Shownotes
Norm and Steve dive deep into the complexities of judicial jurisdictions and the role of the Supreme Court. They discuss cases that straddle both federal and state courts, emphasizing the need for legislative clarity to avoid partisanship in court decisions.
Steve analyzes the Supreme Court’s stance on presidential immunity, drawing from the case of **Trump vs. United States**. He calls for a clear framework for handling such cases in the future, stressing fairness and judicial integrity.
The stakes in the Ukraine conflict are high, and Steve, Norm, and Brett don’t shy away from expressing concerns about the use of American munitions and the potential escalation into a larger conflict.
Infrastructure funding problems are also discussed, particularly the reliance on gas taxes and the impact of fuel-efficient vehicles and EVs on state revenues. Solutions like delivery fees are examples discussed, with Colorado and Minnesota's models providing real-world examples. The Ohio Governor is considering a gas tax hike. So what are the broader implications for government budgeting and taxation strategies?
Ohio’s rapid licensing for medical marijuana dispensaries transitioning to recreational use is under the microscope. Steven, Norm, and Brett debate the risks of market saturation, profitability, and competition dynamics, with an eye on industry sustainability.
Closing on a lighter note, the discussion of **House Bill 599** proposing the walleye as Ohio’s state fish brings some fun and nostalgia. The hosts share their fishing experiences, favorite spots like **Lake Erie**, and Ohio’s best ice cream trails.
Common Sense Moments
08:15 German generals recognized trap, Soviets win Kursk.
16:16 Entrepreneurship requires recognizing and accepting failure.
24:55 Ohio preps for cannabis industry regulations.
28:15 Chinese buying up farmland to grow marijuana.
35:56 Legal breakdown of US Supreme Court presidential immunity decision.
40:35 Creating a presumption of immunity in law.
45:24 Barrett's belief: criminal cases against presidents federal.
47:41 Courtroom challenge against violation of 6th Amendment.
54:03 Absurd political dissent over immunity for Trump.
59:58 Summary: Senate Bill 79 creates energy-efficient appliance rebates.
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.
Recorded at the 511 Studios, in the Brewery District in downtown Columbus, OH.
info@commonsenseohioshow.com
Copyright 2024 Common Sense Ohio
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/
Transcripts
It is July 12, 2024. We're giggling off the record. Common Sense Ohio coming at you week in and week out. I'm back after a 2 week hiatus of, various activities, both work and play, and work and play together. But I am back. Sorry. I missed the last couple weeks. Common sense ohioshow.com.
Steve Palmer [:That's exactly where you go. Www dotcommonsenseohioshow.com. That's exactly where you go for all the backlog of episodes if you want to, if you wanna get if you wanna check out Norm's blog. I'd love to say check out my blog week in week out, but, they're still blank. You can you can also subscribe to our social media. You can like, you can share. And that would be a great favor for us. If you listen to the show and you're one of the millions that are listening but sort of hiding in the shadows, you don't even have to come out of the shadow.
Steve Palmer [:Just tell your neighbor, but even more, like it.
Norm Murdock [:It'd be nice if our relatives did that even.
Steve Palmer [:Even if our relatives did that. Even if the people that have to listen.
Norm Murdock [:Right. Right. Or have
Steve Palmer [:to act like they're listening.
Norm Murdock [:Hey, boys. You know, come on. Dads, you know, just like it and you don't have to read it or listen to it.
Steve Palmer [:Share it.
Brett Johnson [:Dad needs a new pair of shoes.
Norm Murdock [:Come on.
Brett Johnson [:Come on. Just blanket. It's it's money money in our pocket. There
Steve Palmer [:you go. So how do we do this otherwise? Well, we do it with the help of a Harper Plus accounting, where they take care of our accounting needs, your accounting needs, and everybody else's accounting needs who is smart enough to go to Harper Plus Accounting. They have divisions for all. In other words, if you've got a complicated mess and multiple businesses and layers of LLCs, and you wanna, figure out how much you owe the government and how much you should pay and how much you can avoid paying lawfully that is. Harper Plus can help you. If you've just got a tax return and he's done, they've got a brand new division designed to address just that. So nobody is left in the cold at Harper Plus Accounting. Glenn's been on the show.
Steve Palmer [:Glenn Harper, that has been on the show a few times, and, he is about as down earth of a round table guy as you could get. He's got his own show. What's it called, Brett? Empowering entrepreneurs. Empowering entrepreneurs. So check out his show. It's a great podcast. He does it right here at channel 511. And while we're on that topic, if you want your own podcast, you think I got the chops, you can do a couple of things.
Steve Palmer [:You can come hang out with us at the round table if you think you got the chops to hang with Norm. I barely do. No.
Norm Murdock [:Come on.
Steve Palmer [:So you can, you can come and offer whatever you wanna offer. Now we're not letting everybody on, but if you got something interesting or if you're involved in Ohio political world, the Ohio business world, the Ohio news world in any way, shape, or form, or even if you just have a stupid human trick you'd like to show off, we'll put you here too. Just, check us out. You can leave us a comment at Common Sense Ohio. But you want your own podcast, go to channel 511. Never been easier. Never been easier. We've got an app, calendarlyly calendarly, whatever it is.
Steve Palmer [:You just schedule the time. Our production pros show up with you. You lay down the tracks, we give it to you, you leave with audio, you leave with video. We can even help you if you wanna get even more in-depth on how to get up into the world of podcast, the ether world of podcast posting. We got Brett right here, our own Brett host who, runs Circle 270 Circle 270 Media who basically podcast
Norm Murdock [:And it's I have to say as so I'm not involved in that end of this business. But I have to say, the rates are extremely reasonable. It is I mean, you can get a studio time in here with a professional like Brett, Dan. And it it's a bargain. I mean, for what you get. Mhmm. Well, if you think you can
Steve Palmer [:do it on your own, I could not.
Norm Murdock [:No. I had to
Steve Palmer [:get it took me a long time, and it cost me a lot of money to figure out how to make myself sound so good. Right. It does not come naturally. No. I couldn't do it. We had to figure out the microphones. We had to figure out the chain of, what do they call it? The the the I tell you, whatever. We had to figure out the,
Brett Johnson [:just how to get it out.
Steve Palmer [:That you get it out. Production and the amplifiers
Brett Johnson [:and
Steve Palmer [:pre amplifiers and the recording software and all that.
Brett Johnson [:But but all that in the sense that we make it easy for somebody coming in. They just walk in.
Steve Palmer [:We record.
Norm Murdock [:It's baked in. Yeah. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:You don't have to worry about it. You don't have to buy microphones. That's a
Norm Murdock [:good deal is what I'm saying. And and like if you're dreaming of doing, I don't know, golfing or you want to talk about quilting or whatever.
Steve Palmer [:Quilting it is. Oh.
Norm Murdock [:You know? Well, you know, in Johnstown, somebody just opened a quilting store. Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:Unbelievable. That's great.
Steve Palmer [:So yeah. Well, Quilt Away. So every week except for last 2 there you go. That that that's the tagline. You've already given them the tagline for the show. Quilting 101, the fabric of society. Alright. Stitch together
Norm Murdock [:Oh, God. Here we go.
Steve Palmer [:1 needle at a time. Stitching together the fabric of society. Alright. So we are
Norm Murdock [:There goes Steve telling more yarns.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. On July 12, 1940 4. It happened to be the bloodiest, most, the largest tank battle of ever, and I think it was part of the biggest battle of all time, which is Kursk, shortly after, this is when Hitler fought Stalin. It's a great book on some of the stuff, but when Hitler fought Stalin.
Norm Murdock [:Oh, yeah.
Steve Palmer [:But, it was, shortly after I don't know how many months after. It was the spring after Stalingrad. And, the Germans were sort of, reeling with their tail between the legs. Hitler's advisors were saying, we Kursk is nothing for us. Why don't we back back, back off here a little bit? We've got the allies coming from Sicily. We've got, certainly inevitable invasion somewhere in France, and, we can't devote any more resources to get slaughtered by these Soviets. But and even Hitler himself, I I hear tell, knew about it. I mean, he he said, my gut doesn't feel right about this.
Steve Palmer [:His advisers, most of them anyway, were saying, don't do it. And what does Hitler do in typical fashion does it anyway? Yeah. Invades on July 5, 1943 Yeah. And, kicks off the Battle of Kursk. And he had waited and waited and waited to have the top most state of the art tanks, produced, the new the the Tiger twos, I think Yep. And maybe the Panthers. Yep. And, he took a bunch of, trainees that were training that could have been used to help with against the allies in the West.
Steve Palmer [:Instead, he hijacked him and, sent him off to the Eastern Front. I remember watching Hogan's Heroes where it's like, you go to the Eastern Front. And I'm everything, I wonder how bad the Eastern Front really was. It was it was terrible.
Norm Murdock [:Pretty bad. Yeah. It was pretty bad. No take no prisoners almost literally.
