Steve Palmer and Norm Murdock get into a wide range of hot-button issues shaping Ohio and the nation.

From a fascinating look at Dave Thomas’ legacy as an adoption advocate and the roots of Wendy’s in Columbus, to a deep discussion about the recent chaos at airports and the politics behind funding TSA and Homeland Security, the conversation is as timely as it is insightful.

The hosts also explore the country’s Judeo-Christian foundations through Revolutionary War history, dig into the heated debate over the SAVE Act and voter identification, and break down the controversy surrounding secret NDAs and massive tax incentives fueling the data center boom in Ohio.

Plus, they cover big news in tech law with a $375 million verdict against Meta for child endangerment, take on the latest in the Iran conflict, and spotlight the Columbus Blue Jackets’ surprising playoff surge.

Harper CPA Plus

Moments

00:00 "Dave Thomas: Adoption Advocate"

05:00 Biblical Roots of U.S. Founding

08:16 Defunding DHS: A Divisive Debate

11:52 Democrats' Minneapolis Win Uncertain

14:31 "Short-Term vs Long-Term Strategy"

18:14 Free Citizen ID for Voting

19:41 "Unregistered Births on Reservations"

24:25 "Iranian Conflict: No End Ahead"

27:01 Meta Faces Landmark Liability Case

32:03 "JobsOhio's Secretive Funding Explained"

36:14 Land Buyouts Reshape New Albany

39:05 "Local Betrayal Over Intel Deal"

40:29 Supreme Court Debate on Ballots

45:15 "Brave Pilots in Collision"

49:44 "Protester Deaths, J6 & Impact"

50:43 "Weekly Common Sense Recap"

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

info@commonsenseohioshow.com

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.

Copyright 2026 Common Sense Ohio

All right, I'm ready. You ready? We're all ready for your weekly dose of common sense here at commonsenseohioshow.com. That is exactly where you go to leave us a comment, send us a question, or suggest a topic you want us to cover. We are going to jump right into it. It is tax season, by the way. So HarperPlus got our taxes done expediently, I would add. We got them the information. They had a couple of quick questions, got it right back to them, and boom, the Common Sense Ohio tax return's done, signed automatically.

Didn't even have to enter the brick and mortar. Our accountant, yours, could be yours too, HarperPlus Accounting. This day in history, sort of an interesting— if I can pull it up here— an interesting happening this day in history, Dave Thomas. Of Wendy's fame. So for those who don't know, Dave Thomas wasn't born in Ohio, but he spent a bunch of time in Ohio and founded Wendy's in Ohio. But he got his GED on this day in history. On March 25th, he got his GED. I'm trying to find out what year.

It doesn't even tell me what year. 1993. There it is. So I was reading '33. So in 1993, at age 60, What? Dave Thomas gets his GED. Now, he had dropped out of school, I think, at age 14. He had been in food service his whole life. Kentucky Fried Chicken, founded Wendy's and did a bunch of stuff.

But I bring this up for two reasons. One, because—

and he was adopted.

Yeah, that's the second reason. The first reason is he's, he's an Ohio guy. And Wendy's is Columbus, by the way. Columbus, Ohio, where we are, is the fast food capital of the world. Or at least it used to be. Yeah, it's the test market for all the good stuff like the McRib. You like the McRib? White Castle, White Castle, Wendy's, you know, it's all the good— Donatos. Yeah, if you like your Donatos pizza, which McDonald's owned for a while.

Yeah, yeah. So anyway, I bring it up for the second reason also, Norm, is that he was an adoption advocate because he himself was adopted, and he founded the Dave Thomas uh, uh, let's see exactly what it's called. The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. Um, and it's an interesting twist on it. You never heard Dave Thomas say he was pro-life, or at least that he never really came out that way, but he did the opposite, or he took the same position from the opposite angle, which is adopt. Um, and, uh, due to the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, I suspect that lots and lots of children's lives, uh, or a lot of kids have been placed and hopefully lives have been saved. But he was a huge adoption advocate. He himself was adopted.

