Shownotes
As we roll into August, hosts Norm Murdock and Brett Johnson talk about the hot-button issues shaping our state and beyond.
This week, the conversation opens with a historical reflection on the origins of federal income tax, before shifting to the heart of current events—rising concerns over crime and community unrest in Cincinnati. The hosts discuss the fallout from recent riots, the evolving political landscape spotlighting figures like Vivek Ramaswamy, and the surprising absence of Governor DeWine from the conversation.
Brett and Norm give a thoughtful look at the complex racial and social dynamics at play, address reactions from local leaders, and suggest constructive ways for communities to come together. The discussion doesn't stop there—they also touch on media and celebrity culture with the Sydney Sweeney controversy, the endless cycle of political division, and how sports can sometimes offer a welcome escape from it all.
Later in the episode, the hosts tackle the ongoing issues of redistricting and property tax reform in Ohio, questioning the lack of progress from state leaders. From financial relief for homeowners, bipartisan cooperation, to the broader implications of economic policy missteps (looking at you, Intel project), no topic is off-limits.
Packed with sharp insights, candid moments, and a touch of humor, this episode offers plenty for anyone trying to make sense of the news and policies affecting Ohioans every day.
Moments
00:00 Governor's Patrol Aid in Cincinnati
09:29 Cincinnati Commentary Controversy
16:02 Historical Anger and Violence Debate
21:55 Post-Apartheid Reconciliation Panels
26:58 Sydney Sweeney's Political Backlash
32:54 Late Night Comedy's Decline
35:50 Fan Ejected for MAGA Hat
40:37 Ohio Gerrymandering Reality
45:39 Income-Based Property Tax Cap
54:52 "Let the Marketplace Decide"
58:13 "Mortgage Rate Concerns Persist"
01:01:01 Trump's Ballroom Expansion Proposal
Recorded at the 511 Studios, in the Brewery District in downtown Columbus, OH.
info@commonsenseohioshow.com
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.
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcripts
Oh, look at that. You made it back for another dose of common sense. Ohio. We just turned into August. Just turned into August.
Norm Murdock [:Wow. I cannot, I sympathize for the children of Ohio that you know, like summer is coming to an end.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:And you know, the poor things. I know, right. The weather has been brutal.
Brett Johnson [:Exactly.
Norm Murdock [:So they've been riding air conditioning sofas all summer. The, the weather finally starts getting nice this week. Reasonably nice.
Brett Johnson [:And some schools, they're back.
Norm Murdock [:And they're back.
Brett Johnson [:I know, I know. And then, you know, and then they got the back to school shopping the Ohio tax free two weeks and the kids are coming. Two weeks of shopping. Come on.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Brett Johnson [:But it is what it is, but.
Norm Murdock [:It'S like, yeah, get me a new iPhone, mom.
Brett Johnson [:Exactly. Exactly. This edition brought to you by Harper style cpa. Harper cpa. Plus either way you're going to find them. You'll see, you'll see the connection in the, in the show notes. I know I always kind of flip flop it, but I always, I just know it by Glenn Harper and company. You know, so the, the connection, the link in the show notes so you can find that easy enough to do and you're not going to stop your car and write this stuff down.
Brett Johnson [:So. But Steve typically rolls out some type of thing in history. I thought it was interesting yesterday, which today's the 6th of August. Yesterday, August 5th, back in 1861, President Lincoln imposed the first federal income tax by signing the Revenue act strat for cash, which during the Civil War he imposed a 3% tax on annual incomes over $800, which in today's terms dollars would be about $20,000, which is, I always like to do that conversion. What dollars is a value of what. So yeah, he debated a lot about it though he wasn't all that hot on the idea. I mean he had, he sent letters to cabinet members Edward Bates, Gideon Wells and Salmon Chase getting their, you know, ideas on and opinions and such.
Norm Murdock [:So went through, I assume it had to pass Congress.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah, yeah, that too. So you know, so it did, it worked.
Norm Murdock [:What year was that again?
Brett Johnson [:That was 1861.
Norm Murdock [:Okay.
Brett Johnson [:And it was repealed 10 years later.
Norm Murdock [:Okay.
Brett Johnson [:But we implemented it back in 1909. 16th Amendment, which set in place the federal income tax system used today. It was ratified in 1913.
Norm Murdock [:So that was done to finance the Union's Civil War efforts.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly. So yeah, I thought we talk a lot about federal income tax. Like well, when did it. We never have a beginning place or how, when did this idea come from? Well, that was kind of cool that it came up yesterday in history at least. So. So there you have it. You know, blame Lincoln. The idea was floated.
Norm Murdock [:But after.
Brett Johnson [:After. But it did go away.
Norm Murdock [:I guess it would have been Ulysses Grant's administration probably that repealed it.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah, exactly. So it did get repealed.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:For a long time because the war ended.
Norm Murdock [:So, yeah, they paid off whatever, you know, they needed to and got rid of the tax.
Brett Johnson [:You know, the.
Norm Murdock [:That's something our current Congress apparently needs. Never thinks about. Oh, no. Once it's repealing a federal program.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Now, I don't know that much history about the 16th amendment. Why in 1909 we decided to do it again. Was it because of war? Maybe World War I around that time? I don't know. I don't know. I need to look at that.
Norm Murdock [:It is a little odd. Right. Because 1906, what could have been happening. No, the World War I was way in the future.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. So that's true. That's true. I don't know. I have to look into that.
Norm Murdock [:Maybe it was a very small amount and only on the super wealthy could have been.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah, something like that. I have to look into that because that's interesting. Why would we have it come into play? Anyway, so, you know, putting our headlines together again, a lot of stuff that's still being discussed and really we want to focus out to shoot the, you know, the fallout of the riots in Cincinnati. Still a lot of discussion. And it's funny you made a comment about this. We were talking about this before we went on it. It's funny that no one really went to DeWine first, Governor DeWine, to ask about this. We go right to Vivaswamy and senators.