Steve Palmer [:This is like when everybody's fought not everybody, but everybody knows the guy that if you pick a fight with that guy and you come with fist, he's bringing a knife. If you come with a knife, he's bringing a gun. Or if you get chains, he's getting a car jack. Yeah. It's like the guy who doesn't stop. It's a fight to the death. And that's what it was with Stalin. There was no no quarter.
Norm Murdock [:Well, the war in the Soviet Union, you you know, people after, you know, remember in Mein Kampf, Hitler talked about Lebens realm. So Living space. Living space. So it was a war initiated by Hitler to replace a people, to rep apps to actually replace Slavs and Jews, you know, kill them, relocate them, turn them into slaves, whatever it was, it was to replace them entirely as opposed to, say, like a a war for natural resources. Right. So, you know It was a different kind of it was a war of survival.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. They had
Norm Murdock [:a lot of oil. They had
Steve Palmer [:a lot of natural resources, and they had a lot of human resources Yeah. That would have been helpful in Hitler's, you know, plan to own the world because it's labor. But instead, he wanted to exterminate everybody and then have his own living space in that land.
Norm Murdock [:Right. Yeah. So, like, when he entered the Ukraine, the Ukraine which had been under, you know, terrible domination by Joseph Stalin and and they had, you know, 1,000,000 had died in in, you know, from from, famine. And, by by planned famine. Like, you know, we're taking the grain from Ukraine and feeding Russians instead of feeding Ukrainians. And there was a huge amount of death and and when so they welcomed at first the German. They viewed it as liberation, many of the Ukrainians. And, of course, Hitler had no such idea.
Norm Murdock [:He wasn't there to liberate anybody. He was there to exterminate.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. He wanted to kill them and take the take the land. Yeah. So he bought the resources, but he didn't want the people.
Norm Murdock [:Well, in the first mass, executions of the that I mean so yeah. So in Kursk, the thing that was crazy this is not the first time. And I think the Wehrmacht, the German generals recognized that they were walking into a trap or rolling into a trap. So like at Stalingrad, what what the Soviets had done is they had lured the Germans into staying in a salient that they then surrounded and then, you know, basically destroyed the German army inside the salient. And they pretty much tried to do the same thing and were successful, more or less at fighting the Germans at least to a draw in, Kursk.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Well, they had this plan called, I what is it? Defense in-depth. Right? That's right. Where it's basically a stall tactic That's right. Where you just wear them out. Oh, you wear them out. Chew them up. And if there was anybody, any people Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Tougher in the world, I defy you to find them than than those Soviets.
Norm Murdock [:They had their babushka women out there digging tank ditches. And, you know, as the Germans would advance, they'd fall down in these ditches. You know, tank couldn't get out and then they'd kill the tank.
Steve Palmer [:Yep.
Norm Murdock [:And stuff like and then they mass their artillery. And, you know, the Germans had great tactical success at first, tank versus tank, but there was no way they were gonna advance beyond this salient, this bulge. And and they just got chewed up.
Steve Palmer [:And you would think they learned a lesson because
Norm Murdock [:they they
Steve Palmer [:tried the same thing.
Norm Murdock [:At at Leningrad Right. At Stalingrad, at Moscow. Right. Like, guys, this isn't gonna work.
Steve Palmer [:It's not gonna work. And then they tried it again in Belgium in the Battle of the Bulge against the West. You know, it's the same thing.
Norm Murdock [:Same thing.
Steve Palmer [:It just it doesn't work and you end up getting cut off and and slaughtered.
Norm Murdock [:They put all their chips, you know, on on on one hand of of poker and they and they lost. And and it was just it was another it's another indication that those early war successes of Hitler in France, in Belgium, and, you know, Norway, that this this luster that he could do no wrong. Well, the Battle of Britain should've taught them a lesson. Right? That that he was not impervious. He wasn't a genius.
Steve Palmer [:Well, they lost He
Norm Murdock [:was the sodomist saying interesting. Of course.
Steve Palmer [:Interesting, because, I'll find his name. I think it was Manstein. Erich von Manstein strongly requested oh, no. Hold on. I'm wrong. I'm wrong. I'm wrong. Anyway, one of his generals basically said, look, we should not be doing this is dumb.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. We don't have the things that we need to win a tank battle. That's right. The first is numbers. We don't have enough tanks. Right. The second is Supply lines. Supply people.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. But we don't have enough soldiers.
Norm Murdock [:That's right.
Steve Palmer [:And the third, or maybe the first, most important, was surprise. Yeah. And they didn't have it. So They knew that they were. They had surprise. Early in the war, they had surprise. Yeah. And we they they caught the west with their pants down because we didn't understand.
Steve Palmer [:The west did not understand at the time that you could that that type of mobile warfare would be so effective. Right. They had air cover. They had surprise. They had troops. Right. They were well armed, with plenty of, tanks and armor, to back up the job. And and Kursk and Stalingrad and in Moscow, they they didn't have the surprise.
Norm Murdock [:The Luftwaffe totally failed in Stalingrad. Yep. They weren't there in any kind of numbers at Kursk. And meanwhile, the Soviets had tank killer airplanes. They they were they were popping tanks, man.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. So, anyway, it failed failed miserably. And, and and I think it's it's worth at least mentioning a little bit more from a world history standpoint is that because Hitler made decisions like this, he was not able to defend in Normandy. He was not able to defend in Italy. He was not able to defend against the allies because, look, resources are finite, folks. You can't and maybe this is a good lesson in general. It is. Like, resources are finite.
Steve Palmer [:If you allocate all your money in a country and resources in a country to some cause that you have, it's not there for other things. You know, you can't like, this is called scarcity, and it's an economic lesson I think everybody should learn.
Norm Murdock [:And we're we're approaching a $1,000,000,000,000 of aid to Ukraine. And it's not well, I'm not I'm not trying to opinionate that we shouldn't help Ukraine. But you have to wonder if there is because at some point, there's gonna have to be a negotiated settlement to that war. And you have to wonder, would the Ukrainians have been better off negotiating at the beginning of all this?
Steve Palmer [:Yes. Of course, they were.
Norm Murdock [:So now.
Steve Palmer [:And if we would had somebody in the world Yeah. In the United States, in the White House, somebody who would say, you can't do this. Let's find a way to solve this problem now before a bunch of people die.
Norm Murdock [:Oh, so
Brett Johnson [:but but just this week, he's come out and and strong.
Steve Palmer [:Now he's come out strong.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. He's come out strong now.
Norm Murdock [:After a 1000000 dead Ukrainians.
Brett Johnson [:Now he is.
Norm Murdock [:And and a trillion in our you know, like like, we have money to burn.
Steve Palmer [:It just is it's so it it shows you what weakness and indecisiveness results in. Yeah. Yeah. It it's just like And
Norm Murdock [:they're running out of young men in Ukraine. Well, it's they cannot they cannot restaff their army.
Steve Palmer [:So now we're in a spot where are we gonna just go in and take over the fighting? No. We're not gonna do that. You know, we're gonna we're not gonna put our boots on the ground. So you know what's gonna happen? Putin's gonna keep the territories already gained, and the war's gonna end, and it'll be that that'll be that without fanfare. And it wouldn't surprise me if they wait and let the Republicans do it so they can blame the Republicans for letting Putin have the you know, it's like, there's gonna be something like that going on.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:But that's the inevitable outcome at this point. It has to be. Right.
Norm Murdock [:And and Putin would like to do that too because
Steve Palmer [:would love to have a face to get out.
Norm Murdock [:Well, and what that does is then that seals this, trope that somehow, Trump is Putin's boy. Right. So Putin waits until Trump gets elected and then says, okay, We're done fighting. It'll look like that.
Steve Palmer [:It'll look like that. Right.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So now now it's about playing
Steve Palmer [:it for optics as opposed to an actual objective. Right. Objective goal that makes sense for the world. Right. But it shows you at the beginning, if somebody would have said that, if there was a strong leader on any of it anywhere in the world to say, nah. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Nuh-uh. Well, and I think what if don't I remember
Brett Johnson [:correctly at the beginning of this, they were projecting a lot to be done. This will be done a year.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Right. We're rolling on
Brett Johnson [:to 3 years in this war. Yep.
Steve Palmer [:Right. And, we're talking a generation
Norm Murdock [:that's affected by this.
Brett Johnson [:And I mean, a short war probably doesn't really affect a generation so much.
Norm Murdock [:Yes. Yes. There's damage.
Steve Palmer [:Like the civil war. Let me just take a take a quick battle here and
Norm Murdock [:it'll be over and
Steve Palmer [:then 700,000 or so. You've
Brett Johnson [:messed with a generation
Norm Murdock [:of people. And now they're getting down to, like, they're just wholesale killing civilians. So I think last week didn't one of Putin's, you know, rockets destroy a children's hospital
Steve Palmer [:or something.
