What does Friday the 13th mean to you? For us, a quick reference back to a classic Lawyer Talk episode.

Ohio legislators are back to life with their push for a state board of education as a cabinet post, a push again for a higher general public amendment vote.

What is going on within OH GOP in the House of Representatives? The speaker is now Jason Stevens rather than Derek Marrin. Ohio Republican Party censures GOP lawmakers who backed the new House speaker and those that voted against Derek Marrin.

Should there be more political parties? Some say yes with all this split going on. But chaos within a political party is sometimes a good thing.

The Ohio budget proposal for the fiscal year is due from Governor Mike DeWine by the end of January. It could be as large as 2600 pages. As a reference, the federal budget is 4000 pages. What makes Ohio's budget so large? One item for sure - 37% of Cuyahoga County (Cleveland area) are Medicaid recipients, so a large part of the budget is on social spending.

One of many new Ohio laws - occupational licensure, Ohio House Bill 509. We talk about pros and cons, and one con being the state of Ohio doesn't get the reciprocity we do of other states.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and "double dipping," collecting additional income with a current pension. Democrats are calling foul, but Yost is not alone. 12,000 other Ohio employees are doing the same.

Stephen Palmer is the Managing Partner for the law firm, Palmer Legal Defense. He has specialized almost exclusively in criminal defense for over 26 years. Steve is also a partner in Criminal Defense Consultants, a firm focused wholly on helping criminal defense attorneys design winning strategies for their clients.

Norm Murdock is an automobile racing driver and owner of a high-performance and restoration car parts company. He earned undergraduate degrees in literature and journalism and graduated with a Juris Doctor from the University of Cincinnati College of Law in 1985. He worked in the IT industry for two years before launching a career in government relations in Columbus, Ohio. Norm has assisted clients in the Transportation, Education, Healthcare, and Public Infrastructure sectors.

Brett Johnson is an award-winning podcast consultant and small business owner for nearly 10 years, leaving a long career in radio. He is passionate about helping small businesses tell their story through podcasts, and he believes podcasting is a great opportunity for different voices to speak and be heard.

info@commonsenseohioshow.com

Recorded at the 511 Studios, in the Brewery District in downtown Columbus, OH.

Copyright 2024 Common Sense Ohio

Steve: What could be scarier, what could be spookier, what could be creepier than having common sense, Ohio on Friday the 13th? But the show must go on. We can't continue it. We can't push it. We've got to take it on. Our table is round, not that that matters. Almost like some sort of seance table over there.

Brett: I forgot the candles.

Norm: Shoot.

Steve: No. So here we are. Common sense. Ohio. Friday the 13th. So we look do I believe in Friday 13th? I believe that it is Friday the 13th. Now, I have had in another show in the studio, a, uh, true, full blown, professional paid psychic. So anybody wants to go? I, uh, guess mine, uh, the depths of my old lawyer talk episode. You'll find a Halloween episode where we had a local psychic come in here and, uh, I will say it was interesting.

Norm: She did some stuff about the building, right?

Steve: It was it was a he.

Norm: Yeah, he excuse me, but he was.

Steve: Able to he said some stuff that, uh I think my breakdown at that time was this about 30% of it was gibberish, like cosmic forces. And there's this place, like everybody I mean, it was all just gibberish, like memorized rhetoric. 30% was him, uh, sending out fish hooks, looking for or fish nets, looking for ways, uh, to see if we would respond. And then he could grab onto it and then look like he was doing something. But another 30% of it I have no explanation for. And one of the things I'll just tell a story, then we get on a Common Sense, because this is not sensible to me. I, uh, was sitting at the table and, uh, I was playing poker. I was like, I'm not saying anything. I'm dead panning this. I'm not going to do anything. He would go on the table and tell us stuff. I, uh, was sort of sitting with my hand on the microphones like I always do, or holding the base of the microphone or something, talking to him. And, uh, he looked at me, goes, what's wrong with your left hand? You got some issue with your left hand? And, uh, at that time now, we had to go back and actually check some episodes to see if I talked about this recently. And I don't think I had, but at that time, I had fallen off the ladder here at the office. And, uh, I had that injury with my wedding ring where it almost cut my finger off. And, uh, it had been healed enough. I mean, it wasn't like you couldn't tell that, uh, I had the injury, but he specifically said my left hand. And, uh, there's a few other things I'm not going to go into. They're sort of private involving, uh, the other guys at the table. But, uh, those were very eerily accurate and, uh, I had no explanation for it. So the dark arts, what do you.

Brett: Call that kind of a guy. Did he call himself a wizard or did he psychic?

Norm: Very good at observation then. What do you think about it? He's just good at observation. Listens or takes it three steps, sort.

Steve: Of cosmic ability that we don't have.

Norm: And who's to say he doesn't?

Brett: Well, the world's very I guess today interesting. I guess today I'll call myself Norm Stro. Damas norm stress.

Steve: One more thing, actually, after that table discussion here on Lawyer Talk, three or four or five months later, he calls, uh, Bill, fornia now deceased. But, uh, you know, he called Bill and, and asked some question that there's no, there was no explicable reason other than he called Bill and said, are you okay? I feel like something's going on in your world. And there was I mean, it's just really weird. Really weird stuff. How do you explain that? Is he just do that to a lot of people and hit and miss?

Brett: Hey, dude. Uh uh, I'm here. Uh, I mean, this is scary. It's Friday 13th. I'm in a lawyer's office. That's spooky.

Steve: Uh, this is a studio.

Brett: I'm going to pack it to be a lawyer office upstairs, I guess. Uh, I'll play with a black cat today. Break a mirror, spill some salt.

Norm: Walk under a ladder.

Brett: Walk under a ladder. I'm going to test the, uh, outer boundaries of North Strodemas. Here Norm Strodamus.

Steve: All right, well, with all that backdrop, here we are, common Sense, Ohio, at the roundtable. Common Senseohioshow.com. If you want to go look it up. And you can get all the episodes, the new and the old right there. You can subscribe wherever you subscribe to your podcast. Apple, Spotify, Google, all the other ones. So, uh, go there, subscribe, uh, lots of stuff to come in the new year. Uh, the tech crew is working, and soon we will have honed and ready to roll a video.

Brett: So mhm, that is my tribute to diamond, who passed away of diamond and Silk this week. Her sister would do all the talking and Lynette, who passed away, otherwise known as diamond, would always respond to her sister with, uh, uh huh. You say it, girl. M and God, they were outstanding.

Steve: Well, diamond irrespective. Uh, we've got this podcast, or we got the website up. Uh, we have already entertained sponsors. We've created a, uh, kit. So if you want to be a sponsor, you better get in line. You better get in line fast, because people are dying to give us their sponsorship dollars, and you should, too. Or, uh, we'll set up some other ways that you can contribute, uh, because you know how much we make to do this show.

Brett: Oh, man, I forgot the chat. I'm backstroking through cash, buddy.

Steve: I have to go. I have to call my accountant and see how many ways can I say zero?

Brett: Uh, because I'm embezzling all the funds.

Steve: Orms get all the checks. They go to Johnstown, they go to intel. But anyway, the show must go on and it's going to go on. And we're doing this not just for the money, and in fact, not for the money at all at this point. We're, uh, doing it because we like to talk about these topics. I don't think others are talking about these topics, certainly not in an Ohio centric way like we are. No, um, they're not. And we uh, are going to corner the market, mark my words. Stick with us. Great things to come in two, two, uh, two three m. All right, so Norm, where are we at?