Brett Johnson [:It's just like, wow, pecking orders changed.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. So the governor of this state, he did send the State Patrol to Cincinnati or offered to. To augment the Cincinnati Police Department so that the CPD down there could concentrate on street crime and issues involving neighborhoods and, you know, patrolling that while the State Patrol would take over traffic duties, you know, speed enforcement and things like that around Cincinnati and Hamilton County. But other than that, I haven't heard Governor DeWine really involved in this story. And it's kind of interesting because the dewines are very active in politics in southwestern Ohio, including Cincinnati. Cause some of his kids, grown children and grandchildren are residents of Cincinnati. And so you would think. But this big meeting that occurred a couple days ago, a town hall meeting organized by Vivek Ramaswamy, featured Anthony Munoz.
Norm Murdock [:He was the kickoff speaker for, you know, hall of famer for the Cincinnati Bengals. They had Corey Bowman, who is J.D. vance's brother, running for mayor. He's a pastor and, you know, a citizen of Cincinnati wants to become mayor to replace the current mayor, Aftab Purval, the current mayor. And then they had a bunch of other speakers. One that really caught my attention is Sarah Herringer. Her husband owned her and her husband owned a gym in the over the Rhine, which is a gentrified area, former slum in Cincinnati. Years and years ago, it was where a lot of the German migrants settled in Cincinnati.
Norm Murdock [:Then as they gathered wealth and became successful, they then moved to the suburbs and the inner city started to deteriorate, and the over the Rhine became a slum. Famously featured in the movie Traffic with Michael Douglas, A lot of over the Rhine footage in that movie. And then people looked at their map of downtown and realized, my goodness, if we do any kind of development in Cincinnati, the Over the Rhine is perfect. So that's when they put in the casino is in the over the Rhine.
Brett Johnson [:Which always attracts the best of the best, by the way.
Norm Murdock [:Right? It always does.
Brett Johnson [:Always does.
Norm Murdock [:Right. So they then, you know, a bunch of places like this, gym, bakeries, all kinds of little mom and pop businesses started to pop up in the over the Rhine, microbrews and all kinds of things. Anyway, this lady, Sarah Herringer, her husband and her were in their over the Rhine home, I guess in the same vicinity as their gym, and somebody broke in and stabbed him to death. And this happened in June. So there seems to be a crime wave of various kinds. And, I mean, I can talk about personal experiences involving friends of mine down there and my own family that's down there. And there's just a lot of these stories of random, seemingly random violence that you can't explain. You know, people, you know, like homeless or drunk people going into a restaurant and just throwing a chair, throwing chairs airborne at diners and, you know, slashing people's faces open.
Norm Murdock [:You know, diners sitting at their table, and some guy just walks in and starts throwing chairs around with no targeted reason. And so there's been a number of these, like, from behind. I forget what they call that, but where you clock somebody, they don't even know they're about to get hit, and you whack them from behind. And some people say that's a gang initiation, right? And so there's these stories, and people are just like, wow, that's not the Cincinnati I grew up in. Where, sure, there were always some problems, but I don't remember anything like what's going on down there. And certainly not this seemingly race based fight that happened. It turned into a riot. I've never heard of anything like that in all the years that I lived there, and I'm sure there were, but it's just, it might have happened so long ago that it became legend.
Norm Murdock [:But this is all recent stuff and you do wonder if our culture is sliding and I think a lot of people feel it has. One of the councilpersons in Cincinnati of Victoria Parks gave her thoughts on this and she said the victims, and I quote her, were begging for the beatdown, unquote. And even her fellow Democrats said, no, no, no, no, you can't say something like that's outrageous. So she's really out there on the extreme. And I would not want to take my Democratic friends and wrap her opinions with hers. I think that's unfair in the same way that I would not view this through a purely racial lens. I think there's a racial element to that and I think it speaks to a sense of desperation, perhaps in Cincinnati, maybe by people who live downtown, maybe by the minority population, maybe feeling still that racial injustice is not being addressed correctly. I don't know, it probably varies person to person, but you certainly can't say something like victims are begging for a beatdown because that seems to sanction the mob violence.
Norm Murdock [:So some of the other speakers included Corey Bowman again, who's running for mayor. I think going back to Brett's opening here on Vivek, it's incredible to me that the Republican Party, and this is not to criticize Vivek. I mean, he ran a really strong effort to clear the field of any competition. But like Dave Yost, who should be in this governor's race, like he is a voice that Ohio needs to hear from the Republican side. He bowed out because President Trump and all the big donors, everybody got behind Vivek more than a year out from the primary, not to mention the general election, which is next year. So Vivek has like, I don't know what it is, like 15 months before the election where he's running for governor. So the reporters are going to him as if he's already governor and asking him to enter into these controversies in Ohio. And he is responding.
Norm Murdock [:And I think some of his comments at this town hall were really good. But be that as it may, it's interesting they didn't go to Governor DeWine.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. While you were talking, I was thinking about this, this situation of Is there a loss of community feel in that area and are we talking and asking the right questions of the right people? In my mind, I'm thinking you go to the police who patrol that area and talk to them about what is going on. They're there every day. And get their point of view about what's missing here. Why are kids doing what they're doing?
Norm Murdock [:I think part of what is missing, just to jump in real quick with a factoid, is Senator Bernie Marino has highlighted. And I'm sure the Cincinnati FOP and the Cincinnati Police Union are all over this. They are down something like three to 400 officers right now. Just like Columbus. Columbus is down somewhere around. I think the last time I heard from our friend Stephen Walter was we're down like 400.
Brett Johnson [:400, yeah. So I mean. And that's part of it. Exactly.
Norm Murdock [:You don't have people on the street.
Brett Johnson [:There are lots of little pieces here. And then, you know, and also talking to the police, feet on the street about, okay, what are you seeing? What are the community members talking about? What are their problems?
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:Why is this happening? Because I think you're going to get a straight answer. Lots of different points of view, but you're getting it from the community. So you get that community buy in that they're helping fix the problem as well, too, versus outsiders, which is basically many of those people that they're at this table, at that table, I should say, talking about the problem. The problem. The problem. Well, people are living in that community going, well, the vet knows nothing about it. He doesn't live here. That person doesn't know anything.
Brett Johnson [:They don't live here. We need to hear from that community about what the problem is. They may have the solution are parts. Parts of it, and work with them. Because it's got to come from grassroots up.
Norm Murdock [:Well, I think, you know, to bounce.
Brett Johnson [:I mean, you're coming pieces of it, not everything.
Norm Murdock [:People that are just throwing lightning bolts, you know, to amp up, you know, the controversy, are not helpful.
