7: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
01:23:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, take care.
01:23:57
Speaker 1: Great to catch up with you. Thanks, thanks, thanks, thanks. Hoping for some relief here. It makes me want to go out and get me some of that red diesel. If you got a hookup for me, call 513-749-6255.
01:24:08
Speaker 2: I'd never do that. That's illegal. How about Austin Elmore? We'll talk Bengals. They lose.
01:24:13
Speaker 1: But what did we learn from that loss? That's just ahead here on Scott Sloan Show 700. We'll get a news update in momentarily. Bengals lose yesterday. Not in necessarily dramatic fashion, but maybe playing down to a division opponent. Learn from that and you move forward. To me, it's going to happen. It happens to good teams. But we'll see what happens next weekend. That's the question. as the rest of the league catches up to your playbook in about week three or four. Scott Sloan Show, home of the best Bengals coverage, 700-WLW.
01:24:48
Speaker 10: Close to three and oh you can taste it and then they uh strip sack the final seconds of the game in pittsburgh and the steelers hang the l on the bengals he's our buddy as you can tell by the music austin elmore from espn 1530 since he 360 and of course pre post game and all that to break down what were wrong for the bengals what went right and whether this is a blip or a smoke signal of something to come audie what's going on big sexy.
01:25:17
Speaker 2: Hello, Scott.
01:25:18
Speaker 9: It's disappointing not to be joining you on a Victory Monday because, you know, the coffee tastes better on Mondays after a Bengals win.
01:25:25
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
01:25:26
Speaker 9: And I thought Burrow and the boys, the way they had played on offense all day long, getting the ball with an opportunity to go down there and steal a win that you didn't really deserve in Pittsburgh. I'm thinking, okay, we got this. This is going to be just another win for the Bengals or a big moment for this team. And unfortunately... The offensive line gave up their only sack of the day, and it was a sack that caused Joe Burrow to fumble, maybe trying to do a little bit too much. And that was a gut punch because they were in field goal range, and it felt like they had a little bit of momentum in that second half. Just a frustrating, frustrating game for this team.
01:26:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Dalton Reisner, who has been fine, and all of a sudden he surrenders that strip sack. And they had kept Burrow clean all day until that final play of the game, and it just so happened. that it was for all the marbles at that point, took the
knee and a one out Pittsburgh scored four times, three touchdowns in their first five possessions. They looked like they, they were in pretty good form there. Does it, does this one sting for us because more of how close it was close this literally this close to three, you know, or is it more than, well, you know, if you're an older Bengal fantasy, same old Bengals, they find a way to, you know, not play well against Pittsburgh and the division opponent you want to lose too.
01:26:40
Speaker 2: Cause now everyone in the division is tied.
01:26:43
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean, it stings because you lose to an AFC North team and you had a chance to be in first place waking up this morning. And losing to the Steelers is always something that sucks for Bengals fans. But I think you could also make the argument that it's scaring the Bengals fans because that defense looked like the defense from 2024 and 2025. I mean, everybody that we talked to, we talked to Brooke Pryor from ESPN covering the Steelers. We talked to Ross Tucker, who was on the game call for CBS. And everybody we talked to and listened to over the course of the week was like, this Steelers offense stinks and they are not going to be able to do anything against the Bengals defense. And it was like, you would have thought like Steelers fans and people covering the Steelers would have been happy if they scored 10 points against the Bengals. And for them to just kind of do whatever they wanted, Aaron Rodgers was threw for three touchdowns in a game for the first time since, you guessed it, the last time he played the Bengals last season. They didn't get any pressure on the quarterback. They didn't stop the run. They missed tackles. It looked like the Bengals' defense of the last couple of years, and that, I think, is the most concerning part because I think Bengals fans are waking up this morning and then yesterday after the game and thinking, all right, did we get bamboozled through the first couple of games? Is this defense actually not as improved as we thought it would be? And I think it raises a lot of questions.
01:28:10
Speaker 1: Austin Allen, ESPN 1530, about the Bengals' loss yesterday in Pittsburgh.
01:28:14
Speaker 2: The entire division now tied.
01:28:16
Speaker 1: It's a multiple-way tie for first place, which is how we want you to hopefully go up yet another game and run the table. Burrow said he was trying to take a shot at the end zone. But that's easily in McPherson's range. Should we have been thinking field goal there or is hindsight 20-20?
