Shownotes
This episode hits on everything from Supreme Court smackdowns to Ohio’s latest budget wrangling. Some fascinating historical context, legal insight, and yes, even a bit of humor about how our government actually works.
Here are 3 key takeaways that resonated with me:
- Judicial Power & Nationwide Injunctions: The Supreme Court’s recent decision hammered home a crucial point—allowing a single district judge to halt federal policy nationwide is a bad idea, no matter which side of the aisle you’re on. Amy Coney Barrett’s opinion (and the fiery back-and-forth with Ketanji Brown Jackson) is a reminder of just how critical it is to keep checks and balances intact.
- Budget Battles & Political Theater: Ohio’s “big and beautiful” budget bill is full of political give-and-take. Whether it’s debate over taxing H1B remittances, property tax relief, or flat tax reforms, the hosts highlighted how government spending (and the process to pass it) is often more about showmanship than substance.
- Understanding Our History—with Nuance: The episode underscored the importance of studying our country’s past honestly, including the complexities of the Founding Fathers and the long, painful arc of issues like slavery. Our modern debates about policy and social justice are richer (and fairer) when we confront history head-on, not through simplistic narratives.
Common Sense Moments
00:00 Reflecting on July 4th
08:17 Short-Sighted Statutes and Grant's Legacy
12:59 Injunctions as Legal Tools
20:04 Politicization of Supreme Court Nominations
23:57 Speech Restrictions and Content Discrimination
27:15 Defending Unpopular Cases and Challenges
34:15 Misleading Goods and Political Frustrations
41:10 Debt Compromise: A Necessary Choice
44:32 Ohio Budget: DeWine's 67 Vetoes
48:25 Ohio Property Tax Controversy
54:45 Ohio Property Tax Controversy
01:00:21 Tragic Crash: Truck Driver Sentenced
01:07:06 US Debt Crisis: Real Cuts Needed
info@commonsenseohioshow.com
Recorded at the 511 Studios, in the Brewery District in downtown Columbus, OH.
A Big Thanks to our sponsor, Harper Plus Accounting. They provide more than just basic transactions, offering expert business consultation as well. They go beyond the basics, providing comprehensive advice on saving, planning, and optimizing taxes.
Copyright 2025 Common Sense Ohio
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/
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, My Podcast Guy®, 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.
Transcripts
All right, it is that time again. Common Sense Ohio. Wednesday, July 2nd. This is Takedown Wednesday. We got ACB 123 smackdown of KBJ. That is Amy Coney Barrett taking down Katana Brown Jackson her decision. We'll get to that. And we've got the big and beautiful budget bill and Ohio's big and Brown Budget Bill 67 line items from DeWine taking them down.
Steve Palmer [:This is like Takedown Wednesday.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:So we've got the. We got lots going on. And then, not to mention the news, legal and otherwise, we're going to cover. And always we're brought to you by Harper plus Accounting. My accountant could be yours. In fact, I'm working on a problem I had with my accounting. You know, every now and then, those pesky 1099 show up and you didn't catch it in time and you got to go back and amend it. Doesn't mean you're a criminal.
Steve Palmer [:It just means you got to fix it. That's my guy. Harper plus Accounting could be your guy, too. And everybody knows the fact of the day. July 2nd. So on this day in history, Norm, it's really one of the most insidious conspiracies of all time takes root to take down the government.
Norm Murdock [:Hmm. Wow.
Steve Palmer [:Yep. On July 2nd in 1776, the Continental Congress voted for independence from Great Britain.
Norm Murdock [:There you go.
Steve Palmer [:How about that?
Norm Murdock [:How about that?
Steve Palmer [:Everybody talks about July 4th, but really it's July 2nd where the vote happened. Then July 4th, the declaration of Independence is signed, and these guys were the conspirators of all time, taking down the British government, not really taking it down. So, I mean, maybe if you're Britain, you looked at it that way. Old King George didn't appreciate it much, I imagine, but they all signed their death warrant, and they were all signing their death warrant. So, look, this is not a call to action, you conspirators out there. I'm not asking for the militia to take up arms, but it's. You know, it is interesting. And I got it.
Steve Palmer [:I usually don't cover multiple facts, but it is amazing how much happened actually on July 2nd in history. The Continental Congress, of course. Amistad's slave ship mutiny took place. Yeah, interesting. Watch the movie if you don't want to read about it. The Battle of Gettysburg continued with intense fighting, particularly on the Union's left flank at Little Round Top. Go read about Little Round Top. It is.
Steve Palmer [:You know, look, take a side, don't take a side. Read about American history. It's fascinating. The Salvation army is founded. Garfield Was shot. Amelia Earharts and internavigator were disappeared over the Pacific. LBJ signs the Civil Rights act into law ingraining financial burden on everybody. Yeah, yeah, that's a go read about it.
Steve Palmer [:There's a great book we've read called the Great Society. North and South Vietnam officially reunited and Jimmy Carter reinstated draft registration for 18 year olds. So all that on July 2nd. Sometimes I look and I have to do some digging, but not this time. So anyway, July 4th weekend coming up. Enjoy it. It's time for reflection, I think, but also time to be with your family. It is funny how this has become sort of a family holiday and every time I go to a parade or I see something in a local community on July 4th, it really, you know, it restores my faith in the universe for sure.
Norm Murdock [:You know, the one thing about the revolution that I think people have over the years kind of, I don't know, confused it in their head is that these were old white guys and they were mainly.
Steve Palmer [:They're actually young white guys.
Norm Murdock [:They were young guys.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah, young white guys.
Norm Murdock [:I think the average age of the founding fathers was like Ben Franklin was the outlier, but like basically they were like 28 years old.
Brett Johnson [:I was going to say late 20s.
Steve Palmer [:Early 30s, doing incredible things. Look around at our 20 somethings now. Not all of you, but look around at our 20 somethings now. Even when I was a 20 something, I was a jackass. And now these guys were building a country. Really, really amazing. And I guess we should also cover this, I mean, just to the extent we need to. There's this fallacy going around that our country was built on slavery.
Steve Palmer [:And these guys were all old white guys, slave owners who were just forming a country to enshine slavery into. And it was totally the opposite.
Norm Murdock [:It was called the original sin by a lot of lefties.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. And even those, even Washington, Jefferson, those who held slaves all recognized it outwardly that this was a morally wrong, morally wrong institution that needed to. And they were stuck in it. And could they have changed? I don't know. But what I always like, what could they have done? At the time I wasn't there, I wasn't at the Continental Congress voting for independence. But I do know this. The country wasn't founded on slavery. It was founded despite slavery.
Steve Palmer [:And it wasn't long after, it wasn't long after that states quickly started to abandon slavery and outlaw slavery, particularly some of the northern states.
Norm Murdock [:Absolutely.
Steve Palmer [:And I think long before England even did, we were getting rid of slavery. So go research the Real history, not this nonsense that you're taught.
Norm Murdock [:You know, that brings up. You mentioned England. That brings up another thing that the founding fathers, generally young men, were also pretty much all from Great Britain or their families were. So they were brought up in that culture to honor the king, honor the. The system of hereditary power coming down from a given family. And just think of the incredible intellectual progressivism, I guess you would say, for them to go from one person deciding everything to a system where we elect people and there is a consensus, there's a majority vote, and that's how we govern. I mean, that is.
Steve Palmer [:Well, they studied the likes of Locke, Hobbes, the Greeks. I mean, and where would you get there? They did their homework.
Norm Murdock [:Exactly. Where would you get that idea? It was fresh. I mean, I know they were influenced by Indian tribal councils and the ancient Greeks and some of that, but it had never been done in the way that it was done in America.
Brett Johnson [:It is, if you read some biographies of gentlemen that lived in that era, their schooling was totally different than what we have right now. It was stand up and defend a thought for a couple of hours.
Steve Palmer [:Sounds like law school, right?
Brett Johnson [:To a certain degree. And these guys were smart.
Norm Murdock [:Classical education.
Steve Palmer [:It is classical Socratic education. Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:Interesting. And also the change of the Industrial Revolution changed a lot. What was going on at that time, too. Yeah, I mean, I think what was coming. Slavery was in the right parts of the country, was on its way out. They could just see, hey, I can have a machine do this right? And it can run 20, it can run 24, 7.
Norm Murdock [:Shortly after the Civil War, the cotton gin came into common use. And that economically rendered slavery, like, way too expensive.
Brett Johnson [:Exactly, you know, Exactly.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah, sort of.
Brett Johnson [:Thank goodness, you know, those factors came into play.