Brett Johnson [:I missed that.
Norm Murdock [:I don't know. Like 6.
Steve Palmer [:But you know, it's interesting. Children. See, you know this because you follow it. I don't. I mean, this stuff isn't even hitting the news anymore. No. It's not. It's it's like You have to
Norm Murdock [:you have to dig it out. Because everything's about men wanna be women or, you know, who uses the bathroom? Well,
Steve Palmer [:I I think Who's going to the Olympics? A useful story.
Norm Murdock [:That's right.
Steve Palmer [:It's no longer a useful story. Because it's It's all bad. It's all bad, and it's all reflective of horrible United States or lack of United States intervention. Yeah. You know, just enough to keep it going.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:You know, just enough money to keep people dying.
Norm Murdock [:He was actually bragging in his press conference yesterday at at NATO that he had gathered I think his
Steve Palmer [:claim was Biden.
Norm Murdock [:50 allies to oppose Putin. And it's like, man, I I you know, like, is that an accomplishment? I I don't know. So like you say, Steve, it's just enough to keep dragging this out. Right. So the latest thing is the Dutch gave f sixteens to, Ukraine. 3 years after the start? Like, what's that gonna do now?
Steve Palmer [:You know what it's like? It's like when you start a business, and you've got this great idea. And you think, I'm gonna make $1,000,000. And about 6 months in, you haven't made any money yet. And you've got to make a decision. Or am I gonna keep pumping my own capital? Am I gonna keep, bilking my investors? Am I gonna keep going forward without an objective here that has that makes any sense? You you at some point, you have to abandon and recognize failure. This isn't working. You know, keeping this going is is just enough to keep it going, which is just enough to maintain the ongoing loss of life and money and, and and and whatever tragedy is bestowed upon any civilization that's engaged in this kind of war. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:It's like the suffering, I guess, is what I'm trying
Norm Murdock [:to say. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Mhmm. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:And then we authorize the Ukrainians to use our weapons inside Russia. That is total madness. I mean, that
Steve Palmer [:I gotta tell you.
Norm Murdock [:That is total mad. They can go 200 miles in from the border and attack targets inside Russia with American munitions, and and we approve that.
Steve Palmer [:So That's a danger that's a real dangerous
Norm Murdock [:So then so then the Russians sailed to Cuba, and they're gonna teach us that lesson. Yeah. So, you know, hey.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. What are you gonna do?
Norm Murdock [:We're 90 miles from Florida.
Steve Palmer [:Guess what?
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Once I heard that decision,
Norm Murdock [:I in my mind going, we're at war with Russia.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. That's crazy.
Norm Murdock [:We we
Brett Johnson [:we We're
Steve Palmer [:a proxy war anyway.
Brett Johnson [:Basically, we we are. If, you know, we were anyway, but now we're allowing them to go. Again, they have to defend themselves. I I'm not saying not to, but it's that we
Norm Murdock [:escalate. We're escalating it.
Steve Palmer [:Well, and even back in the days of, Afghanistan, we didn't do that. You know, at least we we were supplying the Afghan troops, but in Afghanistan. Right? We're supplying them for their own defense, not for, not to go actually
Norm Murdock [:And we denied that we were doing it, To at least put lipstick on the pig. This is like, oh no. We're Tony Blinken says, oh no. Well, we we approve that. They can use weapons. Luminacy. Dude, say deny it. Like like, you can't you can't come.
Steve Palmer [:We told them they can only use this for defensive purposes. What they're doing with it, we're gonna look into and we and we will. There you go. And we will address it. We do not intend to engage in an active war against Russia. You know, instead, that's what they're doing. It's all what they're doing. It's just stupidity.
Norm Murdock [:And amateur hour.
Steve Palmer [:As I often say, is every like, it's I'm not the one who invented this quote, but it's like, I I don't attribute this to anything other than a complete incompetence. I mean, these people are just completely incompetent and not equipped to deal with this.
Norm Murdock [:You know, Steve and and and Brett, the longer we get from we were talking about World War 2 with, you know, the Russians, Germans, but, you know, we dropped 2 atomic weapons on Japan. And the longer we get away from the only time that nuclear or atomic weapons were used against, a population, I think people forget how terrible Like like, it doesn't dawn on them now that the cold war is supposedly over, what World War 3 would be like. I mean, we're talking.
Steve Palmer [:Well
Norm Murdock [:We're talking your skin falls off, you boil, and you're gone in 10 seconds.
Steve Palmer [:Think about the state of the world right now.
Norm Murdock [:People need to think
Steve Palmer [:about that. We have the Red Army gearing up. Yeah. Now I think And the Chinese gearing up. That's what I'm talking. Or I I I meant the Chinese army. But we have the Chinese army gearing up.
Norm Murdock [:Yes, sir.
Steve Palmer [:You have the Soviets or the Russians rather, already active. And I don't think the Russians are are an enemy in and of themselves that we would have to be overly concerned about. But you start combining allies against us or combining those powers against us, now we've got another world conflict brewing.
Norm Murdock [:And we were the only nuclear power. Now I think the club is, like, 15 nations.
Brett Johnson [:Who doesn't? Yeah. Or have access to it very quickly.
Steve Palmer [:And I think the best defense the like, our last line of defense with Biden's policies with China are simply China. It's against their financial interest Right. To poke us too hard. They got too much investing here in the United States. Right.
Norm Murdock [:But that that's the only leverage we've got.
Steve Palmer [:That's the only leverage we've got left. Right?
Brett Johnson [:It seems to be a laser.
Steve Palmer [:Isn't our muscle flexing because
Norm Murdock [:No. You know, we're They have a bigger navy now than us. Yeah. I mean
Steve Palmer [:It's scary stuff.
Norm Murdock [:They're passing us.
Steve Palmer [:Scary stuff. And we're worried about putting women and men together and, like, it can can trans people be in the navy. It's like, I don't give a crap.
Brett Johnson [:If they're willing to say I do and go do it
Steve Palmer [:Like, the like Go. Like, creating a diverse armed forces makes zero difference to me. Take the people who, you know, build our military back, give us strength, and put us back in the world play. Yep. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Oh, well. Yeah. Yep. I know it's such a big topic that your your head explodes and after a while you run out of words.
Steve Palmer [:It just is. It's hard to you have to put your head in the sand because, like, I can't think about
Norm Murdock [:this.
Steve Palmer [:Exactly. It's too much.
Norm Murdock [:Because you're thinking about total annihilation of the human species.
Steve Palmer [:We're talking about another
Norm Murdock [:Cockroaches will be the only thing that survives.
Steve Palmer [:It's too much.
Norm Murdock [:It's too much. Yeah. Yeah. So, you wanna talk about the state fish?
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. I was talking about the state. What is
Norm Murdock [:the state fish? It's lighting
Brett Johnson [:it up a second. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Just just for a little bit. So, yeah. So House Bill 5.9. God. You talk about bipartisanship. They voted 93 to 4 in the house, bill number 599. I'm sure I'm sure I'm sure DeWine will sign this one.
Norm Murdock [:They pull about 9,000,000 walleye out of Lake Erie a year, and they want to name the walleye as the state fish.
Steve Palmer [:What is the state fish right now? Or is there one?
Norm Murdock [:I don't think
Brett Johnson [:there is. Apparently, there isn't one then, I guess.
Norm Murdock [:But there's a lot of carping going on down at
Brett Johnson [:this stage. Who are the who's the 4 that voted against this?
Norm Murdock [:Well, they're probably from Cincinnati, and they probably want a name
Steve Palmer [:That that's just channel cat or something.
Norm Murdock [:Channel cat.
Brett Johnson [:That's just odd that
Steve Palmer [:it I mean, isn't wall I mean, that that's one of the that's the biggest fishing industry and maybe the perch, I guess, you could say.
Norm Murdock [:You could say. Yeah. Alright. I mean, I can't even look at it. By the way, Lake Erie walleye is badass.
Steve Palmer [:It's it's it's fun. They're fun to catch. They're they're great to eat. Perch are better, but it's they're not as fun to catch. Yeah. So, I mean, look, you could say maybe those the small pond, largemouth bass. I mean, for all the kids who go sneak around farm ponds and grab largemouth.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. The bluegill.
Steve Palmer [:You know, there's nothing like a largemouth bass hitting your your worm harness, your Texas worm rig.
Norm Murdock [:And it's and and that's a edible fish also.
Steve Palmer [:I I never eat them, but Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:But,
Steve Palmer [:they're fun to catch. I mean, they're they're they're vicious fish anyway. So now we know the wall and it should be, I guess. I mean, if for financial
Norm Murdock [:So economics or any do
Steve Palmer [:it, that's a huge industry.
Norm Murdock [:They say in Lake Erie, there's a population, right around 70,000,000 and they're and they're catching about 1 out of every 7 every year. Geez.