Brett Johnson [:No.
Norm Murdock [:Okay.
Brett Johnson [:No, no.
Norm Murdock [:But I think to sort of soften that point of view, the idea of a town hall for people to come. And I think they had room for 300. And some people who were not defending the riot, but trying to explain the psychology behind it, the temperature of the room, the temperature they did show up. And one gentleman got into a debate with Vivek, African American gentleman, that said, and I would disagree with this, but this is what he said. So his feelings are legitimate. I mean, he, you know, if he feels these things it's legitimate for him to explain them, even if I disagree with the philosophy. But he said, quote, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but basically, quote, our people, meaning black folks in Cincinnati. Our people have been put down, discriminated against, have been marginalized for 400 years.
Norm Murdock [:And this is what he said, 400 years. And so you have to understand the anger in the community. And I would say, and I think Vivek and he and Vivek had a back and forth a little bit and then they went on to other people who were there that wanted to talk. But I think that kind of idea, right, that there is prejudice against a group at large. Let's suppose everything he said is true. I mean, because from his point of view, he feels that way. So let's give him his due and say, okay, you're angry as a community because you're thinking back of this heritage of slavery and the underground Railroad that went through Cincinnati and all of this stuff, you know, the civil rights issues and having to pass a voter rights act to make sure that blacks have the franchise to vote. All of this stuff, right? And to look back on that and to retain anger and then to say that that somehow explains almost killing two people, right, by kicking them in the head and sucker punching them from behind.
Norm Murdock [:I, I don't think so. I think his feelings very well could be legitimately discussed and should be. Because if people have those feelings, let's not hide that. Let's get it out in the open. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about the history of America, the 1619 Project and all the other BLM Antifa things, that's all grist for the mill. Let's talk about it. That is what we should be doing is talking about those issues.
Norm Murdock [:But I think to say that there's this pent up rage that somehow can explain how a mob would just go over the top. And I don't care whether it's a Ku Klux Klan mob or a black mob or a sports Mob or a 1-6-MOB or whatever kind of mob it is, it is wrong to, it's wrong to act on the basis of rage and damn near kill people. I mean, let's take the worst thing that could happen to a parent. Just as an example, since we don't have Steve here, I remember a case where a father's daughter was murdered by one of these predators, okay? This guy was in court for sentencing and the dad came in with a gun into the courtroom. Now this guy killed his daughter. The Jury found him guilty. He's there for sentencing. And I remember this guy, it was a clip.
Norm Murdock [:You could probably find it. He had a baseball cap on, he had a gun. He walked into the courtroom and he shot that guy dead right in the courtroom. Okay? Now what could be worse, right, than somebody murdering your child? I mean, there's nothing. I can't think of anything worse, Right. That could happen to you, and yet that guy had to be prosecuted. The worst thing in the world can happen to you. And you can't go and get revenge against somebody when they're no longer or never were a threat to you and you're not in fear for your life.
Norm Murdock [:You just went in and assassinated this guy in a courtroom. So I don't care what the mob thinks that they heard or what they were told or what the gossip was, that this guy maybe said something racial or maybe he slapped somebody in the face. Hey, folks, that is no justification. It's no justification that he's white and you're black, Okay? I mean, that's where this council person, Victoria Parks, she should be a leader in the community like other blacks are being leaders down there and saying, you know, at churches and other council people are saying, no, no, no, no, no, listen, you can't. Violence is never the answer. Right. The only time you can defend yourself is when you're fearful legitimately for your own life. Right? And as soon as that threat is diminished or goes away, you're not allowed to do anything to the other person.
Norm Murdock [:You know, if, if a guy is breaking into your home, you send a shotgun round through the ceiling and he's on his way out the window, out of your house, you're not allowed to run out in the yard and then kill him.
Brett Johnson [:All right? Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:I mean, I don't know what people think the laws are, but there is no justification for a beat down when there is no threat and the guy's laying on the ground. So, I mean, people have to understand what the law is. And then we can have these town meetings with Vivek or whoever, you know, and Governor DeWine, frankly, should be going down there and doing a town meeting. Okay.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. That's interesting that he's not. You're right. I mean, because he's governor. Right, exactly. And he's got a whole other year. I mean, you know, plenty of time to encourage legislation or whatever the case might be. I mean, I don't know what the answer is, but it's one of those.
Brett Johnson [:But back to, you know, talking about the town halls and such or the initial one, there need to be more of them. And hopefully, you know, we hear and see. Probably not though, because usually the first one with all the star power is there. Hopefully they have more and they continue the talk.
Norm Murdock [:They absolutely should.
Brett Johnson [:They have to.
Norm Murdock [:Look what they did in South Africa after apartheid. Bishop Desmond Tutu, right, the Episcopal bishop of South Africa, black man, right, won the Nobel Peace Prize, he held these reconciliation panels and anybody could come in under the protection of the laws that they passed, confess to a race based crime, whether they were black or white. You know, like, you know, I'm a former police officer and I want to confess. We went out at nighttime and we beat up, you know, black teenagers and guys would come in, make that confession, right? So it's now on the public record that these dastardly, racist things happen during apartheid. You know, name, date, you know, it happened, right? And then the victims families would be in the room listening to these confessions, right? And the idea was kind of like, I guess Freud on the, you know, when you go in, talk to the shrink, if you get it out in the open and you do an exposition of whatever it is that is destructive in your life or in society, the idea is if you get it out there and it's now being discussed, maybe that will lower the temperature of people seeking violence. And I think that was what Desmond Tutu was trying to do with apartheid. And perhaps those kinds of hearings should be had in Cincinnati because there may very well be teenage people who feel oppressed. Like one of the very first things that they're now going to vote on in city of Cincinnati, the council, I mean, this is a classic knee jerk reaction.
Norm Murdock [:They now want to impose a citywide curfew on young people. Okay, so you're gonna punish everybody, right? So now guys, you know, say the curfew's 11 o', clock, so me and my buddies wanna go play basketball at midnight, right? Peacefully playing basketball in the neighborhood, right? Because we're 16 years old, our hormones are going wild, we have all this energy to burn off. And now the city council's gonna say, hey, you know what, guys, you gotta go back in your house at 11 or we're gonna arrest you for violating the curfew. So, like, it just amps up things and I'm like, you know, your bottle, a curfew bottles up the problem. It covers it over with like this duct tape and underneath it is this seething rage. Because now you are taking the good kids and you're punishing them like preemptively for what bad kids do and taking.