Steve Palmer [:Exactly. And I think it reflects a humanity. And, you know, I'm not shy about my faith either. It reflects my vision of humanity, which is we are all capable of good and bad. We all have it in us. And, you know, and it's how it plays out. And there's this internal conflict of all of us. And to say and to judge somebody only by the bad thing that they did or were part of is.
Steve Palmer [:Is such a shame on you. It's like, let he without sin cast the first stone. And if you wonder where that came from, it came from Christ. It is such a short sighted, simplified, politicized, nonsensical view to say that all these guys are wrong about everything they did because they were also slave owners. Look, it just defies all reason and logic. And if you Think that you'd be different then. Great, you're better.
Norm Murdock [:I mean, a great example of why these various statues and monuments were torn down in a very short sighted burst of insanity. You take somebody like General Ulysses Grant, who went on to be president, but when he was poor, his, his father in law gave him a slave to live on his little farm. And Grant, at the nadir of his personal wealth, went down to the courthouse and freed and gave his slave his freedom against the will of his father in law. And this is in Missouri, for God's sakes. Right bloody Missouri. And he did that. He wasn't even in the army then. He had been basically dishonorably discharged.
Norm Murdock [:And then after that, friends encouraged him to command a local unit and he went on to be the chief, the top commander for President Lincoln of Union forces to free the slaves. And yet they tear his statue down.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah, it just is.
Norm Murdock [:I mean, are they mad? This was a beautiful example of somebody who had incredible values.
Steve Palmer [:Now the flip side is I have no problem studying both sides of history.
Norm Murdock [:He was offered $1,000 for that slave at the courthouse when he was in line to give him his freedom. A thousand bucks back then. Yeah, that's a lot of money in the mid-1800s. And he said, no, I'm giving him his freedom.
Steve Palmer [:Well, I mean, the point you're making is you got to study both sides of this. Oh my God. So look, I don't fault anybody for saying, look, let's dig into Jefferson and whether he had a plantation, he owned his own slaves. Let's dig into that side of him and sort of explore the internal.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah, that's all valid. Absolutely.
Steve Palmer [:Conflict that he was, or even his hypocrisy, if that's what you want to call it. Let's explore it. But you can't just say because of that everything he did was bad.
Norm Murdock [:No, you can't.
Steve Palmer [:You cannot do that. You can't. And all you have to do. And this is. When I really dig into this with people, I usually ask one question. What would you change? You've got the Constitution.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:What would you change? Well, we did that. We did that. It wasn't perfect. We fixed that. So now what?
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. The two thirds of a person thing for slaves was to diminish the power. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:The purpose of the slave states.
Norm Murdock [:The purpose. It was an abolitionist insertion in the.
Steve Palmer [:Constitution because people who don't study history, they don't understand history.
Norm Murdock [:So they take that as meaning. Oh, you consider a black person 2/3 of a human being.
Steve Palmer [:That's Right.
Norm Murdock [:Oh, my God, you're so ignorant if you don't know why that's in there.
Steve Palmer [:Which is, you know, when you look at it, there's an irony there that's worth discussion. But it does. But the purpose was to eliminate slavery, not perpetuate it.
Norm Murdock [:Exactly. And it led to the Civil War Eventually.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah, eventually. That was part of it. So, anyway, offward and on where we go.
Norm Murdock [:Great stuff, Steve. Good stuff. Well, let's talk about the chick fight at the Supreme Court.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Amy Coney Barrett. I mean, really. So this is.
Norm Murdock [:Maybe they should get in a mud. What do you call mud wrestling? I mean, that would be class pudding wrestling.
Steve Palmer [:Whatever. This is near and dear to my heart because I have been railing against these nationwide injunctions now for not just months, but years. I mean, it never made any sense to me that I could pick a district court in the country, file a lawsuit, and. And then have that district judge enjoin, meaning order whatever action I'm looking or I want. And so those. Like in the law, we call this forum shopping. We go pick a friendly judge, and you get a friendly decision.
Norm Murdock [:There's like 700 of them, right?
Steve Palmer [:Yeah, whatever.
Norm Murdock [:All around the country, federal district judges appointed for life, appointed for life, unelected.
Steve Palmer [:That's right.
Norm Murdock [:Let's just.
Steve Palmer [:So you can pick a judge that's friendly to you and then get a nationwide injunction. Now, is that what's going on here? I'm not gonna comment on that, but it doesn't matter. The point is, if we are going. It doesn't make any sense to me that we would have a system that would let one federal judge enjoin the entire nation. Now, there's other ways you can do this. And then we'll get to the opinion. There's other ways this can be done. You can file a class action and then have an injunction.
Steve Palmer [:Request an injunction for the entire class of people. That can be done. Now, class actions have procedural problems that go along with them, but at least it's a little bit extra that you would have to do. You have to identify the class, has to be specific enough that you can figure out who they are and actually give relief to everybody. But anyway, you can do that. And then you have to have notice requirements, which is sending out notice to people. It gets expensive.
Brett Johnson [:So it's a slower process.
Steve Palmer [:It's a slower, harder process. You can go to the U.S. supreme Court and ask them for an injunction, and they have the authority to do that. I think under certain circumstances. I'm no pro in the procedure. But that can be done. If you ask for some relief in the district court and the district judge says no, will you quickly get to work your way up the appellate ladder like everybody else does? But what's happened recently is these injunctions have been used as a weapon, or if you're on the other side, they call it a shield against Trump's executive actions. Yeah, fair enough.
Steve Palmer [:You don't like the executive actions, go challenge it. File a lawsuit. I love it. Let's air this crap out. Let's get it up to the courts. Let's have a discussion. But you can't have it both ways, you know, and there's a. The underlying issue is you've got forum shopping going on for political purpose.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And even those with whom I disagree intensely, friends of mine in the legal field, we almost always have found common ground that these national injunctions are just bad.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And it's just bad. And I would say the same if the Republicans were doing it against Democratic action and vice versa.
Norm Murdock [:It's tyranny, Steve. I mean, it's tyranny to have one person. Right. Substitute him or herself for the judgment of, say, Congress or an executive who was elected by popular vote by the Electoral College nationally. And you have one person, unelected, appointed for life, who just has, you know, like, they just don't believe in that policy. And they have the right. No, that's not legit.
Steve Palmer [:And this is not. This is not to say this wasn't a decision on the merits of birthright citizenship.
Norm Murdock [:Absolutely.
Steve Palmer [:We're far from that yet.
Norm Murdock [:Far from that.
Steve Palmer [:But as one learned scholar said, it just can't be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks. Justice Elena Kagan, 2022.
Norm Murdock [:Right, right, right.
Steve Palmer [:Who takes the opposite position here?
Norm Murdock [:When Big Joe was president.
Steve Palmer [:When Big Joe was president. So, look, it just, it shows you some of the hypocrisy that you get involved in with politics.
Norm Murdock [:And your point is, Steve, like, she flipped. She flipped. So she was part of the three people out of the nine that. That was in the minority on this position. And so she changed her position without any discernible difference in the rationale. It's just because she didn't like this particular outcome. I don't know how else to put it. And Ketanji Jackson Brown was even crazier in her opinion.
Steve Palmer [:Well, here's. We should at least read the ACB123 takedown. We will not dwell on Justice Jackson's argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries worth of pressure, not to mention the Constitution.
Norm Murdock [:Two centuries.
Steve Palmer [:Not to mention the Constitution itself. We only observe this. Justice Jackson decries an imperial executive while embracing an imperial judiciary. It's a power. And you know, that last sentence is the most insightful.
Norm Murdock [:They're equal branches. The Supreme Court is not supposed to be the referee for the country any more than the President or Congress. The. They're equal.
Steve Palmer [:And I think also in this opinion, ACB suggests maybe that Jackson go read Marbury vs Madison, which if anybody's gone to law school, knows that, I mean, that's an insult of the highest order.
Norm Murdock [:It's almost the first case.
Steve Palmer [:It's the first case you read.
Norm Murdock [:That's the first case.
Steve Palmer [:It's the first case you read in constitutional law. You know, it's like. It really is a slap in the face.
Norm Murdock [:It really is.
Steve Palmer [:So, look, I don't know what this says about Amy Coney Barrett, other than she feels pretty strongly about this issue and how she got the nod to write the decision and et cetera, but again, it doesn't say anything necessarily about whether birthright citizenship will be upheld or not. In fact, I think there's gonna be some conservatives that are disappointed in the US Supreme Court's ultimate decision on this.
Norm Murdock [:Oh, for sure.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. And what I think should happen, what I think will happen, and somewhere in the middle, the two shall meet. You know, we've got some precedent there. That's not gonna go well for us, if you. Or, well, I don't say us, those who oppose birthright citizenship, because I don't necessarily oppose it in all situations. I think there's a meandering road here. And you know what I was thinking on the way in?