Brett: Well, uh, basically all of the crazy, um, possibly good there's ups and downsides to these things, but a lot of the legislation that we've been talking about that died at the end of last year has ah, risen from the dead, um, Black Friday 13th Dracula like, uh, or Frankenstein like. I don't know if they um, one way or the other, they put together several uh, bills. Um, the one involving um, the state Board of Education becoming a cabinet post has been reintroduced. Uh, the bill uh, backed by Frank LaRose, secretary, um, of State, to make it more difficult to amend the constitution is back in front of the legislature, uh, to debate whether or not it will be placed on the May primary, uh, uh, ballot. I call it a primary ballot, but it's just the May ballot, um, in the spring ballot for Ohio voters than to consider as an amendment to the constitution, the Ohio Constitution. And we have an ongoing battle, um, between factions, um, not too different from nationally what's happening within the GOP. We have a schism within the Ohio, uh, GOP general, uh, assembly, the House, the state House of Ohio, the House of Representatives, where uh, the most popular republican, uh, for the speaker ship did not win. Um, he had the majority of Republican votes, but he didn't have all of them. 22 Republicans defected and voted with the Democrats to elect a more mild um, Appalachian area state, uh, Representative Jason Stevens as speaker rather than the Toledo area Derek Marin. Derek having the support of more of the Republicans but not a majority uh, of the overall house membership. And so he is claiming that he is the majority leader. Uh, nonetheless, even though he's not speaker, he says he speaks for the majority of the GOP, and perhaps he does. As the Cleveland Plain Dealer, um, editorialized. They're hoping he being an urban area state representative, that he Derek Merrin, the nonspeaker, the guy who lost, will perhaps shepherd enough of the urban votes, uh, to, um, more, I guess, adequately represent the interests of, like, Cleveland, Toledo, Dayton, Cincinnati the urban areas of Ohio rather than the suburban and rural area.

Steve: Let me get this straight. So the guy who is purportedly more conservative did not get that's correct, did not get the nod and he's in Toledo.

Brett: That is correct. Uh, he's actually in a city called.

Steve: Mon clove up, but it's near northwest Ohio.

Brett: Yes.

Steve: Mhm. So he's up in northwest Ohio, and then the rural guy who is more.

Brett: Mainstream Republican lawrence county.

Steve: Lawrence county down in Marietta. Yeah. And, uh, it seems like it should be flipped, generally speaking. Like if you just picked the dynamic, you would say no. Uh, the more sort of, uh I hate to use this word, but more conservative guy. The ones that's not so mainstream would be, uh, out of, uh we'll see.

Brett: It was big cities. It was the same situation, uh, with Hakeem. M jefferies in the, uh, US. Congress had not enough Republicans, like, if enough Republicans sat on their hands and just didn't vote or voted for an alternative, uh, person for speaker, there was a possibility that Hakeem Jefferies would have gotten the majority. And even though you had a majority in the House of Republicans by five members over Democrats, there was a possibility of having a Democrat speaker.

Steve: So this is the dilemma. This is sort of a good jumping off point.

Brett: Give you the numbers real quick so that you could speak to this with some numbers. So if you don't know and you.

Steve: Know, I don't yeah.

Brett: Who would know this stuff?

Norm: You get it written down.

Brett: Well, yeah, I mean, I, I did some show prep, so, uh, these aren't numbers coming out of my head.

Steve: I had to research.

Brett: Yeah. So Ohio has 60, uh, there are 99 members of the, uh, Ohio House of Representatives. 67 of those 99 are GOP. The rest, 30, uh, two, uh, are Democrats. And all 32 Democrat members voted for Republican Jason Stevens, along with 22 of the Republicans. The 22 that voted for Stevens were censured by the Ohio Republican Party for doing so. The Republican Party felt that Marin, uh, having garnered the most Republican votes, should have been backed by all the Republicans, but obviously 22 of them did not feel that way.

Steve: Well, this is like, um, so many other things, which is why we have common sense. Ohio, this is an interesting way to jump off it's like, as Ohio goes, so does the rest of the world, maybe, I should say, because it's not that much different than what was going on in trying to elect McCarthy. That's right.

Norm: Um, almost mirrored it.

Steve: Almost mirrored it.

Norm: Isn't it wild?

Steve: Yeah, that's right. Now, the geographic dynamic of this interests me. I have to give some more thought to that, how that plays out. But, uh, that aside, it sort of reflects everybody always says, well, we just need more parties. And the problem with that, you start getting these weird pluralities, you start getting these odd factions breaking off within factions. And I haven't completely sorted out whether I like that or don't like that, but I think a lot of people don't understand that. It's not like you're going to have three solid parties. You're going to get these weird fractions of people jumping ship to vote with this deals. Exactly. And that's parliament.

Brett: Right. And you hear about that happening in countries like France or Israel. Yeah.

Steve: I mean, parliament.

Brett: But overseas that happens where they have to put together a consortium of parties that otherwise wouldn't agree on anything, like the Communist Party and the Conservative Party.

Steve: So your party, what you believe in, may end up endorsing something that you absolutely do not.

Brett: In order to have some sort of say so on anything. You form a coalition, uh, with a party that you would disagree with in order to get some kind of trade off like, okay, we'll appoint you to that particular committee because that's an issue that your party really cares about. Fine. You can have your little cake there. Yeah, right.

Steve: But the problem, uh, ultimately is this. I think that, uh and maybe this is what we're trying to do here is make some common sense out of this. Because there's so many people that say we just need another party. Well, maybe not. Maybe be careful what you ask for. And then, uh, at the same time, we have these things going on in both parties, it seems. Not only in the federal at the national level, but here in Ohio. You've got these factions or factions, fractions factions splitting off. Yes. And, uh, so the Republican Party is sort of in this weird spot where you've got one group that is uh, further in one direction, another group who is more mainstream in a different direction. And I think you have this now, whether the Dems admit it or not, they got the same stuff going on.

Brett: The squad.

Steve: The squad. It's even more dangerous because they're touting Marxism without saying Marxism. Sure. They're touting progressivism. Right.

Brett: I mean, one of the members of.

Steve: The squad is a rose stink by any other name, if you call it.

Brett: She married her brother in order to emigrate in.

Norm: Yeah, that's but I think to your point, I think it's an interesting evolution of the parties too. Let it happen organically. Um, I mean, the Republican Party was not the same back in civil wartime.

Steve: No, it was not weird. You go back and I can think of the Bull Moose Party, some of the other ones that sort of happened.

Norm: Over the years, but they even went that cause effect. They caused change within a party. That may be a good thing.

Steve: It might be a good thing. I usually like disruption in the ranks. I usually like chaos.

Norm: This chaos, particularly federal government.

Brett: Yeah, I love it.

Norm: State government stuff. This is good. Ah, let them start kicking each other in the shin.

Brett: Another way to look at this is, uh, market forces. You can look at this from an economic point of view. These are market forces playing out. Let it play out.

Steve: Let it play out.

Brett: That's what I said last week when we were talking about and it was unresolved at the time of our broadcast about the Kevin McCarthy vote. I said, hey, let it play out. Uh, people were panicking and some of the Republican commentators and the news people, brett Bear on Fox was talking about how this is chaos and going to destroy this and that. Well, actually, if you see the things that Kevin McCarthy has allowed come to the floor and allowed to be voted on by the House, it's fantastic. Fantastic to think they've voted on abortion, they've voted on the IRS funding of the 87,000. They voted on the House rules, they voted on a lot of different set up committees to investigate. Well now, Biden's, uh, his secret documents that he took home and didn't protect, lots of good stuff came out of that market force debate. Like Brett says, let it happen, let.