Brett Johnson [:Away one more liberty, taking away another liberty that they feel they have very few liberties anyway.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah, it's crazy. It's a crazy reaction to this.
Brett Johnson [:It is.
Norm Murdock [:Because these were adults that did this.
Brett Johnson [:Right.
Norm Murdock [:In those videos. I didn't see any 16 year old kids. Full grown people.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah, they were full grown. Yes.
Norm Murdock [:Like should have known better.
Brett Johnson [:I was just gonna say that. Should have known better.
Norm Murdock [:And now we're gonna do a curfew on children. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, yeah.
Brett Johnson [:It just seems to me it's one of those. Well, we got to do something.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. There should be a lot more dialogue here.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:You know what I'd like to see? I'd like to see black churches and white churches because that's where good hearted people generally go. They go to church. Right. Regardless of race. Right. Those pastors of different. Maybe those communities are integrated and maybe some are mainly black or mainly white. But I'd like to see some of those churches do outreach, ecumenical outreach to other churches and say, you know what, we want your people to come to our service.
Norm Murdock [:And then afterwards we're going to have donuts and coffee where we have a panel and people can talk about these issues. I think that would be one step that frankly, the people need to be in the leadership of this. Because I don't think politicians are going to solve this.
Brett Johnson [:No, because it's got to come from us. Because it's the shiny object right now. And then the next problem comes about 30 days later and then this puts them. Gets put on the shelf because they don't live there.
Norm Murdock [:Well, and they're looking for in that community.
Brett Johnson [:Right.
Norm Murdock [:They're looking for quick and dirty. Like let's do a curfew. And then we can say, okay, we.
Brett Johnson [:Did something, we did something. Because this problem is 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years in the making.
Norm Murdock [:It's generational.
Brett Johnson [:It is generational. So it's not going to be. And it may take a few years to figure this out.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. You gotta be patient with it. But you gotta start. Gotta start somewhere.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Let's hit your next.
Norm Murdock [:Well, I thought another one of these bubblegum stories that has kind of turned ugly is this Sydney Sweeney thing. So American Eagle hires this beautiful model and I guess she was in that six year episode thing called the Handmaid's Tale. And you know that's been turned into like a cautionary tale about, you know, cutting off abortion rights, you know. So I think people's perception was that this actress who was in this series called the Handmaid's Tale was a fellow Hollywood liberal. It turns out she is a second amendment, gun toting registered Republican from the state of Florida. And so suddenly this campaign when, when, when she was outed, so to speak, as a conservative, and I don't know how conservative she is, but the idea that she's at least a registered Republican has somehow made her an outcast. And I would just say, hey, come on, people, I mean, you know, I mean you've got Ron Howard and you've got, yeah, I mean you've got a million Hollywood liberals, you know, Robert Denir, just tons, right, that are all giving that side plenty of airtime and you've got this, whatever she is, 26 year old, 24 year old, whatever she is, young girl, young lady, she can be whatever she wants to be. I guess I'm not one of these people that wants Rosie o' Donnell to go to Ireland.
Norm Murdock [:I'm not one of these people that says, oh, if you don't like America, leave it. You know, I'm not one of those people. And I wouldn't say that to a liberal that, you know, wants to criticize conservatives. And I think the flip side's got to be true too. This, they have made a mountain out of a molehill here. And this lady, I think yesterday Sydney Sweeney got booed or jeered at some thing, but American Eagle Stock went up 25% like in one day over this.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. So I don't, you know, it feels if you take a step back and you look at this and you kind of look at what's going on, I almost look like, to me, it's almost, you're being played, America, you're being played.
Norm Murdock [:Oh my God.
Brett Johnson [:Because they just want to continue to divide. You divide. Look at something, look at someone and all of a sudden like, oh, she, oh, he is this or she is that. And it's like, well, you got to put them in that barrel, pigeonhole them and it's a continual division.
Norm Murdock [:Exactly.
Brett Johnson [:And again, this is not anything but just observation of let it be, let it be what it is, does it matter? Mean your favorite actors and actresses and will stay in that Hollywood realm. Does it matter what they believe in? To me, I love Harrison Ford because Harrison Ford is great on screen.
Norm Murdock [:He's a good actor.
Brett Johnson [:I could care less if the man is liberal, conservative, whatever. I don't want a microphone put in his face to ask him his point of view. I really don't want to hear points of view from, from Hollywood elite.
Norm Murdock [:They're largely uneducated I don't want to hear it.
Brett Johnson [:I want them to just do their job as anyone else. Now, if they have a political show, a podcast or whatever, or if they.
Norm Murdock [:Jump into politics, fine. You know, like Ronald Reagan, totally different story. Ronald Reagan went from, you know, Hollywood and became the governor of California, then the president. That's different.
Brett Johnson [:Right, right. Schwarzenegger's in that same vein.
Norm Murdock [:Exactly.
Brett Johnson [:You know, those that are jumping and going into politics or, you know, running for an office, that's a totally different story. Yeah. We need to hear what they're thinking, what they're saying and what they're going to bring to the office if they get elected in that office. But beyond that, it just.
Norm Murdock [:Why would you and I feel the same way about sports figures?
Brett Johnson [:Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Like the last person I would go to, and it's not because they are a baseball player or they are a Hollywood actor, but if I want to educate, let's say my kids about anything serious. Right. I wouldn't say, well, you know, Pete Rose always said, right. But now if my kid wants to play baseball and I go, hey, you can't be lazy when you run the bases. Like if you do a pop up foul, the guy could drop it. So run your ass off to first base. Like Pete Rose.
Brett Johnson [:Like Pete Rose would say. Exactly.
Norm Murdock [:But I wouldn't say, listen, when you get married, a good example of a married man would be Pete Rose. Right? I wouldn't say that. Or you know, whatever it is. Like I wouldn't say, you know, the same about Arnold Schwarzenegger. Like, you know, if you're going to have a maid in the house, you know, you should behave like a real gentleman, like Arnold Schwarzenegger did, you know, like I wouldn't, you know, like I wouldn't. That's not who I would go to as an example. And I don't know why we do that with pop culture figures.