01:28:32
Speaker 9: No, I think you're going for the win. And Zach said that after the game. Joe said that after the game. They're going down there to try to win. They had time. They had the timeout. it was on their side to be able to do it and then especially on that end of the field that's the open end at accresure stadium where there can be a bit of a crosswind and you know the reporter on tv was saying that it was a little bit of a crosswind in that scenario driving at the beginning of that drive So you want to get McPherson as close as you can. Yeah, you're confident in him. He's made 20 straight field goals. He looked good yesterday. But you want to still push the ball down the field because the Bengals had a little bit of success at doing that. Like I said, they had protected Joe pretty well for most of the day. And so you felt confident in being able to do that. And then it was a really good bull rush, got up underneath Dalton Reisner by Derek Harmon of Pittsburgh. And Joe, I think, was trying to do a little bit too much. I think with that mentality of trying to drive down the field and win the game, he was thinking that, thinking that, thinking that as opposed to, okay, maybe we just take the sack here. Let me just go down. We'll call the timeout. We'll start over and maybe we'll try to go for the field goal then.
01:29:36
Speaker 2: And, you know, it.
01:29:38
Speaker 9: Sucks because it so much felt like the last two years where Joe Burrow had to be perfect. And if he wasn't perfect, if he makes one mistake, it costs them the game. And that's exactly what happened. Like, Yeah, there was the muffed punt from Keyshawn Williams. There was the dumb roughing the punter and why they even called a punt block to begin with.
01:29:55
Speaker 2: I don't know.
01:29:56
Speaker 9: There were two penalties in the red zone that took points off the board for this team. And yet Joe Burrow makes the mistake at the end of the game that ultimately ends up costing him. And it's just frustrating because I think a lot of people turned to Burrow. At least I saw it on my social media yesterday, which I don't quite understand. A lot of people blaming Zach Taylor as well. At the beginning of that drive, yes, I would be upset with Zach Taylor. He also didn't decline a penalty in the red zone. It ended up working out. But Zach Taylor didn't muff the punt. Zach Taylor didn't rough the punter. Zach Taylor didn't have a false start penalty. Zach Taylor didn't get blown up. Ultimately, it comes down to they did not play complimentary football yesterday, and it was a myriad of self-inflicted wounds that came back to bite them in the biggest moments.
01:30:41
Speaker 1: I watched parallel games yesterday. Of course, being a Bills fan, I watched that, and then fortunately, the outcome there was much better. They did beat the Chargers, but It was almost the same thing, even worse, actually, because of the number of turnovers, just the constant mistakes. And for the defense to actually bail them out, that didn't happen in Pittsburgh yesterday because Aaron Rodgers looked like Green Bay Aaron Rodgers.
01:31:01
Speaker 2: I think the Bills are a good comparison.
01:31:03
Speaker 9: And I said this during the Bengals game yesterday on my Twitter, which is like good teams, great teams find a way to win a game when you don't have your best stuff. The defensive line, they were not getting enough pressure on
Aaron Rodgers. They weren't tackling very well. The Steelers had gashed them on a couple of times, and yet they were in position to win the game. I don't care how it looks. Just win the game and we'll figure it out from there. And Buffalo is a perfect example of that. They looked horrible at the beginning of that game. They turned the ball over a bunch of times. They came out a little bit flat, not to mention they actually physically looked horrible with those uniforms. And all this is kind of going in the wrong direction for Buffalo, and yet they get up off the mat and they find a way to win. That's a step that this team has to take. And Duke Tobin talked about that kind of towards the beginning of this offseason when he met with the media on Duke Tobin Day in January. It's like, we've got to find ways to finish games. And finish has been a theme. And that's a perfect example right there of like, okay, we came out a little bit flat. We came out a little bit slow, but we're in this game. Let's get off the mat and find a way to win.
01:32:07
Speaker 2: And they didn't do that yet.
01:32:08
Speaker 1: Okay, so the defense looked like a different unit than we did in the first two weeks. Was Pittsburgh's game plan that good, or was it just an off day, but... If it's off day, I guess we will not know until a week from this time.
01:32:21
Speaker 9: Well, I would love to know, you know, I would love to just say that, oh, Pittsburgh got the ball out quick and they took advantage of space and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
01:32:28
Speaker 2: But that's not true.