Steve: It happen, and let it happen in public.

Brett: And look what we have now. We have authentic voting on the House floor instead of what Pelosi did, which was packaging up a deal and then presenting it to people. A, uh, fate of con plea. Voted all up or voted down. And you like, had no choice.

Steve: And I think you just gave me a thought, and I think I'm right, is that Pelosi did the same thing. It just didn't happen in public on the floor. It all happened behind the scenes, which.

Brett: Is undemocratic small genius at it. Yeah, small d undemocratic.

Steve: She was a genius at it to go, uh, whip up the vote, so to speak.

Brett: She was a very effective, uh, insider for people that really dig politics.

Steve: You know, how to cheat and steal rich, uh, off, uh, I mean, never mind. You know, how to operate within the system.

Brett: Yeah, right. If you like machiavellianism, if you like all that backstabbing kind of politics. She was a pro and a master. I happen to despise that. Um, I'm Mr. Smith going to Washington. I'm the naive guy that really I believe that, and I'm going to stand in the well until I faint and all that, but I believe in the system. And we got a little glimmer here of hope that maybe more of the processes will be played out for the American people to judge and to, uh, weigh and to observe and then better vote on who their representatives are going to be two years hence.

Steve: Well, just like and this is what we're trying to do in the show, I think, to some degree is create some I'm not going to call it original thought because I don't think we deserve that much credit, but actually thought maybe as opposed to just blind acceptance. And there's always a downside. I hear this all the time in the federal government, and I think we're going to hear it in the state government too. We just can't get anything done. We just can't get anything done. I think it's important for everybody to understand that they're not supposed to be able to get a lot of stuff done. It's supposed to be difficult. And then they, the quote they, whether it's whoever thinks, uh, that they have the majority and want to get more done, they always start with this premise that if we don't have the power to do this, then the world's going to end. On some level, the country is going to fall apart. On some level, these people will forever be destroyed. On some, it never happens. It never happens. No.

Norm: On, uh, to your point of getting things done. Look at what has to be done, what they say has to be done.

Steve: And who's paying for that, right? Follow the money.

Norm: Follow the money. Because stuff does not get happen unless somebody's paying for it, quote unquote, because they paid to get that person in office. I want this highway. Wow, we got a new highway infrastructure.

Steve: It's amazing, right? It's amazing. We shouldn't have gas stoves. And I wonder why exactly that money flow is coming. General, uh, electric, uh, stoves has given a lot of money. That's probably way oversimplified, but it's probably not that far off the mark either. So, uh, you always have to start the presumption of what they want to get done. First of all, is it something that needs to get done?

Norm: Secondly, reaction equals a reaction.

Steve: Even if they had the power, could they get it done? And then finally, what's the other motivation for getting it done?

Brett: Right. So, uh, Derek Merrin, um, I guess you would say the more conservative wing that did not get him elected as speaker, but now he's claiming he represents the majority of Republicans. Uh, some of the things they want are, um, they do want that LaRose bill. They do want the constitution to be harder to amend. Uh, they also want input, naturally, just like in McCarthy, uh, Kevin McCarthy request on the, uh, or demand on the, uh, chairmanships and committee assignments. They want input. And they specifically, this was a quote, uh, from Derek Marin, that, uh, we can't have a dictatorship. Uh, the speaker can't be a dictator anymore. The speaker has total control of a committee assignments, total control over who is the chairman or chairperson of a committee. And if you will, the Rebel alliance, Derek Marin's, uh, caucus they, uh, want to have, which they're calling themselves a majority caucus. That's the name they've given themselves. Uh, they want input.

Norm: Would he have pushed that if he was the speaker?

Brett: He ran on the one he ran.

Norm: Just I hear them going now, you don't want the speaker to have all that power. Would you have wanted it if you're in there? If he did, that's cool, I have no problem. It just seems like a playground move.

Brett: I doubt it, right. He ran on that basis. Um, and we'll have to see what he gets. But here's the thing. If the current speaker is going to if his majority if Jason Stevens, as speaker, if his majority, in order to get things done, is going to always require that 32 Democrats to come on board with his legislation, then, uh, I think Ohio republicans in Ohio's, citizenship in general, as represented by 67 out of the 99 being Republicans, will not be happy. They will not be happy if the only things that get done are what 32 Democrats also are going to agree to. Yeah. So this guy is wielding a lot of power between 30 set. He estimates his majority caucus consists of at least 40. And the Columbus Dispatch estimates it may be up to 44 members out of 99. So that's damn near half.

Norm: Are we describing Stevens as a rhino then, or not really?

Brett: No, I am not going to go there.

Norm: No, I didn't mean you specifically, but.

Steve: I don't know the guy either.

Brett: I just curious. Cannot speak to his voting.

Steve: I had the same thought in the other direction. It's like, I wonder how far I, uh, was starting to think. I wonder what the 32 Dems are like, what's their real ideology.

Norm: And it will come out in time.

Steve: Probably because it's like the versus the normal main look liberal.

Brett: They're standard Democrat. They're in the blue areas of Ohio, which would be the more urban and.

Steve: Tightly, uh, tied to them, like Raphael Warnocks. Are we talking like mainstream, uh, Joe mansions?

Brett: I think you're talking people, like, right here in central Ohio or Cincinnati area. You're just talking mainstream Democrats. Are there politicians are there a few whack jobs? Probably. But I have noticed generally in my experience as a lobbyist at the state House a while ago, but Democrats in Ohio are far and away much more reasonable than the national level. Like whack job Democrats, the ones from Ohio tend to be more practical.

Steve: It's probably true across the country. It's probably like Connecticut, new York, california.

Norm: Exactly right.

Brett: Blue. Blue. Exactly right. In my dealings that are failing, I mean, the bills that Connecticut is the bills that I would take to the State House on behalf of my clients. I would tend to get almost an equal number of Democrat and Republican sponsors for my legislation, which means that it was mainstream, middle of the road stuff. And we're talking urban, inner city Democrat legislators, uh, would sign on to things that even a rural Republican legislator would sign on to, just because we could form a coalition on that issue and people would set aside their personal animosities.

Steve: Well, and I think it's important because I always say I hate the government. They should do less. But it's also important to note that most of my opinion on what the governmental power should be and I like the chaos, et cetera, applies to the federal government because at the state level, we have something implicit in our country called police power.

Brett: We also in our state, we have a compulsory, balanced budget, uh, in our Constitution. So the Democrats and the Republicans in Ohio have to play ball. Yeah. Right. Because there is no kicking the can down the road.

Steve: Yeah. They can't just do it for political purposes and then let somebody else write the check later.

Brett: Exactly right. Because nobody will get money.

Steve: Yeah, and that's true. The point I'm making, which is at the state level, you sort of want there to be some productivity and things to get done because the federal government should not have the power to do it for us. We have to do it. And part of the Constitution, our federalist structure, was created this way. So we're going to limit the federal power, uh, to do these things locally, because we want the states to have the power to do these things locally. And if we give it to the Feds, they're just going to do it. We've got to let the states do it. So it is effective. To be effective, the states have to be able to do this stuff. They have to be able to get stuff done. They have to be able to work together. They have to be able to sort of come to an accord and get things done like a traditional national government. So in this way, I think the states, I think, by and large, do they do get things done, even in Florida or even in places where they're criticizing or the left would criticize dissenters, et cetera. I think if you got down below and looked at it, you would see that things are getting done.