Brett Johnson [:And that's been ridiculous. That's been in the making for decades. Generations, obviously. Really has been.
Norm Murdock [:Go back to Clark Gable or W.C. fields or, you know, any of those guys. Right. Fatty Arbuckle.
Brett Johnson [:We all want to have those touch points that we're, oh, I'm similar to she or similar to he because I get them now sort of thing. It's like, just do your job.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. And a lot of times, so these guys, these late night comics that are losing their jobs because their shows aren't funny anymore, you went from Jay Leno and Johnny Carson who were genuinely down the middle funny, they would take a shot at a Republican or a Democrat. Basically they were just doing light humor, like you know, saying something funny about Nixon or Reagan or Bill Clinton or whatever. And then this latest crowd, Kimmel and Colbert, dude, you know, you just turn it on and it's an hour of just diatribe. And I wouldn't want to hear that about a Democrat or a Republican. It's just, to me it's boring and it's not funny. And I think that's why they're going off the air at this point because.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah, they're definitely turned the political news into comedy. So, you know, they're spoon feeding the political news that we don't seem to want to sit through and really listen to the hard stuff. But it's just that spoon feed me, make me laugh. Spoon feed me, make me laugh. It's working to a certain degree. There is an audience for it, whether it's growing or not. That's. You look at the ratings.
Brett Johnson [:I don't know.
Norm Murdock [:But you know, but Paramount has decided it's not a big enough audience, apparently.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah, well. And you know, and there's some economics behind it too. What? He has a staff of over 100 people. I don't know what the number was, but it's like, holy cow. It's like how many people do you need to make this show work?
Norm Murdock [:Okay, 40 million a year or something.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah, that's a lot of advertising.
Norm Murdock [:It's just we got to find somebody like just a straight up, like you're laughing all night and then getting more viewers. Because I think more and more people. For me, sports just take that as an example. For me, sports has always been like a safe place, if you want to look at it that way. Or just a place where I can relax.
Brett Johnson [:A diversion.
Norm Murdock [:A diversion from real world, from politics. Like, you walk in, you see a good baseball game, nobody's telling you who to vote for for three hours and nobody's telling you what laws need to be passed. You can just eat popcorn, have a beer and focus on a wonderful American tradition. And I think in Europe that's probably the same as true of soccer. People can go to a place and just enjoy a game. And for the pure sport of it.
Brett Johnson [:I can imagine there's probably a correlation if someone were to do a study and that's probably out there. Everybody studies everything that the more intense politics and real life becomes, the more sports viewership is up because of the diversion.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah, and I think a lot of.
Brett Johnson [:I can imagine.
Norm Murdock [:So there was an item in the news this week, some guy got Kicked out of a soccer match, I think in St. Louis. He went to a football, you know, they call soccer football. He went to a football league, football club, FC St. Louis or something. Anyway, the guy's a season ticket holder and the rule is in that stadium that you can't wear political shirts and hats. So he goes in with a MAGA hat, right. And the police and the, you know, the policeman came up and said, hey, I'm a trumper too, but you gotta take that hat off or you need to leave.
Norm Murdock [:Because it's just a rule of. The dress code here is like, you know, we don't want to see antifa shirts and we don't want to see MAGA shirts. You know, that's just the rule here. And, you know, so he was forced to leave because he wouldn't take the hat off. And on his way out, he pointed. And I think this is interesting that there was a section of the stadium that was Rainbow Coalition. And he said, well, now those people are up there advocating their politics. And I'm like, okay, the guy's got a point.
Brett Johnson [:He does.
Norm Murdock [:But at the same time, the overall argument would be, you know, and this is where the soccer team will probably start to analyze their own rules that nobody. Like, if you're gonna, if you're gonna tell people they can't come in and talk about their politics at a sporting event, then it needs to be across the board. And the guy with a MAGA hat should not be wearing it. And the, and the coalition that says that this and that is a crisis, they shouldn't be pushing their politics either.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah, and the Rainbow Coalition as well, too. You don't know that a percentage of them, you don't know their political leanings. Where a MAGA hat kind of does tell you to a certain degree.
Norm Murdock [:I think the Rainbow Coalition has a political agenda.
Brett Johnson [:They do, but I'm just saying.
Norm Murdock [:But I don't want to argue about that.
Brett Johnson [:No, no, no, no, Your point is well taken. You're right, exactly. It's going to be across the board.
Norm Murdock [:Like if the Republican club wanted to go to the baseball game, they can go as a club.
Brett Johnson [:Oh, yeah, sure.
Norm Murdock [:But hanging a banner that says vote Republican in the grandstands is probably, well, not what they're looking for.
Brett Johnson [:Back to your original point. We go to these games because we want to escape this stuff, get away from it. We don't want it. Just give me three hours, please.
Norm Murdock [:That's all.
Brett Johnson [:Just it. That's it. I think that's why the announcers of Games are so good because they just. They're. They're. They're in the game. You want to listen to what it just. Yeah, it's.
Brett Johnson [:There's. There's a lot to that.
Norm Murdock [:And when they go off Mike and start saying crazy stuff, then. Then the. Then the announcers lose their job.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah, right.
Norm Murdock [:Like that. That young Brennaman guy.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Because your. Your point of view does not represent those of your employer, the Cincinnati Reds, or, you know. You know, or. Or at least whoever's employing at the point in time, which would have been the Reds at the time. Yeah, exactly.
Norm Murdock [:He lost his gig.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Because he's saying stuff off Mike that is political. And they're like, we can't have that. That's not your job.
Brett Johnson [:No, it's not. And no one wants to hear it. Do your own show if that's what you want to talk about it. Yeah, right. Oh, for sure. Exactly.
Norm Murdock [:Well, another big thing that's going on right now kind of nationally, and this is where I would say it's a pox on both sides. So that's redistricting. Okay. Or what they call gerrymandering. Right. So when you're in political power in a state like New York, California, Illinois, Massachusetts are a very strong Democrat households. Power. You know, power.