Steve Palmer [:It's so much fun to catch. I mean, casting casting and drifting for walleye is a blast. Not people troll for them and that's that's okay.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. But but when you
Steve Palmer [:learn the when you learn the swing, when you're casting and drifting, and it just comes over the bow, and you and you you feel it start to hit, That there's that's a great big fishing experience.
Norm Murdock [:The the other fun story, and then we can get into sad stories. But the other fun story is don't know if you guys have ever been to Tom's Ice Cream Bowl in Sainsville.
Steve Palmer [:I have not.
Norm Murdock [:Dude, killer. It's I mean, it's They make their own ice cream. So Tom
Steve Palmer [:can make a mean ice cream?
Norm Murdock [:Yep. So that it's an institution in Sainesville. It's it's been there for, I don't know, probably almost a 100 years. And it looks like it when you're inside. It's that old timey kind of stuff. And, anyway, they have created, they being the Ohio Tourism Board or Department, something, I guess, to compete with Tennessee and Kentucky. They've created the Ohio ice cream trail.
Steve Palmer [:Okay.
Norm Murdock [:Right? Because we don't have bourbon really big in Ohio.
Steve Palmer [:We just got a lot of fat people eating. You know?
Norm Murdock [:So they created the Ohio ice cream trail and, It's all on a bike route. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. You have to walk. Right. Walk or ride. No no electric bike. No.
Norm Murdock [:And I guess they're one of the first, so they're gonna, like, roll them all out. I like
Steve Palmer [:that idea.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Oh, wait. I mean, that's fun.
Steve Palmer [:But there's a lot ice cream in high. I don't know about other places, but, what was the ice cream store that burned a while back? Was it velvet?
Norm Murdock [:Oh, yeah. Velvet. It was velvet? Velvet. And then there's Utica. Right? And then there yeah. And then there's that killer place, over We
Steve Palmer [:got Jenny's right here in Jenny's.
Brett Johnson [:And then you get Grater's that Grater's that started in Scentsy.
Norm Murdock [:What's the one over there by,
Steve Palmer [:there was nice ice cream.
Norm Murdock [:Like where Chapelle lives.
Brett Johnson [:Oh,
Norm Murdock [:you know what I'm talking. Yeah. So mix Young's?
Brett Johnson [:Young's dairy. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:That's all that's it. You know, like, you go buy that on the highway. Mhmm. I mean, there's
Brett Johnson [:Oh, they did. Well, it's not even just the ice cream. It's the food, and now they've got a mini golf course.
Norm Murdock [:They've
Brett Johnson [:got pattings. I mean, it's it's blown up.
Norm Murdock [:So I'm sure that's on their trail. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Exactly. We're gonna
Steve Palmer [:be competing with the Corn Palace before you know it.
Norm Murdock [:I thought we'd talk a little bit maybe about, speaking of, things people like to do recreationally, is the, cannabis control division of the Ohio Department of Commerce. So they're getting ready. They say around November, they'll have all these regs and everybody signed up and all the dispensaries, for cannabis, in the labs and the growers and the processors. They'll have all that all figured out, all licensed. And I guess they're forecasting it so we voted on yes or no on that last November. And I guess it's taking a whole year. And the industry seems to be okay with it. I I've read quotes where some of the growers and the labs that have done this in other states said that Ohio has moved at lightning speed.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. We really have. Oh, really?
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. We really have. Okay.
Steve Palmer [:We think it was it was less than a year ago, right, that this was going. So now we've got
Norm Murdock [:And I don't
Brett Johnson [:know anything to compare it to other states. I didn't know
Steve Palmer [:I don't either, but I just know fast process. I expected it to take a lot longer. Wow. So I know that they were get the current medical marijuana license holders were given a preference, and I think they all had, options to go recreational with their current locations. And then they open it up to applicants. I I I always wonder how people obtain such a valuable permit. You know, it's always you always wonder what it takes, and there's probably money in the backdrop somewhere. But, Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:I think I think, Steve, just to give you a number, I think they said 200 applied to be because you had to have several things to even apply. Yep. 200 applied to be dispensaries in a they are in the process of licensing out of that a 112.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. And those people then, I think, this week, had to put in locations for, where they want their dispensaries. And there's some rules on that. It can't be so close to a school, and it can't be within another mile radius of an or it can't be within a mile radius of another location that's that's already established. Okay. So it's like a, it's like the Wild West land grab. You know, people are going running out and literally planting their flags in the ground of various locations. And if their locations get strong, all of a sudden, that location happens to be worth a lot of money.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. So they're getting their franchise. Yeah. My territory. Their territory.
Steve Palmer [:They're getting their territory. So the address becomes valuable.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Okay.
Steve Palmer [:So you've got you've got land developers involved. You've got dispensaries involved. You've got land owners involved. You know, it's, everybody stands if you're in the right you happen to be in the right little slice, you stand to make a lot of money. Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:So I don't remember what the projected income
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. The state is supposed to.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. I know it was and that might be why
Norm Murdock [:the fast track's happening too.
Steve Palmer [:No. That's right. There's a lot of money made. And, you know, I I will say this is that unless the state regulates it, there's not a lot of money be made. I mean, or at least the market will will tamp itself out. I you know, know, this happened in Oklahoma. I you know, we went out and explored that market for whatever reason. One time, I was talking to some lawyers out there, and there were just too many.
Steve Palmer [:You know, they Oklahoma was wide open. If you had if you're a resident of Oklahoma, you could grow and or open up a medical dispensary. There was no other regulation.
Norm Murdock [:Okay.
Steve Palmer [:And, you know, you had them right next door to each other. And eventually, the market the market was saturated. And, you know, it was I I concluded leaving those meetings, talking to the lawyers, and talking to the regulators.
Norm Murdock [:Nobody's making money.
Steve Palmer [:There's just not enough marijuana smokers. You know, it's and and I I sort of sarcastically said, marijuana is not addicting enough.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Yeah. Because not
Steve Palmer [:enough people are using it to to warrant this. And then what also happened is out there, the and this is relevant for what we're talking about a minute ago, is that China went out and bought they're buying up farmland thousands of acres at a time because they are growing marijuana. They're taking over the marijuana grows. And they the the growers can't compete. There's a bunch of Californiaites, you know, the professional growers, from California were were producing their best product. Chinese are figuring out how to doing it how to do it, and they can do it cheaper. The labor to come in and clip and and do whatever you need to do to get the plants to bud or to get the plants to bud and get the bud to to pot. Gotcha.
Steve Palmer [:You,
Norm Murdock [:They're undercutting.
Steve Palmer [:They're undercutting the market and taking over. So it just, we we ran into a guy who had a trunk load. He was from California, professional grower out there from, what's, Humboldt County or whatever.
Norm Murdock [:Okay.
Steve Palmer [:And, he, he had come to Oklahoma when it first opened up, but he had his best marijuana, his best weed. I don't smoke weed, so I don't know much about it. But, apparently, this was his best he could do. It's, like, 5th generation of iterations that incorporated the land, the water, everything else. And, it was a trunk full of it. He couldn't sell it. He was driving around all day, spent a tank of gas trying to look for somebody some dispensary to buy it. Couldn't couldn't sell it.
Steve Palmer [:So the point of all this is to say that unless Ohio regulates the market and and and artificially regulates the market, there's not gonna be enough demand for the supply.
Norm Murdock [:That's mind blowing, actually, because I'm thinking of The Grapes of Wrath, where the Okies went to Humboldt County, California. Right? That is And you got a guy you got a guy growing in Humboldt going to Oklahoma to sell.
Steve Palmer [:And the same problem in reverse. On in Too many too many labors. Right?
Norm Murdock [:And Steinbeck Steinbeck would be blown away. He'd be like, what?
Steve Palmer [:There we go. The land of the land of milk and honey.
Norm Murdock [:So I I don't know what like, in Michigan, I know a lot of Ohio users, will go to Michigan because I guess there it's a you you can get the marijuana at a at a fairly reasonable price, I guess.
Steve Palmer [:Well, you can get it legally at a store.
Norm Murdock [:At a store. Right. Yeah. So I I just, like I'm wondering the same thing Brett is. Like, how big this industry will really be? Because people privately, I think, under some of these rules will be able to grow 6
Steve Palmer [:But even though 6 months
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. And I heard I I was talking to somebody that grows and, he or she said said that,
Steve Palmer [:There's no difference anymore.
Norm Murdock [:That a plant that a plant can produce roughly like 1 pound of very potent
Steve Palmer [:If you're good at it.
Norm Murdock [:And I'm like, how long will that last? And they're like, pretty long time, actually.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. And that I think that's the other thing to to recognize. And the the weed or the marijuana being produced today is not the marijuana of our college days.
Norm Murdock [:No. I guess not.
Steve Palmer [:You know, this stuff is far more potent Yeah. And far more That's what I hear. Yeah. Efficiently grown than it ever has been, you know. And just think where that's going. I mean, it can only get better.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Or worse.