Norm Murdock [:If there's any court that's not bound by precedent, it's the Supreme Court. I mean, they can blow precedent out of the wall.
Steve Palmer [:They can. They don't often.
Norm Murdock [:Like Brown versus Board. I mean, they blew away, you know, all of these.
Steve Palmer [:It usually happens, though, only in situations where the court has gotten over its skis on something and started to be an activist court and legislate.
Norm Murdock [:That's right.
Steve Palmer [:And speaking of legislate, I got to thinking on the way in here. Congress could create a court. And this is the suggestion I had to one of my buddies. Congress could create a court, let it sit in D.C. let it be comprised of a mix of judges where one would go for a nationwide injunction and then create a direct appellate process up to the Supremes as quickly as you can.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah, I like it.
Steve Palmer [:So. Because, look, the idea of injunctions isn't a bad one. You have this idea if there's an action that takes a place. Right. That if it takes effect right away, it can cause irreparable harm.
Norm Murdock [:Well, let's just suppose a president said, right, despite the Second Amendment, I want the ATF to go out, knock on all the doors, get a list of your firearms, and then I want them to confiscate anything I don't know that has a capacity of over eight rounds or something like that. Right.
Steve Palmer [:Somebody's gonna go challenge that right away.
Norm Murdock [:We need a way to challenge that or validate it one way or the other quickly.
Steve Palmer [:So you could file a class action naming all firearms owners as the class participants, and that might even be a manageable class. I don't know. You could go right to the US Supremes, or you could go to the injunction court. I'll call it in D.C. or somewhere.
Norm Murdock [:I agree.
Steve Palmer [:Look, I'm making this up as I go, so I'm sure you legal scholars out there will have comment on it.
Norm Murdock [:I want one other field of for that court, and that would be any kind of elections or campaign violations. Because we've seen in the past, like take Arizona, for example, where it's a fait accompli. By the time it gets to a court to decide it, the governor or the senator or the congressman's been in office for six months. We need a way to resolve and audit elections.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah, no, I agree with that. And this might be the same kind of court. And the question is, how do you comprise the court and try to make it fair to both sides? Because what's happening is both sides are using courts for political purposes.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah, that's right.
Steve Palmer [:And the idea here is to eliminate that as an incentive. So if it were comprised of appointees from. I don't know how you define it. That's for you, Congress, to go to the actually do something other than negotiate a big beautiful bill and go, let's figure out some law on this.
Norm Murdock [:Well, you know, up until President Obama, it was understood between Republicans and Democrats, for example, that when you appointed a name for the Supreme Court, nobody ever asked them behind the scenes and expected an answer. If they did ask about their opinion on Roe like that was, it was just understood that you don't ask that question because you want that judge to make the decision based on the Constitution or on precedent if you're on the other side of that case. And so nobody ever asked that. But you are so right, Steve. Ever since I would say President Obama is where the bright line is. Every president, Trump, Obama, everybody has politicized. You know, Biden, they've all politicized. Well, how would you rule on this particular case? And they, and people want to know the ruling.
Norm Murdock [:This goes ahead of time.
Steve Palmer [:You know, before that you had, which is so wrong, you had Biden and his borking and you had, and even Biden with Clarence Thomas.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:And Elizabeth Warren with Kavanaugh.
Norm Murdock [:Oh my God.
Steve Palmer [:I mean, really despicable. It just becomes stupid. And then the Republicans sort of jumped into it a little bit with kbj. It wasn't a personal morality takedown.
Norm Murdock [:Marsha Blackburn asked her, what's a woman? What's a woman? And she said, I'm not a biologist.
Steve Palmer [:I'm not a biologist. But it's a trap question. It's a trap question because KBJ knows if she's going to toe the line, she can't answer that question the way the conservatives want her to do it. So the conservatives ask the question. But it does expose the nonsensical stuff that's going on.
Norm Murdock [:Even England's top Court decided in 2024 there were only two genders, male and female. Well, look, even, even England.
Steve Palmer [:I want to talk about the other case too, and then we'll move on to the big and beautiful stuff. But Brett, we were talking off the air here a little bit about the second case that not the second, but the other. Another case the US Supreme Court decided on pornography. And it has to do with whether there can be a click through screen to verify you're 18 years old if a website is a third pornography or something.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah, it applies to all websites that contain content that is one third or more sexually suggestive in nature and harmful to children.
Steve Palmer [:And this was a Texas law, I think.
Brett Johnson [:Yes.
Steve Palmer [:So what happens is procedurally, it's important to note it's not just the Supreme Court saying this is the law. It is a law in Texas that somebody challenged. So there was a. Texas passes a law that says if your site is one third or more pornography, which is, everybody knows, really difficult to defend. But you know, when you, or define, but you know, when you see it, then it has to have a click through. I'm 18 and I'm not a child. And really what does that do? Because you think your kid's not going to click it. But anyway, it.
Steve Palmer [:So Texas passes a law, somebody challenges the law. I forget who the plaintiffs were. It's probably the ACLU or somebody like that.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Which I don't mind. I don't mind. This is what you need. You need people to challenge those kind of laws. You gotta put the legislature into place. This is what we do. It's what makes our country great.
Norm Murdock [:Exactly.
Steve Palmer [:So they challenge a law and it goes up to the U.S. supreme Court. And the U.S. supreme Court says, nah, we're not gonna find that unconstitutional. And this one to me is an easy one. Actually, both these decisions to me are easy ones so far.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah, they are.
Steve Palmer [:And so if you just take out the content, the factual background, like the legal concepts are sort of easy to me. You know, this is an easy time, place and manner restriction on speech. So, you know, look, I'm a constitutional purist. You guys know this. I harp on my constitutional rights all the time, but I also understand precedent. And the U.S. supreme Court from almost the days of old have said that you can have something called time, place and manner restrictions on speech. This is what I always talk about when you can't just go shut down High street during rush hour.
Steve Palmer [:There can be a law that prevents that. It's not a violation of your free speech. It's a time, place and manner restriction. Now, if the government requires you to go get a permit to do that, and they only issue permits to one side or the other, well, that is a content based restriction on speech. So if the government or the legislature or a state or any organization or any governmentally funded organization up and down the ladder creates a content based restriction, meaning you can't go talk about if you're kkk, you can't go protest, or if you're, if you're on the other side, Black Lives Matter, you can't go protest. And they create restrictions that are either applied to intentionally prevent one side or the other from having speech. I got a huge problem with both those, an enormous problem with both those. Because you're regulating speech based on content.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah, but if you say, look, pornography is protected speech, but we're just gonna put a time, place and manner restriction on it, an age restriction on it, it's not as burdensome on speech than content based restriction, correct?
Brett Johnson [:What the Texas. Well, the decision, they're concerned about the term harmful to children, quote, unquote. Meaning that it could be debatable because according to the measure, the term could cover any sexually suggestive material, including romance novels and R rated movies. And that's true. It could, it could. But I was playing it out here at the table before we got on the air of the. Okay, so let's say there is an attorney that basically is defending most of the business is child porn or sexually abuse, that kind of stuff.
Steve Palmer [:Or even worse, let's say I'm an organization because there is such an organization that exists that is designed to advocate on behalf of convicted child pornography offenders.
Brett Johnson [:And their website is not going to have child porn, but it will have the term child pornography, sexually abused. All these phrases that Google is going to catch, does that prohibit them from.
Steve Palmer [:So let's create a scenario. It's a law school scenario. Can Congress then, or can a local government then pass a law requiring a pass through on those types of sites based on this decision? And the answer is maybe.
Brett Johnson [:And the pass through when you have to click on I'm over, I'm under is a hindrance to SEO for Google.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:And that I think is building your business. I searched it up and it is. So that in itself is prohibiting you from growing your business to help defend those that have been charged with child abuse or pornography, whatever your law firm is. As the example.
Steve Palmer [:Yep. And this is different. There's a different scenario. There's two scenarios. One would be some sort of legislative branch passes a law that would go a little bit further and then a little bit further yet after that and a little bit further. This is incrementalism. And as a result of that, I've defended plenty of child pornography cases. Call me what you will, it's my job.
Steve Palmer [:It's what I do among other cases. Not my only type of case, but I defend people accused of crimes. And among the crimes I've defended are child pornography cases. Doesn't mean I like it, doesn't mean I agree with it, but I defend the cases. But so if there was a, if somebody had passed a law that says now I have to have click through prompts on my website and it hurt my SEO. I mean one, I would say, well look, everybody's gonna have the same problem, so I guess it doesn't hurt me. On the other hand, I would go bananas because it's impacting me now. That's if the government did it.