Norm Murdock [:Power bases. In Massachusetts, for example, there is not a single state representative who is a Republican. And that's okay. They've gerrymandered the hell out of California and New York. And so when I hear Kathy Hochul get on TV and complain about what Greg Abbott's doing in Texas or what the Republicans in Ohio are about to do with redistricting. Hey, guys, you know, people in glass houses shouldn't be throwing rocks. And it's a fact of life that if you control your state government, you then control the redistricting process and you. Without violating certain Supreme Court decisions about disenfranchising whole groups of population, There are some rules that you have to follow state by state.
Norm Murdock [:And Ohio has rules about the limits of, like, you couldn't draw a district that's 400ft wide and 100 miles long. That would be, like, just for the farmers in West Ohio, along the Indiana border, you can't contrive a district that's so bizarre and lacks any kind of continuity or integrity. But, hey, if you control Ohio, whether it's Democrat or Ohio or Republican, you can then gerrymander. And that's just the way the system works. It's like Barack Obama told John McCain, John, elections have consequences. And so if you elect a Republican Senate, Republican House, and a Republican governor and a Republican Supreme Court. Hey, Ohio, you're gonna get gerrymandered. And that's what is true in California.
Norm Murdock [:That's what's true in New York. But it's the. In those states, it's the other party doing it. So I would just say Republicans, you can't complain about what they do in Democrat states. And Democrats, you can't complain about what they're doing in Texas or Ohio. It's just the way it is. And if you wanna control the redistricting process, you know, politically, then you've got to win those states.
Brett Johnson [:Right?
Norm Murdock [:I mean, that's.
Brett Johnson [:Get your message on point. That's how it works. And get your people elected. That's the answer to everything.
Norm Murdock [:You have the answer to everything. Everything, for God's sake.
Brett Johnson [:Everything. And whether you like the gerrymandering or not, I'm not a big fan of it either. But at the same time, as you mentioned, Norman, both parties take advantage of.
Norm Murdock [:The situation, and then they call the other party crooked. Republicans will call the New York Democrats crooked or the Illinois Democrats crooked. And they're doing that right now to Greg Abbott and to Ohio Republicans. And it's just like, guys, that's BS what you're saying is you're doing this in your state, but somehow you shouldn't do it in a Republican state. And I'm just saying. Listen, you're gonna lose that argument. We have bigger issues. There's other things to do than worrying about redistricting.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Quite frankly, we already talked about a few.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah, right.
Brett Johnson [:Exactly.
Norm Murdock [:Could we.
Brett Johnson [:Good grief. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Maybe pay down the federal deficit?
Brett Johnson [:Yeah, maybe. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So did you have any other hot topics you wanted to cover?
Norm Murdock [:Well, I think in Ohio, another hot topic is. Is the lack of action by. And again, I described Ohio as being pretty much run by Republicans. So we can lay this at the feet of the Republican Party and the Republican lawmakers, and that is the lack of progress on property tax reform. And our Democrat friend, Bill DeMora wrote a column, very partisan column, but I read that column word for word, and he's got some good ideas in that article. One of which. Well, a couple of them. One is to double the homestead exemption for older Ohioans.
Norm Murdock [:So I looked into this. Just curious. When I get to that age where I qualify for a homestead exemption, what would it save me? Out of my. I think now I'm paying almost $10,000 a year, and it's double the amount that I used to pay just Three years ago. So my property taxes have doubled. There are Ohioans whose property taxes have quintupled, have gone up 500%. And my homestead exemption, after the auditor and I on the phone crunched the numbers, currently would save me maybe 100, 150 bucks a year. Right.
Norm Murdock [:And so Bill is saying at least double that. And I couldn't agree more because of inflation, if nothing else. If your home value has doubled or quintupled. Right. Or quadrupled or whatever it's done. Or sex doubled or whatever it's done. Right. Then it seems to me that your exemption should likewise follow it as well as.
Norm Murdock [:Well.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. No, no, I think. I think the homestead could very well be of a great answer to a lot of these problems. Aggressively looked at.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. And another one he had aggressively looked at now. Now, Bill may have set this a little too low. I don't know. I mean, I would love it as a taxpayer. But he said after a certain age. Right. Or after a certain income level.
Norm Murdock [:For example, let's suppose your household income, your wife, your domestic partner, you, your kids, you add everybody up that lives in the house and contributes to the household. And let's suppose it's $100,000 to just pick a round number. So Bill said, well, why not cap your property taxes at, say, 5% of the gross household income? So for that household, the maximum that they would Pay would be $5,000 property tax, to just give a raw example. So even if their home got reappraised at five or 10 times the amount that it used to be worth, but these people still make the same amount of money. Like their. Their income didn't go up, and now they're kind of trapped in this house because if they save it, where, what can they buy to replace that house in the same neighborhood if all the other houses got went up? So they're trapped in that house if they want to stay in that community, but yet they can't pay their real estate taxes because they've gone up exponentially. So Bill saying, tie that representative. Tie that to their income.
Norm Murdock [:I kind of like that.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:I mean, these are things. Hey, Republicans, dudes, you've got these Democrats that want to help us cut taxes for property tax people that are getting basically taxed out of their homes. Right. And they're having to sell homes under duress because they can't pay their property taxes. This should be bipartisan. And Republicans, what you're looking at is this groundswell movement that will be on the ballot next year to eliminate all property taxes. And then we're well and truly effed in the state of Ohio because that's how we finance fire departments and local police department and all kinds of. And schools, all kinds of local services are financed on the basis of local property taxes.
Norm Murdock [:And if a constitutional amendment is passed by voters next year because they're hopping mad about how their taxes have gone up and the legislature led by Republicans and a Republican governor have done nothing, Mike DeWine, you know, remember he vetoed all those property tax reforms. If they've done nothing to assuage this problem and don't work with Democrats to come up with solutions pretty damn quick, I think that constitutional amendment may pass.
Brett Johnson [:Right? I think.
Norm Murdock [:And that's a disaster.
Brett Johnson [:As a group, this should be priority one.
Norm Murdock [:This is priority one.
Brett Johnson [:Everything else, all this stupid little legislation here or there that absolutely mean nothing.
Norm Murdock [:About bathrooms and the gender of athletes and all this candy like, okay, you pass those laws now do something meaningful.
Brett Johnson [:Right. And no poo poohing ideas from across the aisle as well too, because there are some really smart people on both sides.
Norm Murdock [:Absolutely.