Brett: Well, a lot of people will to support your point, Steve, a lot of people will, uh, say that the best presidents in history, that overall, some of the more effective, better presidents, whether it's, um, uh, Teddy Roosevelt or whether it's George, uh, Bush the second, or whoever got things done, the exception might be Jimmy Carter. But governors, people who have had ronald Reagan was governor of California, people who have had to be an executive at the state level, governor often become pretty darn good presidents.

Steve: It's interesting. It's not just experience. It's the type of experience. Right. They have had to learn to work with two sides that have to come together that's right.

Brett: That have to exactly. And oftentimes also delegate, uh, because you can't know everything.

Norm: Right.

Brett: And Ronald Reagan, one of his gifts, which you would say maybe Trump didn't do so well except economically. But one of the things that Reagan brought to the table, having been governor, is the concept of how to delegate to other people, other expert people, people who knew their fields, whether it was military economics, housing, uh, welfare, whatever it was, uh, whatever the subject was, was to create a super cabinet. Like people, uh, who could have themselves possibly have been president. That good. And I think it was Doris Kearns Goodwin. Her biography of Abraham Lincoln was something like a cabinet full of, what did she call them, opponents, um, or something like that. But basically people who were just as smart as Abraham Lincoln. And basically, he surrounded himself with people that were equals to him. And that made him a much more effective president. Because, after all, he had only been a congressman. What did he know? Yeah.

Steve: What did he know? And he knew what he didn't know, I guess, is what he did. So he surrounded himself with people who didn't know what they knew.

Brett: And at first, he picked terrible generals. I mean, the Union generals at the beginning of the Civil War were like McClellan. He just stored up supplies and numbers of men for months and months and months. And Lincoln is like, well, when are you going to engage the enemy? Well, I'm not going to do it until I have a five to one ratio advantage. And he's still lost.

Steve: Yeah. And he still lost. And then you get, uh, Sherman is like, let me go.

Brett: Yeah, right.

Steve: Let me just go.

Brett: I got this. Let me take a swig of whiskey. I think they actually went to Lincoln at one point and said, Grant's a drunk. Right? You know, Grant's a drunk. And Sherman is a hot head from Ohio. And you got Custer out there.

Norm: He was, take a look at their win and loss record, and I'll make a judge.

Brett: But then if that's what it takes, send that man a case of whiskey.

Steve: This is interesting because this is something that, uh, we didn't plan on talking about, but it just gave me this thought. If we judge people as a generation behind mine. Now this sort of new generation wants to do by only their bad things, by only their bad traits, by only their bad character, by only their bad qualities or even a handful or a dozen dumb things. They said then you would never have a Sherman, you would never have a Grant, and we would have lost a damn war. Mhm yeah, because they were lunatics, a lot of these guys. Patton was a lunatic in a lot of ways. But guess what? When you needed him to go close the, uh, cut off the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge, he was there. And he was not only there, he's there in like 12 hours or something.

Brett: It was wild.

Steve: It was wild. So he got it done. And it took a certain personality type to do that. So you can't just wash these people and sweep them under the rug and wash them away. It's like when the shit hits the fan, you need them. You need people. And it's not just men, it's women. We all do dumb things. We all do bad things. We all have said stupid things. We've all made mistakes. And so, uh, be it. You can't cancel them forever. Because we all also bring to the table something positive. And if you look at people for, uh, who they are imperfect, let's find the best of the best and go. And that is diversity. Right. You take the best of everybody and.

Norm: Put it together, you get the best.

Brett: Yeah.

Norm: And it possibly is, too. In our history and learning of history, we've raised these people to a pedestal that we've created, this image of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, that they're just, they're perfect human beings.

Steve: And they were far from it.

Norm: They were far from it. We never, ever talked about the negative pieces of what they did, why we own.

Steve: Why shouldn't we celebrate the negative?

Brett: Right.

Norm: Why not? Honestly, because we all have our Yang and Yang.

Steve: I don't mind identifying it and discussing it, but we don't need to celebrate it.

Norm: No, exactly. But they're not perfect humans.

Brett: Far from it. It's like when all of the womanizing, uh, of Martin Luther King came out, that didn't need to come out to me. So that did not reduce my admiration and my, frankly, affection for Martin Luther King Jr. That I have in my soul for him. That okay. He was a man. He committed.

Norm: Adultery.

Brett: He had a side to him that I'm sure he wasn't proud of. Okay? But that does not reduce his heroic.

Norm: Nature to me and effectiveness of what.

Steve: He did in his life. Sure, he was a guy that was much needed at that time to get done, when he got done. And who else, if not he, who else would have been there that would be perfect? But not he could and it is.

Brett: Surmised, by the way, that he was a Republican. I just want to make that note.

Steve: He would be a Republican today. Well, he probably wouldn't be, but if you judged him by today's standard yeah, he would be a Republican in a lot of ways. So would Kennedy. So a lot of those dams of that era would be Republicans.

Steve: That's insane.

Steve: It should be like two pages.

Brett: And it's not just columns of, uh, uh, numbers. It includes, uh, new programs, new laws, all kinds of stuff is packed into that thing. And here's another number that I found, uh, in doing my research for today that is disturbing to me. And it also explains why the budget, uh, for Ohio and why we can't go back to a state that doesn't have an income tax. This militates to why everything is so, um, outsized 37% of the people. Not voters, the the people in Cuyahoga County. That's where Cleveland is. For our non Ohio listeners, cuyahoga county is one of the 88 counties in Ohio. It is where Cleveland, Ohio is located. 37% of the population are Medicare excuse me, Medicaid recipients. And that I can't tell you, uh, what that does to the budget kills it. So our social spending, if you want to say, gee, why aren't the potholes getting filled? Or Why isn't a bridge getting replaced? Or Why don't we have more police on the street or any number of other needs that a society has? Man, when you need to pay for every single bit of medical care for 37% of the people in the largest populated county in Ohio, cuyahoga County, I mean, that is a budget killer. And I'm sure similar statistics follow on for Hamilton County, where Cincinnati is, montgomery county, where Dayton is, et cetera.

Norm: The more dense the population, it's going to be an increase, but you're looking at a room of ten people. Four out of ten are on Medicare.

Steve: On the government dole that's just for health.

Brett: Care, housing, section eight.

Norm: And throw in probably ties into that as well. There's connections.

Brett: Oh, sure.

Steve: And you get this, you know, now you're like, look at California for a second. Newsom is having to, uh, backtrack on all this crazy spending for environmental reasons because he's broke. He can't just do this. Like, you can't just give away money. And you hear these people, like the squad saying, well, we can. We just need to do it. We can do it. We have money to go buy this, this, and this. Why can't we do this? Well, uh, you can't. There's always a limit to everything. And you can't have it all. It's not Al. Uh, Pacino and Scarface. I want it all. You can't have it all.

Brett: You can't.

Norm: No.

Brett: Yeah. Let me introduce you to my little friend.

Norm: Little friend.

Brett: Exactly.

Norm: For as many things as we say bad. Bad or rethink. Rethink. I caught one thing. It's actually pretty good. With some new legislation coming into Ohio I don't know why this has not happened before that, uh, we're allowing occupational licensure. If a job applicant in Ohio holds an occupational license or certification in another state, licensing authorities will extend that license or certification to them when they move to Ohio. I think that's great. Why should you be dinged because you don't have a license in Ohio from another state?

Steve: So let me think of a counterargument just for fun.

Norm: Well, knowing the suck that intel is going to have, well, just in our.

Brett: Situation, just first of all, what that's about?