Steve Palmer [:Now let's say Google does it on its own. And Google made you. And Google throttles our content here all the time.
Brett Johnson [:All the time.
Steve Palmer [:All the time. Because they don't like the content of.
Brett Johnson [:It and probably will because we're talking about the subject.
Steve Palmer [:And this is the difference between government action versus private action. And then it got really blurry in the last decade or so about government pressure on private entities like Google to take action. So when the government forces or pressures or encourages sort of like hazing In a fraternity. Oh, they didn't make us do it, but they highly encourage. It's like, no, they're making you do it. Right. So it's like, you know, that is government action, too. So those are going to be questions that hopefully emerge or that if they happen, they emerge in the legal precedent.
Steve Palmer [:So this is what the common law is, folks. This is how it works. You have a decision and the decision, then people push the bounds of that decision, and then there's another decision and people push the bounds of that. And maybe at some point the court strikes back like they did with acb and say, look, enough's enough. We're not doing it. Or they. Sometimes they reverse their field completely. Just go read about a stitch in time saves nine, where all of a sudden the commerce clause let Roosevelt do whatever he wanted to do after he threatened to pack the court.
Steve Palmer [:So there's all sorts of reasons courts have reversed their field, but this is how legal precedent works. It's a slow, evolving glacial process.
Brett Johnson [:And for the record, I agree with the decision. I just play it out to extremes to see where it's going.
Steve Palmer [:There's interesting arguments to be made in this decision. Like, as a lawyer, I start to think, all right, you're right. There's some vague language in there. Like, what really does that mean? What is offensive to children? Could that be like, pornography has always.
Brett Johnson [:Been a hard one, Especially when the phrase of I know it when I see it.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. I can't define it, but I know it because it's true.
Brett Johnson [:That changes generation to generation.
Norm Murdock [:That was Potter Stewart.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Potter Stewart knows when he sees it, because on some level, it is the least descriptive yet most perfect definition of pornography. It is.
Brett Johnson [:Exactly.
Steve Palmer [:Because it's so true. We all know it when we see it. We're like, oh, and I tell you, folks, I've seen the worst of the worst. I've seen it and it is nothing you ever want to see. I've had to see it professionally, and it is awful.
Norm Murdock [:There's no more vile thing than exploiting children.
Steve Palmer [:It's awful. There's nothing.
Brett Johnson [:There's not.
Steve Palmer [:So look, maybe, and one more sort of. I'll throw a lifeline to the other side here that raised this challenge. It doesn't mean that the people challenging this law agree with child pornography. Now, maybe they do on some weird guttural level that I don't know about and they're conscious. I don't. Who knows? But just because you challenge the law and the government's ability to enact a Law doesn't mean you agree with the actual premise of child pornography. So don't take it too far the other way either.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Brett Johnson [:And the group is called Free Speech Cult Coalition and they've done, I don't know them personally, I don't know what they've done, but it's free speech. That's two of the three words in their second amendment phrase.
Steve Palmer [:Second Amendment folks do the same thing.
Brett Johnson [:So just beware.
Steve Palmer [:The second Amendment folks do the same thing. Any restrictions on guns are going to go fight it because they're fighting incrementalism. So look, I'm not saying I agree with one side or another. I'm just saying just because you challenge a law that has a time place and manner restriction on free speech doesn't mean you're a bad person that supports child pornography. Now if you are a person that supports child pornography, I got a big problem with that.
Brett Johnson [:Right. That's a difference. That's a different story. Right.
Steve Palmer [:Anyway, Norm, I've said my piece.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. So I just think this, what was officially called in the House, the big beautiful bill.
Steve Palmer [:Well, how did that, where do we come.
Norm Murdock [:That was the official name. That was the name of the bill.
Steve Palmer [:I can just see Trump saying, we got this big beautiful bill. It's beautiful, it's big. It's the best bill I've ever passed in the tire of history. Well, the Congress, it's the biggest and beautifulest bill.
Norm Murdock [:Mike Johnson or whoever in the Congress called it the big beautiful bill. And that was the official name, such.
Steve Palmer [:A Trumpian name until really it almost detracts from it.
Norm Murdock [:Well, it got to the Senate and the Senate, Chuck Schumer called it just the budget bill. So it's been relabeled. So but I'll for purposes here, we'll call it the BBB because we all know what we're talking about here. So The Senate needed J.D. vance to advance the bill. I think the vote was 51 to 50. And so now it goes back to the House and there are a number of inconsistencies because the Senate either took things out or added things in that are not contained in the House bill. So now they need to, you know, they need to have this committee or they ping pong it back and forth.
Norm Murdock [:They could do a committee and that's what I think they will do. It may be informal, but people on the phone just, hey, if you take that out, then I'll put this in, et cetera, and then both sides will vote for it. So something is going to pass.
Steve Palmer [:Because I think it's done.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:It's all, it's all over but the shouting.
Norm Murdock [:It's all over, but they're shouting. But there were some interesting changes that the Senate made that really are ticking off the freedom or, you know, caucus or the more conservative budgeteers in the House. For example, the House put in a requirement that if you're going to receive welfare, essentially certain kinds of welfare, that you had to work for it. Like you had a work requirement. You couldn't just lay on the sofa and get a check and it comes in every month that you would have to do something, pick up trash or go counsel people if you're able to. If you're able. Right.
Steve Palmer [:So that's the key. Right.
Norm Murdock [:So they took that out. The Senate took that out. That's too mean, you know, to require that.
Brett Johnson [:But there are systems in play to receive a check that you have to go get training anyway to get a job. That's interesting.
Norm Murdock [:Well, this, we're talking about work, not education. No, no, no.
Brett Johnson [:But I'm saying work training to get yourself to a job. I think there are systems in place.
Steve Palmer [:I think you're right to help. But it's all nonsense.
Brett Johnson [:But it's nonsense. It's nonsense.
Steve Palmer [:No, it's theater. All these things are theater.
Brett Johnson [:Theater. Yeah, exactly.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. And I look, there are systems in place. I think what you're saying is there's systems in place anyway. But at the same, then we're not fighting those systems. Like why are we fighting this system? And then, you know, to me, all this stuff just means more bureaucracy. Well, if you're going to create another restriction on getting this stuff, you're going to end up spending more to hire another 5 million people to go. That's probably an exaggeration. 100,000 people to go implement it.
Steve Palmer [:The government just gets bigger either way.
Norm Murdock [:We were sold a bill of goods. One of the very first things that Trump did was he picked up on an Obama existing office and he relabeled it Doge. And we went through, and this is why Elon and Rand Paul are so pissed off is because we went through this three or four month thing where they identified all kinds of waste, corruption and abuse. Right. And very little of that is contained in the bbb. So people are ticked off. And what the House had put in, you know, they, for example, migrant remittances, you know, back to places like India with their H1B. Over a million Indians are here on H1B and they're basically, it's white collar Jobs, it's engineers, it's, you know, draftsmen, it's architects, it's professionals.
Norm Murdock [:And it's $32 billion that Indians nationals here in the United States are remitting back to India to their relatives or to their, you know, to their bank accounts or whatever. Back to India. Not keeping the money in the US and of course they have to pay some Social Security. And India has been lobbying to reduce the amount of Social Security that H1Bers pay. And so the house had a 3.5% remittance tax on this 32 billion, just to take India as an example. Of course, Mexico's huge too. And you know, I'm sure Canada is big, but 3.5% on your remittances back to your home country, The Senate reduced it to zero if you use bank transfers. Otherwise it's 1%.
Norm Murdock [:So I guess if you go down to the, whatever the local rip off place with your PayCheck, it's now 1%. And the House had proposed 3.5. And the idea is to make it more expensive to hire H1B people rather than Americans because there's this old saw. Well, Americans won't do that work. Well, Americans will do work if it pays better.
Steve Palmer [:Well, this is the thing, right? This is the market Americans do. The market will adjust to whatever labor costs there are to meet the labor needs.
Norm Murdock [:And if you can get around it with illegals like Purdue Meat Processors, black market labor, they had all these illegals making five bucks an hour, right? Completely off the books. And they're making your sausage and your hot dogs and it's, it's so wrong.
Steve Palmer [:It's so wrong.
Norm Murdock [:And when you say Americans won't do that work.
Steve Palmer [:Well, they'll not at that price.
Norm Murdock [:They'll do it for maybe 20 bucks an hour, but not 5 bucks.
Steve Palmer [:And this is why you don't need minimum wage loss. So it's like the market just has to adjust. And guess what? The price of goods may go up. The price of goods may go down as a result of this, but the market will fix itself.
Brett Johnson [:So are we sending US aid to India?
Norm Murdock [:I'm sure we are in some way.