Brett Johnson [:And yes, they bring some luggage with them. I get it, I get it. You may not agree with everything that Bill DeMora, Democrat says, but guess what.
Norm Murdock [:Maybe 75% you do agree with.
Brett Johnson [:Sometimes this guy comes out with really great ideas. And you can say people on the other side of the aisle as well too.
Norm Murdock [:We keep talking about Bill. I hope we get him on the show sometime because he and I will disagree about 95%, but the 5% we agree about is really important stuff like this.
Brett Johnson [:Right. We've talked a lot about some great ideas that he's had that really have gone nowhere, but he's floating them out there. And he's a hardworking guy.
Norm Murdock [:Right?
Brett Johnson [:He really is.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah, I'm sure.
Brett Johnson [:I wouldn't agree with everything he says too, but I don't agree with a lot of people with Rs or Ds. I don't. It's just. But we're allowed those opinions.
Norm Murdock [:This is really a stain on Ohio. We are disgorging and we've covered it on the show. Hundreds of millions of dollars to billion dollar corporations like intel and Anduril. Right. And with government, the state of Ohio picking winners and losers and we know now Intel's a loser and we lost all this money and they're not building out there anymore. All the license plates from Georgia and Tennessee and Texas that I used to see every day, they're not there in Johnstown anymore. Those, those carpenters and concrete contract. All those guys, they're.
Norm Murdock [:They went back home because they suspended a lot of the construction. And so there is like tens of millions of dollars that could have gone to property tax relief or could have gone to schools or could have gone to prison reform or a bunch of other needs that we have in Ohio. And instead it went to this corporation, intel, and all we did was piss away this money, this taxpayer money.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah, I don't even know it's a crime. I don't even know if Ohio can do this. But we need to. Legislators Ohio legislators need to be bringing somebody from Jobs Ohio and call them on the carpet about this.
Norm Murdock [:No question.
Brett Johnson [:As executive.
Norm Murdock [:It's outrageous.
Brett Johnson [:Just bring him. Put him on Mike and talk. What in the hell is going on here?
Norm Murdock [:Right?
Brett Johnson [:What happened here? That, number one, is there any clawback that could happen? And when's that going to happen, if there's any? And next, it's one of those talking about transparency.
Norm Murdock [:And, Bret, what they did was the opposite. So they extended Jobs Ohio's secret, exclusive contract with selling liquor in Ohio. They run the Ohio Department of liquor Control. Basically, they extended that to the year 2053. It was supposed to expire in, like, 2028. They extended it, like another 25 years beyond.
Brett Johnson [:Well, well beyond our lifespan. I mean, quite frankly, they'll be around longer than we will. Dude, it's great.
Norm Murdock [:It's crazy. And they cannot be audited. I mean, it's.
Brett Johnson [:That's crazy. You know, if we do a major liquor strike, that we don't drink liquor for the next six months, could we defund that?
Norm Murdock [:Honestly, let's all go to Kentucky to buy our bourbon or something.
Brett Johnson [:Exactly. Go to the next state. Buy what you need. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:It's inexplicable. And frankly, some of our think tanks keep. Like we have friends at the Buckeye Institute, for example. We've had them on the show. And when you talk to the chamber of commerce or the Buckeye Institute or these bastions of conservativism. Right. They seemingly won't touch Jobs Ohio like it is somebody's baby politically. And it seems like nobody wants to poke that bear.
Brett Johnson [:Right. We have to have this.
Norm Murdock [:But we have to.
Brett Johnson [:We have to because we have to have this edge over other states. Guess what? We just took it. A poke in the eye with intel, no question. Yeah. And hopefully this thing turns around that something is built there or it's going to be an eyesore. And hopefully if it doesn't, if that remains a cement slab, somebody's head will roll on that one, I hope. Somebody needs to grab onto that. Some politician needs to grab onto that and really win.
Brett Johnson [:You're going to have a 50 mile radius around that area on your side because of all the destruction that happened, economic, physical, everything that went.
Norm Murdock [:Families that were forced out because they looked at a once in a lifetime opportunity to sell their house or their farm and they're no longer even in the area. They moved to Tennessee or whatever. And, and we're stuck with this smoking crater. All of our property taxes have jacked up exponentially. The schools are in flux. They don't know whether they should be building new schools or just wait and see. It's a calamity what's going on out there.
Brett Johnson [:Well, it's also concerning too. Let's take it away. And I know we're getting close to the end of the show, but at the same time, let's take a look at. We want to build infrastructure for these chips nationwide. We want to bring it back home.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. For national security reasons, we do need them not to be made in Taiwan because Taiwan could get taken over any time.
Brett Johnson [:So this is an example. How are we going to fix this problem? Because if intel stops construction because of something that's changed in the industry, so how the hell do we bring it back home?
Norm Murdock [:Right. So you know my answer, My answer is let the marketplace work. Because when investors think it's a good bet to build chip factories in America because the Department of Defense is going to be buying these chips for AI or for missiles or for whatever else they're going to buy them for. When, when people know that there's money to be made, they will invest in intel or Nvidia or whatever. They'll invest in these companies. But for these companies to take public money right. In lieu instead of getting investor money, then it doesn't make sense. And that's how you end up with Enron.
Norm Murdock [:That's how you end up with these companies that never end up in fruition, never really make anything and, and they're just living off government funds until they go pop.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. And this is where I think DeWine is probably out of it now in regards to making any influence on that. I think Stivers is perfect for this in regards to jumping in and saying, yeah, you were there at the golden shovel. Figure it out.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Brett Johnson [:You're now big dog.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Brett Johnson [:So help out a brother, you know, help out a sister.
Norm Murdock [:I'd like to hear Vivek talk about this a little bit too. Like he goes for the, you Know, he goes for the quick headline stuff like, you know, a race riot in Cincinnati. Okay. That's, you know, that's candy, that's easy stuff that you can grab a headline. I haven't heard him talk about jobs Ohio, you know, and I'd like to hear what he says about that because I think we need some reforms.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Because if and when he becomes the next governor, it is not going to go away during his term. No, it's not.
Norm Murdock [:They need to resend.
Brett Johnson [:It may become more of a problem.
Norm Murdock [:They need to rescind this exclusive arrangement out to 2053. Like number one, they need to withdraw that.
Brett Johnson [:Yes.