01:32:29
Speaker 9: I mean, Aaron Rodgers held the ball for a long time and was able to push the ball downfield. And, you know, what's even more discouraging about that is that Pittsburgh totally reworked their offensive line, started a rookie at tackle, had new guys in a guard. Like there was just, it had been really bad for them through the first couple of weeks. They made changes and to their credit, their changes worked. I don't think there was a single snap that Dexter Lawrence wasn't double-teamed, so they were trying to take him out of the game, and the other guys just weren't winning enough. Didn't hear much from Miles Murphy. Cassius Howell only played 25 snaps. Shamar Stewart didn't play a single snap, which was a little bit puzzling. He had played five snaps and gotten a sack last week against Houston. And so at the end of the day, for me, it was they weren't putting enough pressure on Aaron Rodgers, and they were getting gashed in the run game because– Dexter Lawrence, really, I mean, I think Dexter played fine. He had two sacks, but it's hard when you're getting double teamed every single play, you need somebody else to go make a play. And it didn't feel like that happened on the defensive line. And I think that was the biggest reason. And on top of that, I mean, I do think Pittsburgh had a good plan for attacking the linebackers, getting out into the flats, trying to force the Bengals to make tackles on Darnell Washington, who's a 900 pound tight end. Nobody can tackle him, not just the Bengals. And so it was an issue. And they just looked more like themselves. And Jalen Warren caused a bunch of missed tackles. That dude came into this game hurt with a bum shoulder and he had 17 carries for 120 yards or something like that. Like it's just unacceptable.
01:34:00
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you about the Jalen Warren thing and a guy who's playing hurt to gashes you for a hundred plus.
01:34:07
Speaker 2: How concerning is a run defense?
01:34:10
Speaker 9: Yeah, that's my biggest thing is like, what did Pittsburgh do that other teams will now try to emulate? And how did the Bengals respond to that? you just don't want that. You don't want to get two and two, obviously. Now the schedule works out for them. They play some teams, you know, that, that they are better than including Miami. And then we'll see how things look against Baltimore who stole one yesterday over the Dallas Cowboys. But like you, you need to be able, like we've talked a lot about in the past, like instead of just trying to get to 10 and seven or get to 11 and six and get that last wildcard spot.
01:34:44
Speaker 2: You want to win the AFC North. You want to have a home playoff game. You want to be talking about seeding.
01:34:49
Speaker 9: And, you know, I know it's really early to be having those conversations, but these games, like Jacksonville, like Pittsburgh, are going to be critical to getting to where you want to go, and you can't have self-inflicted mistakes that take you out of contention.
01:35:03
Speaker 5: 100%.
01:35:03
Speaker 1: Austin Elmore later today at ESPN 1530, Cincy 360. Of course, pre-post game here on the home of the best Bengals coverage, 700 WLW. He's definitely working today because he's got to pay for golf balls.
01:35:17
Speaker 2: That's very true. What's the golf ball budget, buddy?
01:35:19
Speaker 8: Oh, my gosh.
01:35:21
Speaker 2: Oh, my gosh. We played Saturday. Me, Brian Combs, Rick Uccino.
01:35:24
Speaker 1: And I'll be honest, for a guy who hasn't played in a year, by the back nine, dude, you were great.
01:35:29
Speaker 2: Rick Uccino, there's no hope. You know, I give Rick a lot of credit. He was hurt. He played hurt.
01:35:33
Speaker 9: The dude, he was banged up, and he knew that he was going to be paying for it. I still don't understand his stance. I don't understand the way he holds the club. I don't understand the position to the golf ball. I told him at one point, he reminded me of Charles Barkley when Barkley.
01:35:47
Speaker 2: Was really going through it. No, you could call him Prince Fielder. It was great.
01:35:50
Speaker 9: He did look like Prince Fielder when he would swing. Prince would have that big, big follow through. I'll tell you what, I was proud of the way my irons played after not swinging a golf club in a year, as you mentioned. Flat stick got hot for a little bit. I'm nasty on the par threes. That sort of stuff makes me feel good. That's what brings you coming back. To the game of golf.
01:36:12
Speaker 3: Yeah.
01:36:13
Speaker 2: Yeah.
01:36:14
Speaker 5: Right. Yeah.
01:36:14
Speaker 1: And Rick Uccino was like Pittsburgh's running back, except the fact that the Steelers won. Anyway, later today, ESPN 1530.
01:36:22
Speaker 2: Audie, thanks, buddy. Appreciate you.
01:36:24
Speaker 9: Thank you, Scott.
01:36:25
Speaker 1: Scott Sloan Show. This is the home of the best Bengals coverage. Jacksonville next week. Circle that one.
01:36:30
Speaker 2: 700-WW since now.