Steve Palmer [:Or worse. It depends on what you want. Whatever
Norm Murdock [:you however you look at it. That's true. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. That's true. You know, I get I mean, if if a little is good, a lot is better.
Norm Murdock [:That's Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:That's the way.
Norm Murdock [:So this is kind of a fun story even though it's, you know, I guess, enough time has passed. But up in Cleveland back in the thirties, there was an unsolved serial killer on the loose. And there it it they called him I assume it's a him. The torso killer or the mad butcher. And he killed and dismembered more than a dozen people, and they would find bits and parts all over, you know, this particular area of Cleveland. And it's gone unsolved for 90 years. Nobody ever, you know, arrested or prosecuted. And, there's something called the DNA Doe, like Jane Doe.
Norm Murdock [:DNA Doe Project, which will lend assistance on DNA matters to medical examiners around the country. But they need private funding, and, apparently, if a private anonymous donor came forward and is paying to have this case, possibly solved, and they're gonna start exhuming these torsos, these parts of people. And and and the but the the Cleveland Police Department kept their death masks. So where the heads were still there, they took death mask, you know, molds of their faces, but, you know, they had no DNA testing back then. And they're hoping when they exhume these people, they can get DNA samples and then match them up to,
Steve Palmer [:you know So they think they can get DNA samples of the killer?
Norm Murdock [:Of the dead people because they were unidentified. Oh. I see. Only only one or so then they couldn't tie it together. Like, were they all working at the same factory or, you know, how you know, were they bob hits?
Steve Palmer [:Figuring out the identity of the victims will assist in identifying potentials. Yeah. I got you. Sort of like the, who's the guy who jumped out of the plane?
Norm Murdock [:Oh, yeah. DB Cooper.
Steve Palmer [:Sort of like DB Cooper. People trying to solve that years later.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. So they they're, you know, they're people in Cleveland are kinda excited to just to see what happens. So we'll see. Speaking of, death, I'm sure you guys were as torn up as me about this mother who was a speech teacher at Canal Winchester. And, late at night after she finished so she was working 2 jobs, speech therapist or whatever you call it. She had her master's from Ohio State. She was doing that daze. And then in the evening, she was working as a as a waitress.
Norm Murdock [:And she gets off work. This happened yesterday. She gets off work yesterday morning, gets to the, babysitter at 1 in the morning, to get her 6 year old son, puts the 6 year old son in the Honda CRV, goes back to the front door to get his stuff from the babysitter to walk it back to the car. And by the time she went back to the babysitter to get her stuff, somebody jumped 2 young men, they say, unidentified. Can't no video so far. They don't know exactly who they are, but they think they may have some leads. But 2 young men got in the car, whether they knew baby was in there or not. They they took off with her car, and she jumped on the car.
Norm Murdock [:She jumped on the car. They took her on a little bit of a wild ride. She got ejected off the top of the car after, you know, stop. That's my baby. You know, that kind of thing. And she, got a fatal head wound from falling off the vehicle. Mhmm. Died at, it died at, what the Mount Carmel East.
Norm Murdock [:And so she's she was 29, you know, a member of the faculty at Canal Winchester. Apparently, everybody loved her name, Alexis Stakely, 29 dead. Her son was okay. The the the the men that took the car abandoned the car and the kid was okay.
Brett Johnson [:Okay.
Steve Palmer [:But I
Norm Murdock [:mean, what are all?
Steve Palmer [:Did they catch people?
Norm Murdock [:They have they don't they don't know. They're not sure who they are. They have video of a gang of boys doing something bad about a a block over Like like looking to break into some apartments and they think maybe
Steve Palmer [:Maybe they're just trying to steal a car and there's a kid
Brett Johnson [:in it.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Wow. Wow.
Norm Murdock [:Isn't that
Brett Johnson [:something? Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Just makes you sick. And and, you know, she should be mother of the year working 2 jobs and then literally gave her life to try to save her son.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Well, look, guys. We, shifting the topic again. You know, we we try to do legal breakdowns, or I try to do legal breakdowns of of big cases or court cases that come out. I've been gone the last couple weeks. And then in my absence, the US Supreme Court has decided a number of cases. But I think the one I I I'll try to do a quick breakdown or at least we can I think it's worth kicking around is the Trump versus United States, where where United States Supreme Court sort of outlined the rules of immunity for a president, what they are, what they aren't, where even members of the court have, I think, grossly exaggerated what they believe they are? And that, of course, has been the trope the media has picked up on. And, I think, you know, it's an interesting we we should we should go back and listen to our discussion on it, because I know we spent a good deal of time talking about what we thought this how this would shake out. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And I think we all sort of agreed that it would have to shake out in some way like this, that if the president is doing something the president is supposed to do, he should be immune for that. But if he's committing crimes, he should not be immune for that.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. And and we sort
Steve Palmer [:of said if he's doing something official.
Norm Murdock [:Committing unofficial crimes.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Unofficial crimes.
Norm Murdock [:I mean, official crimes, you could say, you know you know, Biden or Obama or Trump, you know, a drone mission that without any trial kills an American citizen another country, you could say, well, he murdered them. I would I would venture to guess. Well,
Steve Palmer [:so let's talk about what this case says. Yeah. It basically outlines 3 levels of immunity. The first level is if the president, whether it's Trump, whether it's Biden, whether it's Obama, whether it was George Washington, if the president is acting directly within the scope of their constitutionally or or or duties granted by Congress through statute. Yeah. If they're if he's acting under that hat directly, he has absolute absolute immunity. So what are those things? So, you know, that would be like, securing the borders Right. If he's engaged in war Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Defending the country.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:You know, could you could you prosecute, Truman for dropping the bomb? You know, it's like those are those things. The answer is no. Or Obama for droning his enemies or the terrorists. You know, the the president has immunity for those things and and it's absolute immunity.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Lincoln, appropriating private land to build the railroads, for example. Yeah. You know, you you can't call that theft.
Steve Palmer [:You can't call it theft.
Norm Murdock [:You know? Because it's in the constitution that the federal government has a right.
Steve Palmer [:It's called the taking clause.
Norm Murdock [:Right? Exactly.
Steve Palmer [:Yes.
Norm Murdock [:So those kinds of things.
Steve Palmer [:Those kinds of things. And nobody I don't think anybody should quibble with that. I wouldn't I can't imagine anybody would quibble with that. And this is the point I was trying to make or you were trying to make when we were talking at the round table. The point I was trying to make is Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. But on the other end of
Steve Palmer [:the spectrum, you can't give a president immunity if he commits crimes. No. So what we're talking about is you could have the same act, theoretically homicide Yeah. Killing somebody. Yeah. In in one context, that's murder.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. FDR cannot kill Eleanor Right. Because he's pissed at her.
Steve Palmer [:But he could kill the Japanese civilians by dropping the bomb. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And not that FDR did that, but the Yeah. Truman did that. But it's, like, you know, the though it's still homicide, taking a one human life by no. So anybody who went to law school knows this. You have homicide, which is taking one human life by another, then you have murder, which is taking one human life by another with malice of forethought.
Steve Palmer [:Right? So it's like, you have, is it murder? In other words, is it a crime, or is it something that is protected, under the presidential, I guess, immunity? So 2 the same act, 2 different contexts. One's can be prosecuted without immunity, the other cannot. Yeah. And then in the middle, you had sort of these official acts, things that you're doing as president. The the court sort of outlined three levels. The first being absolute immunity. The the third being, no immunity whatsoever for crimes. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And in the middle are things like that are sort of in the middle, like these official acts. Yeah. Maybe not so clear.
Norm Murdock [:Because because the president in his oath to, you know, Uphold the law. To uphold the constitution, uphold the laws of the United States, etcetera. Right? And that's gray. I mean, there's some gray area there. Right? Did and and in Trump's particular case, right, the question is, was he contacting Georgia and these other venues, as president to to make sure we have a clean election system? And that was why he's contacting them. Right. Or was it because candidate Trump to benefit himself purely is after that $400,000 a year job and the power that it has Right. To continue.
Steve Palmer [:And the Supreme Court did not decide that issue.
Norm Murdock [:They sent it back.
Steve Palmer [:They sent it back because what they did in the middle is they created something called a presumption of immunity. That's right. Where, alright, this could be an official act, defined the way you just said. So we're gonna presume at least for now that that's an immunity or there's immunity for that, but it can be overcome, and that's what the courts have to figure out on a case by case basis. What is the purpose of it, and is there immunity? So the law creates presumptions, and presumptions are these, you know, anybody who studied evidence knows that this gets this is murky water. Yeah. You know, it's it's so you're presumed, to start innocent. But what does that really mean? If you've ever sat at a council table accused of a crime, you don't feel presumed innocent at all.