Brett Johnson [:Okay, so you said how many billions.
Norm Murdock [:Of dollars going 32 billion is remitted backed by Indians working in the US.
Brett Johnson [:So we can maybe reduce the aid to India because we know those billions of dollars are going back there anyway, right?
Norm Murdock [:I'm sure there's military.
Steve Palmer [:That would make way too much.
Brett Johnson [:They're making money here to send back home. And I'm going to Assume a lot of these HB1s are probably from poor families.
Norm Murdock [:It just shows you, you know? I mean, beautiful.
Brett Johnson [:What I'm saying is we're sending money back to India.
Norm Murdock [:We're talking white collar jobs, man.
Steve Palmer [:Like, you're missing what he's saying.
Brett Johnson [:What I'm saying is these kids that are here earning money and sending money back home to India, they're not kids, but go ahead. Adults, whatever.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Engineers, right? Colleagues, friends.
Brett Johnson [:So their families in India, we don't know their status there. They could be poor. They could be.
Steve Palmer [:Who knows?
Norm Murdock [:There's poor Americans.
Steve Palmer [:India's getting money.
Brett Johnson [:What I'm saying is we will. Then we could cut off US Aid to India because of all the billions.
Steve Palmer [:That is US Aid.
Brett Johnson [:That is US Aid.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:This is the problem with these bills. I'm saying they are not consistent.
Brett Johnson [:Does that make sense?
Norm Murdock [:No, it doesn't. Oh. Because the aid could be things like military assistance. Well, it could. And you've got Pakistan next to India with a nuclear bomb, right?
Steve Palmer [:Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:And India has a nuclear bomb. And Trump just settled the dispute in the cash.
Brett Johnson [:I'm just. Well, what I guess the eight I'm looking at is food, the basics, not military.
Steve Palmer [:What are we sending people? So what you're saying is this. We never do this. We never look at things in the big picture. And I think some of this is what Trump is trying to do.
Norm Murdock [:It's what Doge was trying to do.
Steve Palmer [:Is look at this as a big picture and say, look, here's what's going on with India, or here's what's going on with any other country. We're sending all this money through this, through USAID or whatever it is to do whatever. And at the same time, we're doing this over here. The two are really sort of maybe doing the same thing. Maybe they're not, or maybe they're incongruent to begin with. Nobody's looking at this as one big global thing and fixing it. Instead, they're plucking out these little political buzzwords or buzz topics and then trying to solve it. That solve it.
Steve Palmer [:This is political theater.
Norm Murdock [:Well, I consider this to be like bread and butter on the table. So you had, under Biden, Disney employees being fired and being told you have to train your H1B immigrant to do your old job. That actually happened with Disney. So imagine you're living in Orlando. Maybe you're making 150,000 a year, and they bring in somebody from a foreign country making 75,000, and you have to train them. You know, during the pendency, during your, you know, your parachute period before you're discharged from your job at Disney. I mean, that's comprehensively wrong. I mean, that's wrong on every level.
Brett Johnson [:Certainly is.
Norm Murdock [:And it's just, it's just Disney or, you know, Purdue or, you know, Tyson Foods or whoever it is undercutting American, you know, standards of labor in order to bring in cheap, you know, to undercut them. And I don't know why a country would do that. Right.
Steve Palmer [:The other bigger picture thing I'm seeing, like Musk has criticized the big beautiful bill and I hear him reading the headline that, you know, do this at your own peril, you Republicans are going to lose your primaries. Here's the problem, though. Like, I don't like the system that we have. I don't like these big omnibus bills that sort of try to do like the big spending bills. I don't like them and I don't like the big beautiful bill. And a lot of parts of it I don't like.
Norm Murdock [:Of course not.
Steve Palmer [:We didn't really cut the spending. We didn't really implement does. We didn't do anything of these things.
Norm Murdock [:It's going to increase the debt.
Steve Palmer [:It's going to increase the debt, but it's better than the alternative and we've got to move forward with something. So it's like there's these conflicting problems. We don't get it our way. You never get it completely your way. And this is why our country operates the way our country operates. We have representatives from different parts of the world or different parts of the country that have different interests. The opposite is also true. I could say to Musk is be careful if you don't vote for it because you may get primary back home or if you vote against it, because whatever it is, it can go both ways.
Steve Palmer [:Because your people, your supporters back home may have a different interest than what your vision of the world is. Absolutely. And this is the representative form of government.
Norm Murdock [:A good example of what you say is the Senate reduced the salt deductions that the House had put in there to benefit New York State, California, Illinois, you know, places that have high local taxes. Right. They gave them, in the House version of the bbb, they gave them a much higher deduction off their federal income.
Steve Palmer [:Tax, which is really a federal subsidy of these big states. That's right.
Norm Murdock [:And the Senate reduced it. So now you got all these big blue state, you know, where there are Republicans like Elise Stefanik in New York. Right. So she was one of the people that wanted New Yorkers to get that big deduction because it's so expensive to live in New York State and the city. So she's upset. Right. And threatening not to vote for the bbb.
Steve Palmer [:Yep. And look, you're gonna get that.
Norm Murdock [:You're gonna get that.
Steve Palmer [:But had the BBB not passed, or if it doesn't pass, it's catastrophic.
Norm Murdock [:Oh, yeah. Cause we're gonna get a 68% tax increase.
Steve Palmer [:We are cruising towards the glacier, the iceberg.
Norm Murdock [:The Trump income tax cuts that he made in his first term.
Steve Palmer [:That's right.
Norm Murdock [:Are expiring.
Steve Palmer [:So, look, you can't get everything your way. There's a compromise. That's this government. That's how it works. It's imperfect. That's what it is. And the reason it needs to be this way is because you don't want one side doing everything it wants to do all at once.
Norm Murdock [:Right. And another good example to your point, Steve, is things that have nothing to do with a budget were also stripped out by the Senate. Like, Ted Cruz wanted this. And I don't know if it's a good idea or bad, but it just doesn't have anything to do with money. But he wanted the federal government to be the regulator, sole regulator of AI policy. And the Senate took that out. So now all 50 states get to have their own separate AI policies. And his bill was.
Norm Murdock [:Or his attachment to the BBB was for 10 years. He wanted the federal government to set the tone, the limits, et cetera. And they threw it out.
Brett Johnson [:That's not a budget.
Steve Palmer [:It's not a budget item. It's pork.
Norm Murdock [:But they took it out.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah, they took it out.
Norm Murdock [:Well, it's not even pork. It had no money attached.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah, it just.
Brett Johnson [:You're legislating through the budget.
Steve Palmer [:It's just a little. It's a leech.
Brett Johnson [:Because like you said, we don't know much about it. So let's flush this out as legislation, not put it in a damn budget bill.
Norm Murdock [:Well, they did and they took it out.
Brett Johnson [:You know what I mean?
Steve Palmer [:But your point. The point is that requires its own separate debate.
Norm Murdock [:Well, that's what.
Steve Palmer [:The parliamentarian is not watered down by the budget debate. At the same time, this is what Congress is supposed to do.
Norm Murdock [:That's right. They stick a bunch of stuff. And Ohio does the same thing.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. So, I mean, look, let's talk about Ohio.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. So Ohio has a $60 billion biennial budget. It was just signed by Governor DeWine. And unlike, I think you have to go back to Clinton for a few years. The president used to have line item veto, and the Supreme Court said, no, baby, and they took it away. I forget the Supreme Court case, but they struck that down in Ohio. In our Constitution, we made it a constitutional power of our governor to have a line item Veto. And so Governor DeWine exercised that 67 times in this budget bill going out big.
Brett Johnson [:This is last bill he gets to touch.
Norm Murdock [:So he took out a lot of stuff.
Steve Palmer [:The Supreme Court struck down the line item Veto act of 1996 in the case of Clinton versus City of New York just for those scholars.
Norm Murdock [:So for a couple of years there, Clinton was knocking out pork, or what he viewed as pork out of the budget bill. And some people thought, I think Gingrich was in favor of that. It was a bipartisan. We want the POTUS to have this power, but we're going to need a constitutional amendment, clearly in the. On the federal level like we have in the state, to give the president.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. So the court emphasized the separation of powers and it relied on the presentment clause. Interesting stuff. You're a constitutional scholars. Yeah, go ahead.
Norm Murdock [:So what they took. So some of the things they did, the big things that they did, they. We came up with a flat tax in Ohio of 2.755% for all Ohioans in all bracket levels. And of course, there's a minimum. Really poor people won't pay any. But for people that meet the required adjusted gross income, it's 2.75% for all Ohioans. It used to be, I think three and a quarter for anybody over $100,000 adjusted gross income, that's gone now. All Ohioans are on the same page.