Yeah, I think, uh, to this day at Wendy's they have a donation box right there at every restaurant for, uh, um, assisting families that want to adopt.

Yep, really incredible guy. And Wendy's, by the way, was named after his daughter who was named Wendy. He also founded a fried chicken place called Sister's. Yeah, that didn't, didn't take.

It was excellent.

It was good chicken. Sister's Chicken.

Really good. He was a little bit before this whole fad with Chick-fil-A.

Yeah.

Like, like where that just went crazy. Or Roosters or all of these other chicken places. They were maybe a little too early with it.

A little bit too early. But anyway, fabulous guy. Go read about him. Incredibly positive guy. Huge influence on the community here and huge influence on the adoption community nationwide. So that's cool. Anyway, lots to talk about, I am sure. So let's jump right into it.

Yeah. So also on this day in 1776, the, you know, we talked last week about how the Continental Army defeated the British at Boston, kicked them out of the harbor because they took the high ground. Further artillery and chased them out of Boston. But it wasn't before the British and the Tories, the loyalists, trashed the city pretty good. So when George Washington came in, they reopened the churches in Boston, which the British had closed because they were suspected of being insurgent houses of organization, which they were. So at any rate, they reopened the churches and they feted George Washington at this service, a daily kind of sermon that this one Pastor Elliott conducted every day until the British took Boston. And when they reopened the church, they did Isaiah Chapter 33 and the 20th Psalm. And I looked those up.

I'm not a Bible scholar, but I was interested to find that in Isaiah, there's lines such as, "The destroyer, when you're finished destroying, you yourself will be destroyed." And betrayers, "When you're finished betraying, you will be betrayed." And, "Lord, we wait for You to save us." And clearly, the pastor was thinking of King George being the betrayer and the destroyer, and clearly George Washington being the right hand of God in this case. The 20th Psalm, it says, "Some may trust in chariots, and others may trust in horses, But we trust in the name of the Lord. So when people, modern people, claim that, you know, our new nation wasn't founded on any kind of Judeo-Christian ethics, I just want you to know that before George Washington and the gang went down to the Bunch of Grapes Tavern after this religious ceremony and ate at public expense, that they did in fact celebrate Christianity, and we are very much a nation founded on those precepts.

Yeah. How about that?

How about that?

Yeah. And one of the interesting things, I love studying the Revolutionary War, and I think I've talked about it. There's a fabulous book, I think David McCulloch wrote it, called 1776. And it sort of outlines the timeline. But one of the fascinating things is that Washington's greatest victories were his retreats. When he was able to retreat and save the army in the dead of night when he first got out of, I think, New York, and then he did it again. But anyway, fascinating history. Go check it out.

And as Norm, as you point out, it is a Christian foundation. To be sure.

For sure. So what's really hot right now? Of course. I mean, it's— you've got people in 4 and 5-hour lines at the airport, and these are retail citizens of the United States, right? They're not Congress critters. They're not, you know, the moguls of industry on their private jets. They're just regular people trying to get to spring break or go to a family member's funeral wedding or whatever they're trying to do, go to business meetings, what have you. And clearly this dispute, which supposedly emanates from two shootings, two deaths at the hands of ICE agents against protesters who were interfering with police operations, and presenting according to the officers who claim to be defending themselves, were in, you know, jeopardy of their lives and opened fire, killed 2 people. So all of, you know, 2 people is significant. I'm not diminishing that.

But over the deaths of 2 people, which the state of Minnesota has sued the Trump administration over that, So, you know, litigation is in place over this, but that's not enough. What we need to do is defund the Department of Homeland Security and defund as much as we can the operations of that department, including at the airport. And this just seems to me so insane and so over the top and so irresponsible at a time of war in particular, but also Frankly, the Democrats in the Senate are losing this battle. The American people are really up in arms at this point. And I think, I think the, the whole edifice is collapsing in on itself, that Americans increasingly are now being reinforced because we just went through this a few months ago. I mean, we just went through the TSA being defunded and the TSA workers not getting paid for several weeks. And in the end, right, they capitulated. Schumer capitulated.