Steve Palmer [:Right. Right. But in theory, the jury is instructed, you must presume that this gentleman is innocent or this lady is innocent until the prosecutor proves otherwise beyond a reasonable doubt or with proven evidence that amounts to beyond a reasonable doubt. Right. So it's a presumption. It can be overcome.
Norm Murdock [:It can be overcome.
Steve Palmer [:It can be overcome. And, you know, there's a there's 2 different theories on presumptions, whether you nibble away at it or something else called the bursting bubble theory of presumptions where as soon as you present enough evidence, it's it's gone, and there's no more presumption immunity is gone. I think that's what this is. So the immunity is gonna be gone. As soon as this government or whoever's prosecuting the president, in this case, Trump establishes that this was not an official act, with some evidence, some credible evidence. And, that is going to have to be somethings or something that the court itself, the the trial court level has to decide. And each one of those now will matriculate up, and and sort of be evaluated. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And that's the only way it can happen because here's what the the Supreme Court is supposed to do, and here's what it's not supposed to do. And every time it does what it's not supposed to do, we end up in trouble. The Supreme Court is not supposed to be a fact finding mission. It's not supposed to be a court of fact where people present testimony evidence, new information. Yeah. The Supreme Court is a court of an appellate court of record. It looks at the record on appeal and decides what it can based on the facts that are there. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:There are times in the court's history where it has not done that. Roe v Wade was one of them. Brown versus Board of Education was another. I think it was Brown. You know, they they've done this at times, and they get way out over their skis because it creates precedent. It can't be undone based on facts that have changed later. Yes. So the idea is to pronounce the law and the rule, not decide facts.
Norm Murdock [:Even if it's a
Steve Palmer [:And parsing.
Norm Murdock [:A hard thing. Even if it's almost Dobbs decision, I heard Biden last night at his press conference refer to the current Supreme Court as the most conservative court in American history and how they're out of control. And of course and then I hear people like Glenn Beck and and some of the commentators talk about how that was a pro, that was a pro life decision, And it was nothing of the kind in either case.
Steve Palmer [:It was nothing. Right?
Norm Murdock [:It was nothing of the kind. It was a subject matter that belongs to the states. Sure. And that's what it was. That's
Steve Palmer [:a decision. Even if it's not subject matter that belongs to the states, it was decided on facts that weren't in the record. Alright. So when when when Roe v not Dobbs, but when Roe v Wade was decided, it was decided they they created this trimester scheme. That was not presented at a trial. No. That was in that was that was taken from other places. So once the US Supreme Court does that, there's no way to go backwards or it gets very difficult to go backwards if those facts change.
Steve Palmer [:This is why this is a legislative question. Because on the legislative floor, you can debate these things. We can present evidence. You we saw hearings the other day on free speech, where they're taking testimony and evidence.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:That that becomes a record. That becomes the congressional record, and you can act on that. But you know what else you can do is you can add to it, or you can change it, or you can add, contrary facts when they change. So it may be that certain medical things were true at the time Roe v Wade was decided. But now, however many years later Yeah. 50 years later.
Norm Murdock [:Like viabilities. Like viability. Right. That's a great example.
Steve Palmer [:Now that's changed.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Babies can can survive at a much younger age of gestation now.
Steve Palmer [:But as
Norm Murdock [:soon as that they used to be.
Steve Palmer [:Constitutional law, it it's chiseled in granite. It becomes very difficult to change. And that was So this is why the US Supreme Court doesn't decide these things. So here in Trump's case, in Trump versus United States, the court remands it back. And that's fancy lawyer talk way of saying, they sent it back to the trial court and say, you figure this crap out.
Norm Murdock [:Figure the facts out.
Steve Palmer [:You figure out the facts. You know why? Because you're the person that can take testimony. Right. You judge are the person that gets to hear witnesses. Right. You get to look at exhibits. You get to consider this. And you know what? You've been doing this a long time.
Steve Palmer [:It's a life appointment or in theory, your court system isn't been engaged in fact finding missions forever. We don't decide facts, you decide the facts.
Norm Murdock [:Steve, the only the only nibble I have to pick on that decision is I'm with, Kony Barrett, And I don't know if she put this in her, in in her, you know, I I don't know in the decision if she expressed this. But during the hearing of the case, she expressed her belief or her her her her impulse was that for any kind of case, criminal case brought against a president, former president, she was of the opinion, at least during the discussion with the with the attorneys back and forth, that it needed to be in federal court. Because we're talking about a federal officer and what he or she may have done, right, while in office but had done privately and let the federal judges sort that out. And I think that would be an improvement on this decision. Had they said, listen, it it this the state courts can't manage this. There's gonna be too much partisanship, too much like when a when a democrat's in office and gets out of office, then a republican prosecutor can go rogue, and vice versa. And and so it needs to be in federal court where at least the federal judges go through some kind of vetting process. They're not just elected.
Steve Palmer [:Well, this this happens to be coming up on a federal case. So it is a federal district court that's deciding this. But I think what you're saying is
Norm Murdock [:I'm talking about the New York case.
Steve Palmer [:The New York case. Right. So is is On January 6th.
Brett Johnson [:But but you but you could choose the federal area of the country to take it to.
Norm Murdock [:And that's a little bit more It's
Brett Johnson [:a little open to So so you what you want to
Norm Murdock [:You see the difference between a quality of judge like Mershun Yeah. Okay. And Eileen Cannon down in Florida. Yeah. But you know what though? There's a there's a qualitative judge.
Steve Palmer [:Judge. Let me
Norm Murdock [:push back.
Steve Palmer [:Go ahead. The idea here is it's a state say it's a state court judge. Yeah. There is a hierarchy of review that can happen after that.
Norm Murdock [:So it's
Steve Palmer [:just state court judges all the time decide federal issues.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:All the time. Yeah. Doesn't mean they have the last say though.
Norm Murdock [:That's right.
Steve Palmer [:So for instance, here in Ohio, I'm defending a criminal case and the judge I have a trial and the judge says, no, you're not allowed to cross examine this witness on this topic. So I say, objection, judge.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:It's a violation of my right of confrontation, my right to cross examine, my right to be Matlock or Perry Mason or whatever it would be, in the courtroom. And that for those, government scholars Sure. Is, the 6th Amendment, among other things in the 6th Amendment. So the judge says, nope, overruled. Well, the judge has just made a decision on a federal 6th Amendment. Right? The judge also has made a decision because Ohio has something similar in its constitution. But now I appeal, and I go up to the Ohio Court of Appeals directly, and I say, Ohio Court of Appeals, this judge f this up, and violated my client's right to the 6th Amendment, or right of confrontation under the 6th Amendment. Court says, yeah, we hear you.
Steve Palmer [:You sounded good, made a good argument in writing, and you're pretty eloquent here in the courtroom, but nope, denied. Yeah. I go to the highest Supreme Court, and I say the same thing. And they say, nope, we're either not gonna look at it, or we'll look at it, and denied. Now I get to go to federal court.
Norm Murdock [:I gotcha.
Steve Palmer [:And a federal district judge either in habeas corpus review, or I can go directly to the United States Supreme Court and petition for some
Norm Murdock [:I get you.
Steve Palmer [:And there's review. So I Well
Norm Murdock [:well, let me push back on you.
Steve Palmer [:Okay.
Norm Murdock [:Okay? So I don't disagree with you about that is still offering fairness. I I I agree with you. And there's lots of due process. I agree with you. What I am troubled by, I think, Coney Barrett was troubled by, was the idea that we're dragging former POTUS', you know, through a very drawn out long process that would be more cleanly and just as much due process if it started in the federal system. That's all I'm
Steve Palmer [:saying. So what needs to happen?
Norm Murdock [:So instead of a 5 year thing
Steve Palmer [:Congress needs to pass a law that says any former president must be prosecuted in federal court. They do. Alright? That that can happen.
Norm Murdock [:Actions actions need to be brought to those federal level.
Steve Palmer [:No reason that the Congress can't I can't think of any reason. There might be one, but I can't think of a of any solid reason why that couldn't be
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:A congressional act. Yeah. But it doesn't exist now. So, look, the states can prosecute the guy.
Norm Murdock [:That's right.
Steve Palmer [:And that's that. And the US Supreme Court is not entitled, in my opinion, to pronounce that as a rule of law.
Norm Murdock [:So, like, when Fawnee Willis, right, campaigns on the idea that she's gonna go get that guy. Right? And and she campaigned locally.
Steve Palmer [:And so did the the weasel in New York. Yes.
Norm Murdock [:Right? Bragg. Bragg. Yeah. They they campaign that they're going to go after a free citizen whether they like
Steve Palmer [:popular They targeted a guy.
Norm Murdock [:They targeted a guy. They happened to
Steve Palmer [:be their political enemy. Exactly.
Norm Murdock [:And the feds would not openly do that because they're not running for office. Now they may they may like Well,
Steve Palmer [:they absolutely would. And they they certainly can.