Norm Murdock [:So flat tax. The other big thing is, which, you know, Brett and I talked about last week, was the unclaimed funds in Ohio, which is almost 4 billion bucks. They're going to take 600 million of that, you know, so whatever that is, a sixth of it or whatever that turns out to be to help the Browns build their stadium. So that's a $2 billion build up there. And 600 million will come from Ohio, lost deposits that are in the unclaimed fund.
Brett Johnson [:Now, there is a stipulation on that, though, correct. That to get that money, if they leave, they return the money.
Norm Murdock [:Correct. Right.
Brett Johnson [:Okay. So there is at least that stipulation to it.
Norm Murdock [:The old Brown's going to Baltimore thing, Right? Right.
Brett Johnson [:Exactly. Exactly. It's little consolation, though, but what is what.
Norm Murdock [:So we've had the Buckeye Institute here and Steve, who's your friend, the college.
Steve Palmer [:Brad Smith. Brad Smith is a scholar on First Amendment issues, scholar on election issues.
Norm Murdock [:Really, really impressive guy, Brad Smith, who is the chairman, Buckeye Institute.
Steve Palmer [:We'll get him on.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah, we've been wanting to for a couple of years and now that he's retired as a law professor, maybe we'll get Brad in. I would love that.
Steve Palmer [:He wrote an interesting article I read recently on free speech. It's worth a read. You can catch it on, just Google it and Facebook or whatever.
Norm Murdock [:He also his speech, his farewell speech to Capitol University Law School was incredible. And it was basically, why are you going to law school? What's the purpose of this entire thing? And he goes into a really good philosophical discussion of the purpose of the law and why you're here. And if you're not thinking like that, maybe you shouldn't be here.
Steve Palmer [:It's too late if it's graduation.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah, yeah, I don't, I think it was his, I think it was his farewell law review, you know, kind of article. So. But what he and the Buckeye Institute, not to personalize this on, Brad, he may have a different opinion. But what has upset a lot of conservatives is it's apparent now all across the state of Ohio, with all of the infusion of out of state corporations suddenly discovering cheap energy, cheap land, very affordable labor rates in Ohio, that they're moving in and on green fields, they're building data centers and power plants and all of this stuff. And so our property taxes in Ohio have skyrocketed in many, basically everywhere, but in some communities as much as five times in just a period of a few years. And so DeWine vetoed a lot of this property tax relief that was contained in the budget bill. For example, he vetoed the, the proposal that school districts be prevented from carrying over more than 40% of the previous year's budget operating expenses year to year. So you've got school districts now in high tax areas that are just stockpiling millions and millions and millions of dollars and just squirreling it away in the bank.
Norm Murdock [:And yet the property taxes are still high and they're just accruing this money year after year, not necessarily with any distinct need for it or plans to use it other than they're just, they're able to just keep amassing this money. So there was a proposal to limit how much they can stockpile and DeWine got rid of that. And the idea would be if schools can't keep, since schools are the main recipient of property taxes, the, the idea would be, listen, if we can't stockpile this money, Then we need to go back to the voters and decrease the amount of property tax. So it would force that to happen because otherwise it would just go into some fund at the county and just sit there.
Brett Johnson [:Well, I guess on the other side, I'm looking at it as.
Norm Murdock [:Oh, the DeWine side. Go ahead.
Brett Johnson [:Well, there is a point, I think, that schools are able to not have to go to the polls so often because they've stretched out the budget that they said they were going to honor. I mean, I've been a part of the Hilliard city school systems. Not actively, but kids going there. But when they say they have a budget for X amount of years, they've held to it and even longer. So maybe that's a part of it that they're able to not have to go back to the voters so often because as you said, stockpile. But at the same time, every time they go, you know, the tax rate's gonna go up. I don't know. I'm just thinking of scenarios.
Norm Murdock [:Well, I like accountability. I think school districts need to go back to the voters on a regular basis. It's a way of them checking off that. Yes, you're doing a good job or you're not. I mean, that's the point of a levy is, hey, is your fire department, is your police department, is your school district, or what, is your water district? Are they doing a good job? Yay. Nay. Approve the levy or not?
Brett Johnson [:Well, and that's what meetings are for, too, to see how. Budget meetings and such, too. I don't know. I see it both ways. I'm not necessarily in DeWine's favor on this one, but I could see where maybe that may help out with that.
Steve Palmer [:I don't know.
Norm Murdock [:Well, I'll tell you what, it doesn't help. It doesn't help the little old lady who on fixed income who had $100,000 value farm and now it's a half a million and she can't afford to pay her taxes.
Brett Johnson [:But that's not a school problem. That's not a school problem.
Norm Murdock [:Well, sure thing.
Brett Johnson [:That's a corporation coming in and taking up land. We just talked about that.
Norm Murdock [:It is a school problem if the school never reduces its millage for property.
Brett Johnson [:Taxes because a corporation came in and gobbled up a bunch of land because.
Norm Murdock [:The auditor increased the value of this little old lady's farmland and now not even her whole Social Security check that if you add up the whole year that she gets will not equal the property tax. So she can't Buy food, medicine.
Steve Palmer [:Right.
Brett Johnson [:Because. Because of schools or because of corporations coming in?
Norm Murdock [:So what do you want to do? Ban corporations?
Brett Johnson [:I'd like to see a little bit of change. They're coming in and brownfielding. Shit.
Norm Murdock [:No, no, dude. The solution is to have property tax relief for people who were pre existing in that area.
Brett Johnson [:Correct?
Norm Murdock [:That's the solution, Cor. By not limiting schools ability to stockpile money, that's a force against reducing the property tax. Two other things he took away the ability in the bill for county budget committees to on their own, lower property tax rates of certain kinds of property taxes. So I got this letter from the auditor in my county that said, my hands are tied. I'm sorry that you're. So this went out to every property owner in Licking County a letter that said our hands are tied. We know your property taxes are way high now because your values went crazy, but we can't do anything about it. Write your state representative.
Norm Murdock [:So one of the solutions was to give counties the right to reduce property taxes outside of the electoral process. If they exceeded the needs of these local organizations like water, fire, police, sheriffs, and they have an excess of funding that they don't require, then they're just going to spend it. Like instead of the Sheriff saying, Hey, 45 deputies can do my county. If he's getting money to do 90, he's going to go hire 90.
Brett Johnson [:He's going to get 90. Exactly.
Norm Murdock [:And then the taxpayers are stuck with this. So the third thing was, he was making. The third thing that DeWine vetoed was coordinating the total between income taxes, where school districts have an income tax with their fixed sum property taxes. So that, that became out of control because in some districts you have them not only getting property taxes at an egregious rate now, but also they're getting an income tax. And again, the schools in some cases are getting way more money than they actually need or even asked for. And there's no means now of reducing that. So this all. So Brett, the context is we have a bunch of pissed off Ohioans that are bringing a constitutional amendment next year to the ballot to get rid of property taxes in Ohio.
Norm Murdock [:Like get rid of it all. Now what will that do to schools? So this little bit of relief that was in this budget bill was meant to head off that the O.K. corral. Well, the O.K. corral is now coming. According to Buckeye Institute. You just took away property tax relief, Governor DeWine, and so you handed the gun to the anti taxation people who are gonna now try to stick in The Constitution, no property tax.
Steve Palmer [:All right, well, look, with that, we gotta move on. I think we should at least talk one more thing, and then we'll get to good and bad. As we go into the fourth weekend, we've got. The Diddy verdict is not in. But it's in, it's close. And look, I don't predict what it's gonna be. He's gonna be guilty, but I don't predict what he's gonna be. But I think he's gonna be found guilty.
Steve Palmer [:They're deadlocked, apparently, on the racketeering charge.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:But I'll say one interesting thing about this. There's been this. A little bit of discussion online what happens when a jury's deadlocked on one, but they got verdicts on the other? Usually what happens is in a federal court, the judge will send the jury back and say, we don't care. Keep deliberating, keep going. And they instruct on based on the Allen charge, which is Allen versus the United States. In Ohio, it's the Howard charge, where the judge basically says, look, you don't think that you're the only. No other jury's gonna be able to do this better. You've got it.
Steve Palmer [:Now we need you to decide. If you're firmly for one side, please consider the other. If you're firmly for the other side, please consider this. Go back and do your job. And almost always we call it the dynamite charge in law, because it's like throwing a stick of dynamite in there, and we usually get a verdict. So the judge sent it back for the charge. Now, if they can't get a verdict, they come back deadlocked. It'll be up to the prosecutor whether they want to retry that particular count.
Steve Palmer [:And that, I suspect, will depend upon what the verdicts are on the others.