Norm Murdock [:And they need to demand terms in any future agreements and rewrite current ones. That this is an auditable entity at full transparency to the citizens of Ohio. You know, maybe during negotiations with a company, things can be closely held in certain areas, of course, but when the ink is dry on the contract, we should know every damn thing about it.
Brett Johnson [:Yep. Everything. Everything. Yeah. So you want to go with winners? Winners and losers.
Norm Murdock [:So winners got this week gotta be shareholders, people in the stock market. So the s and P500, the Dow, they have hit records. NASDAQ hit records this week. If you are still invested with your 401k and you looked at your portfolio, unless you're, you know, your 401k picks some really bad stocks, basically everything went up dramatically this week. Now things go back down and people are predicting a correction of 10% or.
Brett Johnson [:Whatever later on in the next couple of months.
Norm Murdock [:Next couple of whatever. And there probably will be, I mean there definitely will be a correction, probably 10%, you know, and then it'll cycle back up again. My losers this week would be borrowers. So this is where I have to say I think that the Fed needs to, they didn't do a cut on the rate, but mortgage rates are around for a 30 year fixed or around like 7% right now. And that's just too much. I mean it wasn't that long ago, maybe four or five years ago that rates were like 2%. So I saw where, gosh, what was it? Money magazine or one of the population business titles that you can buy at the Barnes and Noble or wherever you get your magazines, they did a story that said even at 0%, if you could get a, if you, if you went to a bank and got a 0% interest mortgage for 30 years, homes are still unaffordable. For the Gen Zers or Gen Xers or gen whatever they are that these young people.
Norm Murdock [:There was a chart that came out this week that tracked from 1958 to the present. Okay. People who are 30 years old and are homeowners. And it went from 1958. 50% of the people who were 30 were also homeowners. Guess what it is in 2025? It's 7%.
Brett Johnson [:Gonna guess 10.
Norm Murdock [:Wow. 7% of the people who are 30 are married with a house versus 50%, you know, 75 years ago.
Brett Johnson [:Wow.
Norm Murdock [:And that, hey, that is a cultural shift that we are grappling with. You know, whether it's marriage, whether it's where people think, like, do I even have the American dream accessible to me? 7%. So what is their stake? When you only have 7% of 30 year olds who are married with a house, what is their stake in a neighborhood to make it a better neighborhood if they think, well, it's only 7% of us, the rest of them are geezers or they're renters with no real long term stake in the neighborhood. So why should I plant a tree, mow my lawn, form a community watch group to keep crime down or anything else that's positive.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:We got a problem, folks.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:With the middle class. It is shrinking.
Brett Johnson [:It is. It is exactly my winner this week. You know, I had to think on this one, but it's like Trump deciding to put some dollars into a new ballroom at the White House. I'm thinking, yeah, why not? It's his own money. Apparently, right now the ballroom at the White House holds maybe a capacity of 200. He's looking at dumping money, his money, along with other people that may invest in up to 600, something like that. It's like, okay, yeah, 200 does sound like a small ballroom, quite frankly. It does.
Norm Murdock [:If you want to do a state dinner.
Brett Johnson [:And if it's not our money. Okay, go for it.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:You know, honestly. Okay, whatever. He needs to stop climbing on the White House roof, though, and doing some work.
Norm Murdock [:I'm sure there's some people would like him to topple.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah, you need to stop doing that.
Norm Murdock [:But we don't want any harm to come to the president.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And a loss. I just saw this today, that apparently we're going to put a nuclear reactor on the moon. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is going to announce an expedited plan this week to build a nuclear reactor on the moon.
Norm Murdock [:He's a temporary head of NASA too.
Brett Johnson [:Exactly.
Norm Murdock [:That's why.
Brett Johnson [:So he's doing the tent, you know, kind of getting his toehold into that. So it looks like we're going to try to go to the moon again and we got some power up there. I forget what, you know, the new. It's like, you know, we got, we got energy problems here. Quite frankly, I don't.
Norm Murdock [:Could we build some nuke plants here that are safe, small to me, I'm kind of concerned.
Brett Johnson [:It's like, we don't need to be blowing up the moon by accident, you know, I know it's not going to happen. You know what I mean?
Norm Murdock [:Don't go all Godzilla on me here.
Brett Johnson [:That's tongue in cheek. But it's like, but we got energy problems here, folks. We have to really worry about nuclearizing the moon, quite frankly. I don't know. Anyway, so whatever the. You know, it just seemed like an oddball kind of. Like what?
Norm Murdock [:Yeah, I didn't, I didn't really dig into that story.
Brett Johnson [:Can we do solar power?
Norm Murdock [:But I, I think because, you know.
Brett Johnson [:The sun does shine on the moon.
Norm Murdock [:Well, I think what that portends. So you gotta ask yourself, why would you need lots of power on the moon? It's not just to put people up there on vacation. I think there is gonna be economic exploitation of minerals coming out of the moon's surface or, you know, mining into the moon. I don't know what is there. I'm not a student of cheese.
Brett Johnson [:Cheese has been off the list for a while. So we know there's not moon cheese.
Norm Murdock [:I know that they're mining deep sea for iron nodes and all kinds of stuff that apparently is on the seabed or below the surface of the seabed here on Earth. And apparently there must be something valuable that they're gonna try to extract from the moon. And as Brett says, it ain't cheese.
Brett Johnson [:No, it's not. There's something there or they wanna try to explore it somehow. I don't know. I don't know. Anyway, so if. Let us know. We just bring the news, we sometimes don't have enough time to really dig deep. And sometimes the news isn't allowing us to dig deep because it's not there, quite frankly.
Brett Johnson [:So thanks for joining us again. If you do like what we said, if you don't like what we said, please leave us comments. We want to hear feedback or topics that you'd like us to cover. Please do. Steve is not with us, but again we cover a lot of legal stuff with him. Throw some legal stuff at us, that sort of thing. We'll get Steve's input. Whether it's pre recorded or recorded depends on what his court date schedule is.
Brett Johnson [:And also be sure to thank Harper. Plus CPA accountants. They sponsor the Common Sense Ohio. I'd love to have them on board. And Glenn's been on the show quite a few times talking about accounting stuff and helping your business grow the best way you want it to grow, with their help. And they're great people, honestly. Until next week. We will see you then.