Norm Murdock [:Like Comey. You know And it's not
Steve Palmer [:that they're running for office, but they're appointed by the guy in charge.
Norm Murdock [:That's right.
Steve Palmer [:Right. So
Norm Murdock [:Well, nobody I I would say Garland has been nakedly, partisan in what he has done at the Department of Justice, for example. But he didn't run for office on a platform to destroy another person, which is what they're doing at the state
Steve Palmer [:level. So but there's there's redress for that. And look, our system is not perfect, but you can't make it perfect with pronouncements out of turn by the United States Supreme Court. The reason our system is as perfect as it gets is because we don't do those things. And the Supreme Court does not have the authority nor should it to pronounce that as a law. I would be all in favor of that if it came from Congress.
Norm Murdock [:But there are a lot of matters, a lot of subject matters that you have to file in federal court.
Steve Palmer [:Because of the United States code says so. Yes. Exactly. Right. Not because of an pronouncement by the US Supreme Court.
Norm Murdock [:Admiralty, cases. Sure.
Steve Palmer [:You know? Well, either the constitution says it or the or the US code says it through an act of congress. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:So So when a barge when a barge hits another barge on the Ohio River, they don't file in a in an Ohio court. I think if it's under the Admiralty statutes that you Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:But so this isn't you you have most of most of these things have concurrent jurisdictions. So for instance, I had a case in the Ohio on the Ohio River where my client was accused of being under the influence of alcohol and ran into another boat, somebody died, prosecuted in state court. Yeah. And the issue was, what's not only could it be prosecuted in state court, which state? Because is is it Kentucky or Ohio? Yeah. Or could it be both? And could it be prosecuted in federal court under some admiral Admiralty law? Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:And the
Steve Palmer [:answer is probably yes. Yeah. But and this happens all the time, say, a bank robbery. Federal court has or the federal courts have jurisdiction over bank robberies, but they're often prosecuted in state court too.
Norm Murdock [:Kidnapping.
Steve Palmer [:Kidnapping is another one. Sure. Drug trafficking is another big example.
Norm Murdock [:Some some some some matters you have to start in federal court. And that and this is where I think of Very few. A president of the United States, I think, is 1. Maybe. But but
Steve Palmer [:I would define it by the you you know, we we would probably agree more than we would disagree, but I would define it by the act, not the person.
Norm Murdock [:Okay.
Brett Johnson [:No. Alright. Gotcha. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Okay. I think I think, you know If it's if it's if there's
Steve Palmer [:a hint that he's operating within the duty. Now now look, there's another thing. In civil courts, very interesting. So if I'm suing 1 person or if I'm suing somebody or a corporation or somebody for civil damages, then I file a lawsuit against you. And, you know, the question is, can I file can I where can that be filed?
Norm Murdock [:That's right.
Steve Palmer [:And sometimes that can be filed in federal court, sometimes it can be filed in state court, sometimes both. Sometimes I file in state court, and you get to remove it to federal court. I
Norm Murdock [:mean, all bankruptcies, federal.
Steve Palmer [:Those are those are federal. But sometimes I can file a suit against you, and you remove it to federal court because it raises a federal question or under diversity of citizenship because you live in a different state. Right. Sometimes, you know so it gets jurisdiction between federal and state gets blurry. Yeah. And and and the only point I'm making here is not to disagree with you, but to say it takes an act of act of congress
Norm Murdock [:I agree.
Steve Palmer [:To establish it.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. I agree.
Steve Palmer [:And I guess the US Supreme Court.
Norm Murdock [:And I guess that's why they didn't legislate in this case. I wish that they could have said, you know, they could have directed or said something about this as a matter for congress.
Steve Palmer [:If they could have. Yeah. If they were being partisan as accused by the dissent Yeah. To create what she is Ketanji Brown Jackson, I think, wrote the dissent. Or or she's she's is it no. It was Ketanji. It wasn't Sotomayor. But she's she's making these absurd claims that this means the president can hire hire seal team 6 to kill That
Norm Murdock [:was Sotomayor.
Steve Palmer [:Was it Sotomayor? That was right. Okay. So either way, it's a it's an absurd
Norm Murdock [:It's absurd.
Steve Palmer [:It's absurd. It is hyperbolic hyperbolic and absurd, and that was a political dissent. No question. And I think if the majority and, of course, this strikes down the or strikes along the party lines. But if the majority wanted to be partisan, it would have agreed with Trump and said you're immune. It did nothing of the sort. In fact, it explicitly said nothing of the sort. We do not agree with Trump that he's entitled to immunity for all these things just as an absolute right.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:And they sent it down and said, look. Something But the the court took on maybe more than it needed to. And and, you know, to that extent, I I'd have to give it some more thought. They didn't necessarily have to create this whole hierarchy of immunity or whatever. They could have just said, look. He's not immune here. Go back.
Norm Murdock [:Well, I'm glad they did what they did.
Steve Palmer [:It it it sort of needed to happen. And Yeah. This is this is likely to repeat.
Norm Murdock [:They gave us a framework.
Brett Johnson [:Well, and they're reading the tea leaves.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:That, okay, this this junk is not going away. You know? For all the
Steve Palmer [:Look. If it's not Trump, it's gonna be the next guy.
Brett Johnson [:Exactly. And now it's good to go.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No.
Norm Murdock [:They opened Pandora's box. Once they once they got political first time they've ever done this to a former president to redo it.
Brett Johnson [:It's gone. And they
Norm Murdock [:know the backlash is gonna be back and
Brett Johnson [:forth back and forth. Yeah. Yeah. Well, if I might. So we talked about this before too. And and I I thought these two stories that I recently read kinda come in line, but we know states are traditionally relied on gas taxes for road maintenance. Yep.
Norm Murdock [:No. It's fine. Wow.
Brett Johnson [:But fuel efficient cars and EV are reducing the revenues across states. So, there are a few states now that have introduced a a delivery fee. Colorado introduced it 29¢ per delivery in 2022. It's generated over a $160,000,000.
Norm Murdock [:Meaning, like Amazon coming to you.
Brett Johnson [:Exactly. Minnesota has it 50
Norm Murdock [:cent fee Wow.
Brett Johnson [:On purchases over $100.
Norm Murdock [:So Uber Eats, it's over a $100 for your Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:Typically, from what I'm reading Amazon, the the the the the road
Norm Murdock [:heavy Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:Road warrior
Steve Palmer [:Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:This kind of stuff. I mean, Washington has it. Illinois has it. So the consumer
Norm Murdock [:will pay a road tax.
Brett Johnson [:Basically for delivery.
Norm Murdock [:For not using the road. Exactly. And hiring somebody else to do.
Brett Johnson [:Because of like, EV. So let's turn it to Ohio. And from what I'm seeing, you mentioned this before we went on to record that, governor Mike DeWine raised the gas tax in 19.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. First thing he did in office.
Brett Johnson [:He's considering another one. Oh, gosh. So so I'm thinking this out that he's he's kinda between a rock and hard place. Number 1, if he does suggest and he's already done in this when it floated to 19, no one was really happy about it. An increase on tax on gas. His his the party's not gonna go for this.
Steve Palmer [:That's not your own.
Brett Johnson [:Gonna get blowback. Big time blowback. Okay.
Steve Palmer [:Well, it depends on what faction the party, but yes.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:And DeWine can't increase EV registrations. He can't do that. Not
Steve Palmer [:by himself.
Brett Johnson [:He well, but I'm what I'm saying is the the the the the look of it. He just brought in this big battery factory down in, Jeffersonville. Right. So, that's gonna smack that in the face.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. That that You're right. They're low in Rondo.
Steve Palmer [:Right. Exactly.
Brett Johnson [:So I'm gonna I'm my guess is he's gonna go with delivery fee. Wow. And so let's go further with this delivery fee.
Norm Murdock [:As if just let me say Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Go ahead.
Norm Murdock [:As if UPS and Amazon and all the other FedEx don't build into what they charge you their gas tax. Yeah. Right. Right. You're paying it already.
Steve Palmer [:You're paying it already. Yeah. Right. You're paying it already.
Norm Murdock [:So so
Steve Palmer [:let's go further.
Brett Johnson [:Wow. So let's not just say it's Amazon and FedEx. Let's go anything that delivers anything.
Steve Palmer [:And Spoiled Rose by any other name is still a Spoiled Rose.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. How about we start taxing food trucks?
Steve Palmer [:Well, that yeah. I'm sure
Brett Johnson [:Because they're delivering food to a side street or wherever might be.
Norm Murdock [:And the little domino delivery Don't
Steve Palmer [:get the Napa delivery trucks.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Sure.
Brett Johnson [:That bring But to to All
Steve Palmer [:of these
Brett Johnson [:guys working on cars.
Steve Palmer [:That's absurd. And All of this is to say that the government, in general, state, local, federal, can't live within their own budget. That's right. Right. Like, there's plenty of money.