Norm Murdock [:So let me throw a settlement. So the city of Columbus, as you know, they settled with some George Floyd protesters, I think, a year ago, and it was somewhere around 800,000. Well, they just did it again, this time for four protesters. $800,000. And it was for the police allegedly using excessive violence. Meaning specifically, they named knee knockers, which I think is wooden bullets, essentially, or bags, tear gas and pepper spray. And the city of Columbus, the Director of public safety, Kate McSweeney Pichat, made a very conciliatory speech about this settlement, that it was the right thing to do. She brought in, if you can believe this.
Norm Murdock [:I mean, this just blows my mind, a British professor to teach police about First Amendment compliance, which, like, blows Me away because they don't have a first amendment in England. And he is proposing that the police use dialogue policing, which I guess means while you're holding your shield up and you got your gas mask on, you.
Steve Palmer [:Go, hey, bro, quit throwing bottles at me.
Norm Murdock [:Chill out. And here's a spliff man. Just relax a little bit. I'm your friendly neighborhood policeman and we're just going to have some dialogue here.
Brett Johnson [:What's it called again? Dialogue what?
Norm Murdock [:Dialogue policing is what this British professor.
Steve Palmer [:Look, I'm not going to take a position on any of it. I will say this, that the lawsuits may have cost that much to defend at the end of the day, but the settlement definitely says something about the city's position on the.
Norm Murdock [:So what they enacted. Also as a matter of city policy, there's now a civilian review board which does not have the power. Talked to my FOP contact that review board, unlike other cities, doesn't have the power to fire the cop if they find against the cop. But they also added a department inspector general. So they added some layers of bureaucracy or investigation or whatever of police action, which maybe is not an all bad.
Brett Johnson [:Thing, but as long as it stays independent, you're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Norm Murdock [:But I don't know. Bringing in a British professor to talk about the First Amendment with police. And she is claiming also that 42 other PDS around the country have come to Columbus to learn about what Columbus did vis a vis this lawsuit way.
Brett Johnson [:The flag, how to bend over and take it then basically.
Steve Palmer [:So if some. If we could get them to address the trash on the streets out front in my building, that would be really. That would be a really. Because I go out and try to pick it up as I can. I'm doing my part city. But your cans always fell, doesn't it?
Norm Murdock [:So, Steve, can I talk just real fast? Two things. I'm super pissed about this guy in the semi tractor that was streaming some video or whatever the hell he was doing in there and killed six people back in 2023. His semi went into some cars and a school bus. And these. These kids, the band, it was high school kids on play at a teacher's conference. They were going to perform, do a little concert. And he killed six adults and children, injured dozens more. He got sentenced to 18 months.
Norm Murdock [:It's like three months per person he killed, which I find completely inadequate.
Steve Palmer [:So I guess I would ask why. Why is it inadequate?
Norm Murdock [:Well, I think distracted driving needs to be cranked up.
Steve Palmer [:Well, so you presumed something into this.
Norm Murdock [:He was found guilty of that.
Steve Palmer [:Of distract. But you've presumed.
Norm Murdock [:I'm not presuming the facts.
Steve Palmer [:Look, he's. Just because he's found guilty of it, he probably pled guilty, Right? Or was there a trial?
Norm Murdock [:I don't know.
Steve Palmer [:Okay.
Norm Murdock [:I think it was a trial.
Steve Palmer [:So something came out of trial that probably mitigated this. So maybe it's true that he had something streaming on his phone, but maybe it's also true that something else caused the accident. Could be.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. I'm just going by what the State Patrol investigation. They said he was streaming video, which means.
Steve Palmer [:Well, like, he's streaming. No, no, no. It doesn't mean that. They didn't say he was streaming video, and they said he was streaming video.
Norm Murdock [:I think a reasonable person can conclude if you're streaming video.
Steve Palmer [:I stream videos all the time while I'm driving, and they're called podcasts, so I get on YouTube.
Norm Murdock [:Are you watching that show? No. Okay.
Steve Palmer [:But it's streaming while I'm driving through my system as a podcast.
Norm Murdock [:But not video.
Steve Palmer [:Yes.
Norm Murdock [:You're watching. You mean videos being displayed in your phone?
Steve Palmer [:Video can be displayed on my phone while it's streaming. And I'm listening to it.
Norm Murdock [:I find that. Okay, I'm not trying to piss you off.
Steve Palmer [:So if somebody's listening to this live, norm, it is a streaming video, but they don't have to be watching it.
Norm Murdock [:Okay, Steve, I got that.
Steve Palmer [:Well, no, I don't think you do.
Norm Murdock [:I do.
Steve Palmer [:Do you see the distinction? So maybe there was evidence that he wasn't watching it. So, look, what I'll do is sometimes I put my phone on the. Upside down the dashboard, and I've got video streaming.
Norm Murdock [:That's responsible.
Steve Palmer [:Doesn't mean I'm watching it. Sometimes it's down where I could see it if I were watching, but I don't watch it because I'm listening.
Norm Murdock [:I could have 800 child porn tapes in the backseat of my car and have never watched one.
Steve Palmer [:That's different. That's a crime to possess child porn.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah, but I'm just saying.
Steve Palmer [:So it might also be a crime to stream, but if it didn't cause the accident.
Norm Murdock [:Yes.
Steve Palmer [:And the accident was caused by something else, then you could get a sentence that reflects. All right, so he was doing this, and that's a problem. In fact, if that's the case, the sentence is too harsh. So, look, there's things that go into the outcomes of these cases.
Norm Murdock [:Okay, that's fair.
Steve Palmer [:The facts make. They're presented in a way that presumes the Worst scenario. And then they offset that with a really light sentence. And I'm thinking, all right, well, what else is going on that caused a light sentence? Because if you're a truck driver and you kill six kids and you did something really bad to kill six kids, you're gonna get whacked. I don't care where you are.
Norm Murdock [:So he did absolutely no breaking. That's one of the facts. Which would tend, I think, to be a salient factor maybe in a conclusion that he's watching the show.
Steve Palmer [:All I can say is I would want to know more.
Norm Murdock [:Okay?
Steve Palmer [:I'd want to know more.
Norm Murdock [:Nobody but God and that truck driver knows what he was.
Steve Palmer [:Not necessarily because there's black boxes in the truck. It can talk about how fast he's going. There could have been another cause of the accident. Maybe he fell asleep.
Norm Murdock [:That's right. Yeah. Okay. The other thing that's really pissed me off is this Luigi Mangioni guy, right, who lords over the entire system of healthcare, saying how righteous it is to take out executives, which he did on camera.
Steve Palmer [:How righteous it is to kill people for your own moral cause.
Norm Murdock [:And then he pleads not guilty.
Steve Palmer [:Well, that doesn't bother me, but keep on.
Norm Murdock [:Well, it bothers me.
Steve Palmer [:Everybody pleads not guilty. It doesn't mean he's not going to change his plea. But it would be really weird for a judge to even accept a guilty plea at the arraignment. It doesn't happen.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:It would be a sensational event.
Norm Murdock [:I don't know, man. So, you know, some people are. Evidently, he's very proud of his revolutionary solutions. Murdering people.
Steve Palmer [:I'm not. I'm not justifying his.
Norm Murdock [:I would be like this in court. Yeah, I killed that guy.
Steve Palmer [:If I were representing him, and I would. If he paid me to do this, I would first plead not guilty.
Norm Murdock [:Of course.
Steve Palmer [:And it doesn't mean there's no moral statement there. What you're really saying is, give me the evidence that you're going to use to prove your case and what's going on. I think it's a death penalty case, too. So you would have to plead not guilty or just say, all right, kill me.
Norm Murdock [:Well, that's his solution, isn't it?
Steve Palmer [:Killing him. But you can't expect.
Norm Murdock [:No, I don't expect.
Steve Palmer [:Let's take it to another case. I'm going to go do an arraignment this afternoon. And if I went to our standard arraignments here and Frank, I'm making this up because I'm actually not doing an arraignment this afternoon, but they're on Wednesday, so I could actually go do arraignment this afternoon. My client would be indicted on, say, one count of felonious assault and say my client is guilty as the day is long. From a factual standpoint.
Norm Murdock [:I understand.
Steve Palmer [:And I went and I appeared in front of the magistrate in the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas, and I said, judge, guilty. It would stop the clock. Everybody would look at me like, what are you doing? In fact, if a guy did that without a lawyer, that just probably wouldn't even take the plea.
Norm Murdock [:Yes. So I'm not talking about people who.
Steve Palmer [:Get offended by not guilty pleas at arraignment. You're just. It's misplaced. It doesn't mean he's not gonna plead guilty later. But it's normal procedure.