Norm: That's what it's about.

Steve: Exactly.

Brett: That is what it's about. So I have some expertise in this.

Norm: And maybe I'm wrong.

Steve: I thought it was smart.

Brett: It's a mixed bag. Steve was going, right. Let me think of the other. So it's a mixed bag. So Ohio has several licensure boards. Okay. Nursing, um, beauty, whatever, beauticians, uh, skilled trades as well.

Norm: Right.

Brett: Plumbing, welding no. Yeah.

Steve: No, they have licenses that might be a union certification.

Brett: That's right.

Steve: We don't have an Ohio board of union certification.

Norm: Government, but it's okay. No, go ahead. Go ahead.

Brett: Okay. I'm talking about professional licensers.

Steve: Got you.

Brett: So nursing, social, uh, workers, attorneys, attorneys, uh, doctors, dentist assistants, anything.

Norm: It's basic. Well, there's a ton of union, though, but nonunion.

Brett: So the problem with reciprocity is we don't seem to get treated the same. So if an Ohio attorney or doctor wants to move to Florida oh, no, they don't open up the doors and say, come on in. Because naturally, if Steve retires to Florida, what a beautiful area to do estate work. Right. Steve goes down there and goes, wait a minute, I could do estate work here in Ohio. Why can't I do it in Florida? Just accept me. So reciprocity needs to go both ways and in many, many professions. Uh, it does not now for teachers, uh, and for nurses and for other things, um, there has been reciprocity with many states with Ohio, for example, if you're a teacher and you want to move to Texas, texas has a need currently for more teachers because it's a growing state. They will take somebody from Ohio.

Steve: That's a good state. And the point I was going to make is, there's good and bad. Right. Because there are states that I have an attorney license, and I don't know if that's what this is talking about. Professional licensure. Is this going to be tradesmen?

Norm: Yeah, let me look.

Steve: And contractors? I don't know. But to be a plumber or like, a certified plumber, you do go register in the Franklin County, and you deal with that. But, uh, let's just take professional licenses for a second. I know the Dakotas were doing this when they were building a pipeline. They needed people so they would welcome other licensed, uh, professionals and tradesmen. But then there might be a time when they don't want to do that. Like, Florida gets hits with a hurricane, they're not going to complain that linemen are coming down there to help out. Right. They're not going to complain at all. But if they didn't need it and.

Brett: It'S saturated, they don't want you Steve. They don't want you practicing law down there because because they want to close the gate behind them.

Steve: They want to protect their own. Traditionally, it's very difficult for me as an attorney to go to get a full blown license in Florida, and a full blown license. Not Anne, but also California, uh, is tough. Uh, there was a time I was trying to get license in Denver, and they would have waived me in. In other words, my bar scores were enough, I could have just gone and paid the fee and gotten in. I missed the deadline, so I would have had to retest. But it's like, um, uh, in Michigan and Ohio, uh, my partner, uh, in my consulting business, he has waved in now to Ohio, but he had to jump through some hoops, pay some dollars, um, and, uh, go through the character and fitness stuff and do what they do. And I suspect I would give the states the authority and the power to decide when and how that can happen. And like you said, Brett, there's got to be a reason for that. I think it's a good thing.

Norm: Yeah. They're looking at it because of the workforce suck of intel and Honda. It's not much more specific than that. To your point of who is it?

Steve: If we need them, then it makes.

Norm: Sense because it is interesting we don't have the reciprocity, at least with your contiguous states. Work with Michigan. Work with Ohio. Specifically Kentucky. West Virginia. At least it's across the border. You're going to have people that live on one side of Pennsylvania and want to work in Ohio.

Brett: Do you have a bill number on that?

Norm: I don't. I'll look it up for you. I'll put it in the show notes, but it was just part of a news story I saw that makes sense.

Brett: I'd like to track that.

Steve: Yeah. I was up in Michigan working on a case yesterday, and I heard all sorts of language in terms I didn't know. Like, uh, the names of the crimes aren't what we have here in Ohio. The degrees of the offenses don't mean the same thing that they do here. Uh, there are rules and laws up there that don't make any sense at all to me. Uh, and the opposite is also true. And I think I used to say this when I was back in college. There was a time in our grandparents era, maybe even our parents era, where if you went to a different state, it meant something. It was a different state. You know, you could get cross state lines and it's a whole different government. It's like going to a different country. It'd be like going from France, more like going from France to Germany than, uh, Ohio to Indiana. And now it's become very homogenized. You can still go. And that's a product of the federal government's power spread and the interstate system had a lot to do with it.

Brett: There is one state that's real different still, which is Louisiana based on the Napoleonic Code.

Steve: Is that right?

Brett: I didn't yeah. Where in criminal, uh, court, there is a little vestige of you having to prove yourself innocent. Really?

Steve: Yeah.

Brett: There's a little vestige of that in, uh, misdemeanors. Interesting. Yeah.

Norm: House Bill 509. Thank you.

Brett: Yeah, I'll keep track of that.

Norm: There's 63 licenses that they have identified.

Brett: Now that must, uh, be is that.

Norm: The federal this is state.

Brett: This is state and it cannot and.

Norm: It pushed through the Buckeye Institute.

Brett: Pushed through, okay, so it is now law because we could not have 509.

Norm: Bills in the past already. Dentistry, investigative PiS, gambling endorsement, professional license, temporary orthodist, orthodist prosthetic.

Steve: Mhm, these are professional licenses, which is interesting because this is a jumping off point again, using Ohio, Jordan Peterson, I was going to do a legal on my lawyer talk, I'm going to do a breakdown on this. But they've got something called like, the psychologist college up in Canada. And Jordan Peterson, we're not going to go into everything about it, but they're trying to revoke his license and people are like, what the hell is this college? What is this? And I think a lot of people don't realize most professional, um, uh, areas of practice have something like this. We call them boards in Ohio, nursing board, um, the bar association in my field, the medical board, the pharmacy board, the dental board, the board, the board, the board, the board up there, they call them colleges, sort of the same thing. It's like a pseudo governmental, regulatory, uh, body. Uh, and it's got a lot of power. And I've seen that power used in ways that it's got to be wielded carefully, I would say got to be.

Norm: Wielded carefully because it's driven by money.

Steve: Well, it's driven by well, in that case, in Jordan Peterson's case, driven by politics, which is even worse.

Brett: Um, but, uh, they are saying in Peterson's case that some comments he made on either Joe Rogan or some other Joe Rogan, Twitter, he made some statements that they said, well, that's not professional and that would alienate a patient and whatever, and you need to be re educated. So we're mandating you, Jordan Peterson, take this course of remediation, right? And he's saying, no, I will not. And then what that sets up is, if you will, a trial, uh, a professional licensure trial, where he hearing, hearing where his attorney and their attorneys will combat before the people that will either renew or withdraw his license.

Steve: Now, in Canada, it's very interesting. And this is why, when people would argue with me about freedom of speech, um, and they would say, well, we're not dealing with the freedom of speech. No, we are really, until we screw it up. M, we have the Constitution, which is very unique to us, that gives us the First Amendment. And, ah, essentially his license is in jeopardy because of things he has said in a public forum. And you can say as an attorney, I get regulated somewhat. I can't go criticize a judge necessarily in a public forum, uh, and call that freedom of speech. But he wasn't really even in his field on the stuff he was saying. It was political speech he was engaged in. So he was criticizing Trudeau, he was criticizing the COVID response. He's criticizing, uh, the other, the left or the, uh, progressives or whatever it would be up there. And now, uh, they've taken action to try to revoke his license for it. So, to me, that's the most abhorrent use of governmental board power that you can possibly imagine, like criticizing or, uh, punishing people for political speech, is the apex of bad government.