Norm Murdock [:There's plenty of money.
Steve Palmer [:Just start allocating.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. And and and and and well, and and we should
Brett Johnson [:be taxing quota as well too. In any heavy object delay.
Steve Palmer [:Right. Instead of giving them money.
Brett Johnson [:Exactly. Yeah. But again, it comes down to we've talked about this before.
Steve Palmer [:Why are why
Norm Murdock [:are we
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Why are we eating this? Because of EV batteries.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Brett Johnson [:I I have no problem. If you know what? If you wanna raise it, because a registration fee are for the,
Norm Murdock [:It's very low.
Brett Johnson [:It's $100 for hybrids, 200 for plug in EVVs.
Norm Murdock [:Which does not in no way represents what they would have spent on gas tax. Up.
Brett Johnson [:Crank that up.
Steve Palmer [:Yes. You want an EV? Then go pay for
Brett Johnson [:it. Exactly.
Norm Murdock [:Because you're because actually, EVs per car weigh way more.
Brett Johnson [:Yes. They do.
Steve Palmer [:That's that's a huge problem. Right? That's what you're just talking about.
Brett Johnson [:Right. Exactly.
Steve Palmer [:It just is a classic just ripple effect of stupid government mandates in economics. That's right. You know, you start when the government starts cramming down economic incentives, and I'll put incentives in quotes Yeah. For the reason they should be, which is because it's stupid.
Norm Murdock [:To steer behavior.
Steve Palmer [:To steer behavior, it creates a ripple effect because human nature is not gonna do it. You know, they're they're not gonna like it. There's and you're gonna have a leak somewhere in the dike. You know, this is my my analogy on this. I'm a woodworker. Anybody who's ever tried to build a a perfect picture frame of 45 degrees, When one of them is off and you try to tweak it, you start all of them get monkeyed. So you're, like, alright. I'll just fix this one.
Steve Palmer [:Then you gotta fix the next one, then the next one. And then you're back to square 1 except now the whole frame is smaller and it doesn't fit. You guys it's like it is a disaster. Yeah. You can't do it. Once you start tinkering with it, it doesn't work, and this is what this is. They've crammed down EVs on people, and now it's killing the roads, and they gotta pay for the roads. But because they gotta pay for the roads, they don't wanna act like it's the EVs that are causing the problems.
Steve Palmer [:They're gonna start causing or or whatever that Yeah. I'm making this up. But No. The point is I think that's what this
Brett Johnson [:is. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Here here's another one I'll pile on. So this is this is another example of, if you will, a hidden tax. So Senate Bill 79, which was bipartisan, One of the most conservative house members, Bill cites from Cincinnati as a cosponsor, for example. And then some liberal, Democrat up on the up on Lake Erie at in in Westlake, Ohio is a cosponsor. And what what this bill does, it allows Ohio utilities now this all sounds real happy. Ohio utilities can offer rebates for energy efficient appliances and thermostats. Right? Okay. So that that's all that all sounds real happy.
Norm Murdock [:But, of course, the PUCO controls the rates that Ohio utilities can charge you. So that means the rest of us ratepayers, right, are underwriting somebody else's purchase of of energy efficient appliances.
Steve Palmer [:No. It was it was change of words. New appliances.
Norm Murdock [:New appliances. Right. Right. Right. Well And who's buying those? And generally, well heeled people. It it won't be talk to. It won't be somebody poor.
Steve Palmer [:So here's I don't know. I I I've not done a deep dive into this, but I do know this. I knew somebody who had a refrigerator in their garage. Right? A refrigerator in the garage.
Norm Murdock [:Sure.
Steve Palmer [:You know, and this is always the one that used to be in, like, the old house. Right.
Norm Murdock [:He's got his course light or whatever it is.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Somehow or another, somebody did an energy audio on energy audit on it. Maybe the power company came out and and said, look. We're gonna test this. We're gonna do it. And then they they did an energy audit on and this was not the state of the art energy efficient
Norm Murdock [:A 19 fifties norge.
Steve Palmer [:In a in a garage that is heated. Right? Sure. Right. It Yeah. The difference was, like, almost insignificant on what the fridge and the garage was using that was 50 years old versus the new one they bought. It's, like, it's all BS.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. It's, like, $12 a year.
Brett Johnson [:And again, that that that refrigerated to your point, that refrigerator or freezer that was built in the fifties or sixties was built to last, number 1, built to hold the the coldness in. It still works.
Norm Murdock [:They're better they're better manufactured.
Steve Palmer [:It still works.
Brett Johnson [:So it's gonna be more efficient.
Norm Murdock [:And and
Steve Palmer [:what are you gonna do with the old one? They they You're gonna dump it in the ground?
Brett Johnson [:That's what they that's what'll happen.
Norm Murdock [:And put it
Steve Palmer [:on or whatever the poison is that they're in
Norm Murdock [:the bottom of. And get and get and get a check from AEP for $200 because you went down to Home Depot and bought a new one. Right.
Steve Palmer [:Because you patted the pockets of, h h or what's that? What's that? Big Sandy.
Norm Murdock [:Well oh, and but then the rest of us Ohioans were the ones that are giving you that rebate.
Steve Palmer [:I'm gonna save my money because I don't have I don't wanna buy a new fridge or I can't. Yeah. Or I bought one last year. Right. So I don't get the benefits.
Norm Murdock [:Remember the Obama Appliance Program? Yeah. I mean Yeah. Remember that deal?
Brett Johnson [:And
Norm Murdock [:it was all fairly wealthy people that went out and bought all new fridges and everything. Right. And you're like, wait a minute. You know, our household income's maybe 50,000. We can't afford to do this. Same
Steve Palmer [:work. Remember all that? Yeah. Oh, yeah. People buying the big SUVs. I mean, it's like it it benefits the wealthy. Exactly right. Like all these things.
Norm Murdock [:And it steers it it the whole idea is under a good, you know, a happy thing. Oh, we're gonna save the environment and energy efficiency. You're steering people's behavior with taxpayer or, in this case, rate payer money.
Steve Palmer [:You were
Norm Murdock [:yes. And it's not fair to the rest.
Steve Palmer [:People to with your mon with other people's money.
Norm Murdock [:With other people's money. Right.
Steve Palmer [:Right.
Norm Murdock [:So that's what the
Steve Palmer [:go and think about it. That's what the government always does. The government doesn't have any money. Instead of other people's.
Norm Murdock [:Instead of just letting it be a market This is not the government's money. Decision.
Steve Palmer [:It's your money. Right.
Brett Johnson [:Well, you know, going back to
Steve Palmer [:that We need
Norm Murdock [:we need Thomas Soul at
Brett Johnson [:the yeah. On and it's been, you know, we can add on this and speaking of the market, you know, dictate it, not dictating, but equalizing everything out. So, for a while, we're talking about how fast food prices up, going up, going up, going up. Now, all of a sudden, there's a little bit of fast food war going on. Oh, have you? Between Wendy's and McDonald's are starting to lower prices now. Because people aren't buying it.
Norm Murdock [:Exactly. That $5 thing.
Brett Johnson [:And guess what? It works, doesn't it?
Norm Murdock [:It does. It works.
Steve Palmer [:It turns out people know what they
Brett Johnson [:wanna spend their money on.
Norm Murdock [:Uh-huh. And And McDonald's and Wendy's know if I come in for the $5, you know, killer deal and they say, do you want to upsize that? Right? And turn it into a 7 or $8 deal.
Steve Palmer [:Once you're there, you're doing it.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Exactly. You might do it. And it's your choice at that point
Norm Murdock [:in the marketplace. Exactly. You got the market. So I
Brett Johnson [:think that's kinda funny. You see, all of a sudden, now the price
Steve Palmer [:scores are going on out there. So I
Brett Johnson [:love it. I love it.
Steve Palmer [:Alright. Well, with that, we gotta wrap it up. We've been at Common Sense Ohio on this July 12, 2024 with the summer. You know, once you cross that threshold or the precipice of 4th July, it's all downhill
Norm Murdock [:from there. Oh, come on.
Steve Palmer [:Next thing you know, your kids are showing
Brett Johnson [:Oh, my god.
Steve Palmer [:Your kids are showing up at football camp on August 1. That's it's like three and a half weeks away. I know. Your cheerleading practice starts.
Norm Murdock [:A bridge now.
Steve Palmer [:School is coming like a freight train right around the corner. The chance to earn that last couple bucks at the summer job is almost done. Hopefully, you saved enough kids for your social activities and your boyfriends and girlfriends going forward. But here at Common Sense Ohio, we don't care. We're coming back next week and the week after Right. And the week after that and so on and so on. You can check us out at commonsenseohio show.com. I won't go into all that nonsense again, but that's where you go, brought to you by Harper Plus, where we are coming at you right from the middle each and every week, at least until now.