Norm Murdock [:I understand that. I understand that. I find him to be a worm and a coward.
Steve Palmer [:I do, too.
Brett Johnson [:Oh, yeah.
Norm Murdock [:And if you live by the sword, you can die by the sword.
Steve Palmer [:Well, look, he's gonna be convicted, most certainly convicted.
Norm Murdock [:Like this Kohlberger guy in Idaho. Right. He does this plea deal for life, you know, sentence instead of being shot at a firing squad for killing those three college kids. And, you know, I find that despicable, too, because the prosecution has all the evidence on this guy.
Steve Palmer [:I think there was. There was a little bit. There might have been some wiggle room in Kohlberger. But look, they could have convicted him.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah, that's right. And shot him. Well, I mean, he sliced up three young people.
Steve Palmer [:I gotcha. I gotcha. I hate to laugh at the whole scenario, but it just seems crazy that we still have a firing squad. But anyway, we.
Norm Murdock [:Look, it's a humane way of putting something down.
Steve Palmer [:I don't have any fault with that. I might even choose it if it were my choice. That's right. That's true.
Norm Murdock [:That's right.
Steve Palmer [:But look, the government reaches plea agreements for all sorts of reasons, and I can't fault it. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't, but I can't fault them without knowing more.
Norm Murdock [:I'm just saying I don't like it. Yeah. So my winner and loser is Elon Musk. Winner and all in one. Yep.
Brett Johnson [:Oh, okay.
Norm Murdock [:Because winner, winner. Because he and Rand Paul are in this Massey guy in Kentucky. They are 100% correct that our debt is out of control and we need to do actual cuts as opposed to Washington. Talk about cuts in the rise of, you know, like, it's a cut in the rate of the increase in the budget is Called a cut. We actually need to cut. We need to cut the budget. But they're losers in the sense that America's never going to have a big boy, big girl conversation with itself about this. As soon as you say cut any kind of program, the other side will start yelling about little old ladies being tossed off cliffs in their wheelchairs.
Norm Murdock [:Right. And so there's no rationality brought to the discussion. And I think maybe the only way we're ever going to cut is if the economy grows at something like 4% a year and we overcome our debt by the government taking in huge amounts of tariffs, huge amounts of income tax receipts and fees, and all other kinds of remunerations. But I don't think we're ever going to do anything about these.
Brett Johnson [:Sadly, that's not a priority to pay it down.
Norm Murdock [:That's right.
Brett Johnson [:It's not.
Steve Palmer [:It's not.
Brett Johnson [:They see money coming in, they're going to. They're going to park it out somewhere.
Norm Murdock [:And our children are going to have this massive burden at some point.
Steve Palmer [:At some point. Cows always come home to. Or the chickens always come home to roost. Cows always come up. Whatever the saying is, they're going to.
Norm Murdock [:Have, you know, 75% income tax rate or something to pay back China for all these loans.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah, it's good and bad, Brett.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah, the bad. You know, us spending money on the browns. I just. I was hoping that was not going to happen. Even. Even with the stipulation of, like, well, they. They have to stay in the state. It's just moronic.
Brett Johnson [:And I chuckle. I just love this little tit for tat that Elon and Trump is doing on social.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah, they go back and forth.
Brett Johnson [:I just chuckle.
Norm Murdock [:He was really deceived.
Brett Johnson [:I think so. And talk about, look at his time going, what a waste of my freaking time. The value of his company, Value, my company. And you guys don't even even pay attention to what I found out.
Steve Palmer [:Right. Back to good old normal.
Brett Johnson [:Good old normal. And he probably should have. He probably. Yeah. The deception of. It wasn't.
Steve Palmer [:But it wasn't a waste because it turned on the lights for a lot of Americans.
Brett Johnson [:It did. It did. But those in power, it didn't because they're doing the same damn thing.
Steve Palmer [:It's like the end of a movie, you know? It's like, wow, here we are, right? Back to the beginning.
Brett Johnson [:Back to the beginning.
Norm Murdock [:This is a portcullis, just like Obama's porculus. That's what this is.
Steve Palmer [:All right, so my bad, I guess, to the extent It's a bad or maybe a perplexity is that. But New York City is about to elect a communist to govern their city. I mean, Mom, Dhame, he's just a communist. Like, he's talking about taking over the means of production. He's talking about. He wants to tax white rich people. White rich people at a higher level.
Norm Murdock [:Based on your race.
Steve Palmer [:Right, Based on your race. He's gonna start operating the grocery stores.
Norm Murdock [:I mean, like, and buying up tenements.
Steve Palmer [:And apartments and townhomes, rent restrictions, the whole nine yards. I mean, look, I've been. Anybody who's ever traveled over to the Soviet bloc in some of those countries when they were doing that, I got to spend some time in Estonia. And you could. Like, there was a distinct part of town, and I was like, what's going on over there? I was pretty young. I was in my late teens. And, you know, my dad just said, oh, yeah, that's where. That's where the Soviets built their housing.
Steve Palmer [:It's like these concrete. I mean, it's shit.
Norm Murdock [:It's shit.
Steve Palmer [:It's shit.
Norm Murdock [:Right?
Steve Palmer [:And New York City is a beautiful city.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:With all sorts of great culture, all sorts of cool stuff.
Norm Murdock [:The center of capitalism.
Steve Palmer [:The center of capitalism. And he's gonna turn it into a communist.
Brett Johnson [:Is he reflecting the majority sentiment going on, though?
Norm Murdock [:Do you think he got 33%, something like that?
Steve Palmer [:They have the same thing.
Brett Johnson [:That's kind of a big number, though.
Steve Palmer [:They have this weird sort of split voting, split stack voting, whatever they call it.
Brett Johnson [:I mean, are those problems he's addressing a problem that he's reflecting?
Steve Palmer [:I think he just has a good look. The communists, the socialist message always sounds good to, like, the young millennials. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Well, he's promising free everything.
Steve Palmer [:Free everything. Right, Everything.
Brett Johnson [:Reduce rent. That hits the.
Steve Palmer [:It's a pocketbook, and it always results in the opposite of what they promise. Always.
Brett Johnson [:Right.
Norm Murdock [:But he's entering into a contractual relationship between two private parties. You know, like, the rent's gonna be whatever the rent is, and it's controlled there.
Steve Palmer [:Give me the authority, authority to control the world, and I'll do it the best for you. Give me all the power to take everybody else's stuff, distribute it the way I see fit, and create this utopian existence.
Norm Murdock [:I want to see him perfect sense. I want to see him send his kulaks down to the New York fish market and to the mafia controlled, or at least Italian groceries and fruit and vegetable markets. I want to see him go down there and socialize that and say, no, no, you're going to close up your stand, and we, the city of New York, are going to sell groceries.
Steve Palmer [:Everybody's leaving.
Norm Murdock [:Good luck, dude.
Steve Palmer [:Everybody's leaving. People will leave. If this happens. People are gone. There will be no money. It'll be all done. It'll be done. And then Trump, of course, for his part, says, fine, do what you want.
Steve Palmer [:I'm just not going to give any federal money. No big deal.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:So they're done. It just is. It's, it's, it's insane. It can't play out. If it does play out, it's like the, you know, if they vote for it, they get it good and hard is what they, what they're going to get. So anyway, that's, that's my bad. My good is I had a chance for the first time to go to a UFC fight. I did it in Vegas.
Steve Palmer [:Took my son for a send off party. He's going to go to the army. I saw the UFC fights. I'm not a huge fanboy for the ufc. I watch every now and then when it's on, but my son and his buddies watch it. It was awesome. I'll bet it was awesome.
Norm Murdock [:I'll bet it was.
Steve Palmer [:It had everything you would want. And the crowd was awesome. A really, you know, there's a lot of different cultures there because it, it sort of strike. And Vegas is a place where everybody would come, go see it from all over.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Not a single course, word or terse word did I see. You know, it's like, even the people next to me like, who are you voting for? I was like, you gotta ask him. I don't even know.
Norm Murdock [:I don't know.
Steve Palmer [:But it really, really cool experience. Got to see it all live.
Norm Murdock [:Are they in one of those octagon things?
Steve Palmer [:Not a cage with a top, but an octagon. Beating the crap out of each other. Two awesome, like dead, cold, stone, knockout, unconscious. I got to watch in person. Really cool experience. So anyway, that was my thing and, you know, Vegas is Vegas. Take it for what you were.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:That is so cool.
Steve Palmer [:All right. July 2, 2025. Just think what was going on in 1776. They were voting right now for our freedom, these scoundrel conspirators. But don't do that now. Go enjoy your weekend with your family. What are we, Ohio? Common, common sense Ohio. Off the record, right from the middle till now.