Brett: Well, they are literally telling him to walk in lockstep, or else with their we take your philosophy. Right? What's interesting about psychology in general, from my Psych 101 class, is when we were given the coursework, uh, at my university in Psych 101, we studied the whole planopy of, uh, psychoanalysis theory. Everybody from Freud to Carl Young to whoever, right? We didn't just, uh, to my professor's credit in doing the survey course. It wasn't just like what the professor agreed with. It was like, okay, starting from caveman days, if you will, this is how the science of psychology has developed. And along the way are all these various stops and places where some people believe this, some people believe that. And he didn't tell us or she I can't even remember who the professor was. But, uh, it was not outcome determinative, uh uh, to receive a grade in that class, we didn't have to agree with the professor's politics, even if the professor made it crystal clear, hey, I'm a liberal, and I think this, uh, he or she might say that as a sidebar. But the intellectual exercise of doing the survey course was not dependent upon fealty to them. And it's scary.

Steve: In other words, they didn't teach you what the truth here's what the difference is.

Norm: Right.

Brett: They didn't tell us what to believe.

Steve: They didn't say, here's what it is. And if you don't put this on your test, then you're getting an F. Right. And that's what they're doing now.

Brett: That's what they're doing now.

Steve: So I wrote essays. I mean, I went to the College of Worcester, and at that time, it was still it was changing. But it's still sort of a traditional liberal arts education.

Brett: Sure. And they're doing that to Jordan. At the professional level, I'm using college as an analogy.

Steve: And you could say one side would say this, another side would say this, and I believe this.

Brett: And some psychiatrists in Canada might treat you one way, and some psychiatrists might treat you a different way. The markets will emerge. Well, as long as nobody's killing anybody.

Steve: Right. Or cutting off their private parts. Wait a minute.

Brett: Right. Or engaging in abuse, like taking advantage.

Steve: Like cutting off their private parts.

Brett: Or sexual being a predator or something like that. Right. If it's just I treat you differently. Right.

Steve: Well, even in law school, people look for the answers. I always use law. Look, I'm a lawyer, so I get it. But the law school education, those who looked for the truth never found it, and they flunked out. That's right. Um, we were not trained to do that. We are trained to look for the truth, but we're also, when you realize it's a constant exploration of argument and fact, it's never fixed.

Brett: And you have to keep it's a moving target.

Steve: You have to debate, debate, debate. And there are truths. There are things that we fundamentally know. And then you take that and you try to find out the next thing that you don't know based on the things you do fundamentally know. So a perfect law school exam would say, all right, this side is going to argue XYZ. This side is going to argue, um, ABC. And the court is going to decide this. Now, if it's in a minority of jurisdictions, the court would say this over here. Most, um, jurisdictions would say it the other way, and then there's some in the middle that would sort of combine both. And that's how I'm going to find in my answer. Now, the outcome or my conclusion on that essay in law school was largely irrelevant. It was that I knew all the arguments and was, uh, able to, uh what am I trying to put them.

Norm: On paper and express them, know the processes to get at least to the end correct.

Steve: And your conclusion is irrelevant. It really is. Right. Because at the end of the day, a lot of people would do well to wake up to this fact. You can't control everything. You can make an influential argument to the court, and then you're stuck with.

Brett: The decision coming out of left field. This is neither here nor there, but it's interesting that somebody would complain about this particular thing. So our attorney general here in Ohio is a gentleman by the name of Dave Yos. Generally does a good job. Um, I have no personal relationship or anything with Dave or no keen insight. Uh, I know Steve does, uh, to some degree, uh, being a lawyer, as well as I think he said, a neighbor at one time on one of our shows. Uh, the Democrats are crying foul on Dave Yoast, the Attorney general, doing what's called double dipping. Uh, meaning he is collecting currently, while being a full time attorney general, like 12,000 other Ohio public employees who make $20,000 and more. Dave Yoast is collecting, uh, while having that full time job, uh, his Ohio pension. Um, so the Democrats are crying foul like he should either.

Steve: They should be careful what they're crying foul about.

Brett: Yeah, because let me tell you something. Of those 12,000 other Ohio public employees, whether they drive a salt spreading truck for a county somewhere, putting salt down on the highways, or whether they're a county commissioner or a judge or whatever they are, I will bet you the majority of those 12,000 other state employees earning 20,000 or up on Democrats. So, like you say, Steve, they should.

Norm: Really we've complained about this problem for years, so obviously, there's no slapping of the wrist or cutting off of the arm for doing so well, not for him.

Steve: Without sin cast the first step. My God. So here's the thing.

Norm: Teachers or teachers are usually the first one to get pointed at.

Steve: My God.

Brett: Anybody who's worked in the government and.

Norm: It'S almost a moot point.

Brett: And they get their pension and keep.

Steve: Working and keep working. It drives me that crazy when, look, I agree, I agree with the Dems on this, but do it for everybody, right? I don't think the government people should be able to collect my money and double dip.

Brett: But it's not a Dave yosh problem.

Steve: It's not the point. It's a government, uh, problem. That's right, it's a government problem. I've sat behind courtrooms listening to police officers scheme about how they're going to make X amount of dollars when they retire. Because they'll get this and they'll get that. And if they stay two more years, they'll be able to double dip and do this and this. And none of it's illegal. I don't mean to suggest they're doing in and out. They're just manipulating the system that's in place. And shame on you if you think one person should be allowed to do it, but not another. Exactly. Either everybody can do it or nobody can do it. Right? And I don't think anybody should be.

Norm: Able to do it.

Brett: No, I agree. And frankly, some of the ages for drawing on these pensions, like military, uh, maybe it should be just for combat, uh, veterans that get, uh, their pension after 20 years. But I have a general problem. Like in the military, you go in, say you're 18, you put in your 20 years. Well, hell, you're 38 years old.

Steve: Yeah. Rock and roll.

Brett: Man. Listen, I love the military and I honor our soldiers, men and women, um, that enlist and serve the country. But you're not retired at 38.

Steve: This is what I love about the show, by the way. This is what I love about the shows. We've taken a local thing, Dave Yost in this criticism. And you can use this as a means to assess this going on in other parts of the country. And that's what we're talking about now, the military. But to bring it back to what, uh, Brett's point about reciprocity with Licensure, I don't necessarily have a problem if the government wants to incentivize a government position out of need. So if we need military servicemen at a certain time, they're going to say, look, uh, in order to get you to enlist, and we're not going to, because the alternative is they force you to enlist, we're going to get you to enlist, then we're going to offer some benefits, we're going to encourage you to do it. I don't have a problem with that because it makes some sense. But m, I don't find that true of, like, the, however many hundreds of lawyers that work for Department of Public Safety or however many hundreds of people that are working at some state government.

Brett: I couldn't agree more.

Norm: And it could be to your point there, too, uh, on the local level, police, maybe there is an incentive for.

Brett: That, because of particularly the way we.

Steve: Are now in this day and age, for sure, possibly.

Norm: But any job to put your life in danger, we could say possibly, but.

Steve: At least be able to say why.

Brett: Right? Let me draw little distinction. So in the military, you might have, uh, we're increasingly going to pilotless aircraft. For example, drones, M, uh, even fighter planes, they're designing now, that pull so many GS that if a human being was in the cockpit, you would literally tear the person apart. No human being, regardless of the G suit that you would be wearing, a human being could not survive the kinds of turns that the fighter craft is capable of doing. It can literally stop on a dime, change directions, and the human body could not survive that. And there's no equipment they can put on you where you could survive the kinds of maneuvers. So we are increasingly having people say, below the Las Vegas strip, right, a couple of stories down underground, they're flying these drones. They're flying, um, military aircraft, say in Saudi Arabia or in Iraq or in uh, Ukraine. They're flying them from comfortable, air conditioned, you know, shelters, uh, you know, in, in America somewhere. It's not like Joe Foss in his, uh, corsair over Iwo Jima Combating Zeros, where he's physically in the combat, and for his service, gets the Medal of Honor, for example uh, Joe Foss went on to become governor of, I think one of the Dakotas and president of the NRA. But that aside, that's a different kind of hazardous situation, and that might merit getting your pension, but somebody just putting mail in a slot or using a joystick on a video screen, that's not.

Steve: Quite the same service. Except to the extent you have to have a military, and you have to.

Brett: Be able to put people on. You have to staff it.

Steve: You need to staff it. You cannot staff it now. I agree, like, look, there are certain military you might even incentivize certain choices.

Brett: That's what I'm saying.

Steve: So if m you want more combat people, and um, if you enlist, you had a choice.

Brett: Well, I think Brett referenced it with police and fire.

Steve: With police and fire.

Brett: If you're going to put your ass on the line, I can see where you gotta up for goodies.

Steve: See, but I think military and this is not even a huge disagreement, I would just disagree with you I think anybody who signs up for the military is to some degree putting their ass on the line, because they have given up their life. They have become slaves to the military. And they could in fact, they could.

Brett: Be emphasis and asterisk on the word could.

Steve: Yeah, they could in fact, be called.

Brett: To go fight if we needed them. And that happened in, uh, Vietnam in World War I. World War II. People in the kitchen, here's a rifle, we're being overrun. You got to run to the, uh, skirmish line.

Steve: Like, if you're stolen, you just knock on doors and stuff. I get it. Not only do you have to fight, you don't even get a rifle. Wait till the guy in front of you gets shot and pick up his I get it.

Brett: On the other hand, I met a World War II veteran who quite proudly told me he never went overseas. He was with the fighting accountants at the Pentagon. Like the CBC? Well, yeah, the fighting accountants. Ah. He was stationed at the I consider.

Steve: Him any less important?

Brett: No, not at all.

Norm: Because if he got this to there, because of what he was doing, um.

Brett: He could have he was willing. He might have interrupted.

Steve: He would have had to go. So anyway, you know, we're saying the same things.

Brett: We are. We are. I think it's worthy of a discussion and exploration. Uh, that's all I'm saying, people.

Steve: I'll say this one more thing, too.

Brett: Though, because we're living longer, you know, back then, say, World War One, right? 20 years, you're 38 years old, you're probably going to kick off in your 50s.

Steve: It is now.

Brett: That's all I'm saying, man.

Steve: I would say this if we all knew, and I don't profess to know how much money the government is spending on this kind of stuff and how much money these people are making. Double dipping. If you knew, like, they're trying to single out yoast, that's a political target hit job. Sure. But if you knew, like, what Joe, uh, the cop is doing, or what i, uh, always say lawyers at Public Safety because they have hundreds of them, and I don't know what the hell they do over there, but they go work and they make 125,000. They got huge pensions. They got their college loans paid off. Well, they're in eight to four.

Brett: Maybe they retired to Florida.

Steve: They got a boat, they got RV.

Brett: They got a plate. God bless them.

Steve: But see that Jones is working, right? I'm not saying these lawyers aren't working, but do we need them?

Brett: Can we just cut it? All I'm saying is public employees are very aware, very coached up on how to double and triple dip.

Steve: Yes. When you retire, they give you a personal adviser to help you do it.

Brett: Exactly. So a good friend of mine's father was a Korea War veteran. So he served 20 years in the army. He then went to work. So he's now 38, gets out of the army, then does a whole another 20 years with the IRS.

Steve: Okay.

Brett: Uh, gets that pension, and then he goes into the private sector as an accountant getting Social Security. So he literally, when he retired, got three checks, but. I'm just saying that path is legitimate. I'm just saying, uh yeah, right. Most Americans, the vast majority of Americans when they hit that age, have no pension. Right? And if you play the game which people aren't educated on how to play the game, but if you play the game like this guy did, you're a triple dipper.

Steve: Maybe what bothers me the most is.

Brett: Whereas the rest of us just get.

Steve: Social Security, I think the government is a chain around the neck of private ingenuity. What they're really doing, the incentives we're talking about have become, uh, over broad. They've become too vast because now they're incentivizing people. They're incentivizing people to go into government and create bigger government just to have another position so they can get this incentive. I mean, this is like a leviathan.

Brett: This is hobbes, uh this is Hobbes leviathan. Exactly. So Brett's point, he didn't do anything wrong. Uh, we all agree with that. But the system might be wrong. If you're a poor guy down in Appalachia, you're a coal miner. When you retire, you're going to get Social Security. That's what you're going to get. Right? But if you're a clever guy like Robert Byrd from West Virginia, you're a triple dipper.

Steve: Yeah. And you're going to get rich off the government dole.

Brett: I mean, if we're going to talk fairness in terms of treating people the.

Steve: Same and you can't say that some bureaucrat in the state government has done the kind of service that you want to reward, that's not the same as the military.

Brett: That's true. Isn't a coal miner who gets out the coal so AEP can burn it and we can have the lights on in this studio or have a warm.

Norm: House and charge our electric cars.

Steve: Finding a noble profession. But it's not an argument for socialism or national fascism or national socialism fascism to take over the means of production because that's what's happening. So we're going to take over energy and then that guy will get a pension, but the energy will suck. Let the private market do what it does and get this stop incentivizing this nonsense, right.

Brett: And stop. What I would like to see is we talk about term limits, right, for politicians. And there's a good argument, you know, we can debate that on another day. But there's also a consequent good argument for term limiting bureaucrats like Fauchi, like.

Steve: Lots of people, fauci should not be a millionaire.

Brett: Well, he should not have been allowed like J. Edgar Hoovers. Another one should not be these kinds of people in these positions of power. When the politicians get elected and then they get unelected and they come and go, who is left in the deep state in the swamp that is always there? It's some guy that's working at the Department of Transportation for 50 years and he's the guy who literally controls what.

Steve: Happens with the money. Right. It's insane.

Brett: And this is unelected.

Steve: Everybody should hate the deepest. Everybody should hate this administrative bohemia that we've created. Everybody should hate it. I don't understand why they don't. Yeah, it's like I really don't. It's like how I agree.

Brett: Uh, and liberals used to be with us on this. They were the first people to say never trust a person over 30. Don't trust the government. Down with Uncle Sam. We want free speech.

Steve: That we need more.

Brett: They flip how it's more.

Norm: Yeah, but I think it's the ignorance of not knowing that Dot person has been there for 30 years. We only have eyes on the elected.

Steve: Officials I had personally.

Norm: We don't know they've been changed.

Steve: That's right. It people that work for the state government. And I can tell you right now they didn't. The, the people I'm talking about didn't do anything. Nothing. They spent money on neat computers and.

Brett: Ah, I'm not saying that's the Ohio Department of Administrative Services ODAS, that's who you're talking about. The people who run the It world for the state of Ohio.

Steve: And I'm not saying they were all bad people. They weren't. That's the incentive structure that was created.

Brett: Well, sure, m. You get paid the same whether you're really productive or not.

Steve: Because I know, and I'm doing it today, I have It. Stuff going on in my office. I am going to make sure, I'm going to make sure it's done efficiently. Mhm. It's done economically, mhm. I only get what I need, not somebody's whim on testing equipment. And it's got to get done now because I can't be down. I am paying for it. It's coming out of my wallet. I'm writing the check. If I send some stranger to go do my grocery shopping with my money, they're not going to bargain shop.

Brett: Now. Want to do some fun facts?

Steve: Yeah, let's do it.

Brett: We got a couple of minutes because we're winding up. So we have this uh, um, NFL, uh, playoff game coming between Cincinnati and uh, other Baltimore Ravens. And of course Joe Burrow, although he was born in Ames, Iowa, uh, was uh, raised basically his entire life in the Plains area. Uh, that's a uh, village, the Plains, uh, just outside of Athens, Ohio. So I thought it would be kind of cool to, to just note some other really interesting and pretty cool stuff from uh, down in that area round Athens. So, uh, Jackie O's beer makes 50 different flavors of beer using uh, locally sourced, uh, hops and barley and all that kind of stuff. Uh, right from uh, the immediate confines of that area. Uh, Sarah Jessica Parker, the actress on Sex in the City, which awful show. Whatever.

Steve: Anyway.

Brett: She's from Nelsonville, Ohio. That was a terrible comment on my part. I apologize for those who were fans of that show, but I couldn't stand it.

Steve: Um, look, you didn't like the show, but it wasn't awfully produced and it wasn't awfully made. And maybe the contest bubble gummy and stupid.

Brett: But honestly, I saw about ten minutes of it, and it was about snappy, yappy, New York checks, and you're all wearing black dresses, and I just couldn't take it.

Steve: I bailed. It's not your demographic.

Brett: Well, if I want smartass New York comedy, I go to Seinfeld.

Steve: That's phenomenal.

Brett: Yes. Not sex. And, um anyway, Ohio University, of course, down there on the Hawking River some past, uh, students, there were paul Newman, Arsenio Hall and Ed O'Neill. Um, Ed being from Youngstown, just a gorgeous actor. You got to love Ed O'Neill. Um, uh, the, uh, snowville creamery. Uh, that's Megs County, right near Athens. Um, interesting. I don't know a dang thing about this, but in reading the notes, they use the A two gene cow milk, which some other dairies don't use. They use the A two gene because the A two gene is the same gene as in human milk. And so it's more digestible, um, more, I guess, integrates itself when you're processing it after you consume it. Um, makes it perhaps, uh, less of an issue for some people, medically. So, anyway, I just bring that up and go, joe, I'm a Bengals fan. Uh um, look, Ohio makes it big a lot.

Steve: You forgot one thing. There was a movie filmed down in Nelson of Ohio, I think it's called Mischief, with, uh, who was in that movie. Recent no, old movie, back in the 80s. Mischief, I think it was called. Looks like we got that Brett on it real quick. Yeah. It was called Mischief. It was filmed down there, and, uh, there were some names in it, too.

Norm: Nice.

Steve: Um, I want to say I can see the face the actors and I can't come up with. Brett's going to tell us.

Brett: If not this show, we'll pick it up. But, uh, I just think that a lot of times the big city areas, suburban, uh, areas we sort of forget about appalachia, Ohio. There's some really wonderful stuff down there.

Brett: Yeah.

Steve: Wow. It wasn't 56. It was, like, about and they were looking for, like, a town that would still look like the 50s. Nelsonville is a neat town. The rocky factory down there. Uh, it's a pretty neat place. They got the train now. You can go down. They have the.

Brett: Train.

Steve: I don't know what the museum I'll call it. But you go and you ride the historic train. They'll take you to colonial era stuff on the train. They have a Christmas train. So if you have kids, it's a pretty cool thing to do.

Brett: A lot of people don't know that whole area was, uh, a vineyard real strong in the wine making thing. I didn't know that. Oh, yeah. Along the Ohio River. Uh, so I'm going back to, like.

Brett: But yeah, eckert. Um, incredible. Uh, he at one time was a reporter for the Dayton Daily News.

Steve: I didn't know that.

Brett: Yeah. Yeah.

Steve: So and we, um, got Tacomza, we got leather lips. We got all the best right here in Australia.

Brett: Right. And Takumsa, he was a consultant on that, on on, uh, the Outdoor Drama. Tecumsa, he was one of the perhaps, uh, the writer of that play. Interesting. Yeah. So Eckert was deeply involved. It also was a Hollywood script.

Steve: Eckert was a writer on that? Yes. Not tacompsa on the play.

Brett: To Kumpsa. On the outdoor drama. To Kumsa. He was the playwright.

Norm: Right.

Steve: You said Tacoma would help the consultant.

Brett: I was like, no, he would meaning, uh, no, Tacoma.

Norm: So would have put another seance moment.

Brett: From the beginning of the podcast. He would have put some kind of tribal axe right in their forehead. Um, but, uh, at any rate, uh, yeah, also, they made, um this is amazing technology. I don't know if they do, ah, the high historic village, probably too dangerous. But they would also, uh, forge steel and cast, uh, iron in Nelsonville in that area, uh, and do ceramics. So, um, there was actually some pretty high tech stuff being done down there, uh, uh, 150 years ago.

Steve: Ohio, right in the heart of it all. Uh, let's wrap it up. That was common sense. Ohio. Friday the 13th edition. I feel like it's like we're treating it like Halloween or something, but it is just Friday the 13th. But there you go. You don't is that that's not turkey season yet.

Brett: We're close.

Steve: No, no.

Brett: That's the cool ghoul. Yeah, that's that was a late night, uh, movie guy in Cincinnati. Hello, boys and girls.

Steve: I'm the cool ghoul. We had Fritz Parent boom up here. We had, uh, night owl.

Brett: Uh, Fritz the night owl, right?

Steve: Anyway, uh, ah, we are going to wrap it up with that we're common, uh, Senseohio show.com. If you have questions, if you have comments, if you want to get involved, if you want to be a guest and you think you've got the chops to hang with Norman Brett, uh, give us a shout or look us up or shoot us an email. Do whatever you do on the website there. You got a place to do it. Uh, I urge everybody subscribe I urge everybody to consider sponsorship as we are taking, uh, orders for such, uh, as I speak right now, we have 16.

Brett: Blogs up between, uh, Brett and myself on the website.

Steve: Uh, distant third over here at zero.

Brett: Well, people check them out. Uh, we are talking about other issues besides this, uh, the podcast subject matter. So Brett and I are taking on national issues and other personal things and whatever. So the content is different. If you would like to go explore that. It's on our website.

Steve: And I think it's notable to say this, that we don't always agree here at the table. We don't always, uh, uh, have an accord. We don't always get along. And we get along, but we don't always get along academically or where we stand on some of these issues. And that's the purpose of the roundtable. That's the purpose of this debate. That's the purpose of Podcast World in general. As Brett would tell you at circle 270 Media. It's like this is where maybe the last place where you can air this stuff out. You can actually say what you think. And if you're wrong, you're going to be called on it. If you're right, you can defend it. Uh, and we like to encourage that. Right here at the round table. There are no corners on the round table. Everybody gets a spot. And it's always the same and your opinion is the same until you get proven wrong. And that can happen here too. So beware if you come in with an opinion and, uh, you can't defend it, well, normal take you apart anyway. This is common, uh, sense, Ohio coming at you right from the middle, at least until now.