And I think we on this show pointed out that, you know, these screeners were private employees before 9/11. And when 9/11 happened, George Bush and Norm Mineta, at the time was Secretary of Transportation, decided— I don't know why, but they decided that every screener and, and every X-ray technician in an airport had to be a public employee, even though the 9/11 Commission found that they had committed no errors at the time. Steve, you and I could get on an airplane with plastic silverware with serrated edges on the little plastic knife. It was totally legal.

Yeah.

And so none of the terrorists that took down the 4 planes got on board with anything that was banned from being screened.

Yeah.

So, but, but yet we turned 100,000 screeners into public employees, and now look what we've got. You can defund them.

This is, um, it's insane. This is the lunacy of what happens when the government politically takes over private industry. I mean, it is the lunacy. And you can make some arguments, pros and cons, of whether the government should be in airport security or not. I mean, it— I guess if you want to go to the— you've got your Constitution there. I mean, this is definitely something that would impact interstate commerce by all modern definitions anyway, by the US Supreme Court. But, you know, you just sort of wonder, what's the political gain here? I mean, you've got these guys, it's like immediately, well, let's go this direction. The midterms will tell the tale.

I wonder if you're right that I'm very curious about this because the Dems, and I almost disagree with you because I think the Dems are smart enough to realize that if they create the havoc, the Republicans will get the blame. So the Dems are creating the havoc by not funding Or by not funding.

Sure, that definitely is a strategy. Yeah, you're 100% right.

It works.

I think so.

Create Trump chaos and then win the midterms. I think that's their strategy.

So Newsweek came out with an opinion piece about this, Steve, and they said— and Newsweek is a left-wing, you know, piece.

No, they're not. Just ask them.

And they said, they said the Democrats were winning this on the Minneapolis thing, that they had Homan, and they had, uh, I mean, they got— Trump fired Kristi Noem, uh, so Trump and Homan backed off the tactics that they were using in Minneapolis. So rather than the Democrats doing a victory lap like, hey, we got Trump to back off, that was all us, we did it, and prancing around, instead of that, they went, according to Newsweek, this thing at the airports is a step too far. They think the Democrats are losing the American people on this one. And it's just— now it's just muddy. It's a pox on both houses. And if it's going to be that and it's not a clear Democrat win, Newsweek says that they're, they're probably not going to gain anything politically from this episode. Well, and that doesn't mean that they won't win the midterm.

No, that's right. But it, but it, it gave Trump a little bit of a seam to run through. So what's he doing? He deploys ICE.

That's right.

In to take over the airport security. And then, you know, if he's doing this on purpose, and I hope that they are, and if they're doing— or if it's just the way it is, like there's these, there's these clips of ICE agents handing people water in the airport lines. Like people are saying, well, look, they're really nice people. They're really—

they don't have masks on.

They don't have masks on. And they're just, they're just, they're being friendly and nice, providing security, doing what it's— so it's an opportunity for ICE to say, look, We're not all bad guys. Yeah, we're just doing this. Now, the other side, of course, is saying, well, ICE is just preventing immigrants from entering the country and flying or doing whatever. It's all nonsense. None of this had to happen. None of it should have happened. None of it should be tied to what's going on with ICE.

Right. And it's a political stunt. But I think, I think the media portrayal of it still blames Trump for the chaos. The media and Trump doesn't do himself any favors on that sometimes. A lot of times, um, with his rhetoric. But, uh, I feel like ultimately he'll take the blame and we lose the midterms. That's my— that's my prediction. I don't— I don't want— I don't want that to happen, but that's my prediction.

Yeah, uh, well, you know, typically the, um, the party out of power, uh, does better in the midterm.

Well, statistically they always lose. Yeah, the party in power loses the House.

Yeah, so the party out of power being the Democrats will probably pick up some. And of course, it's a razor-thin margin in both houses. So any sort of loss by the Republicans probably means we're in for impeachment.

Yeah, 2 years of impeachment.

2 years.

But again, you know what, that— I thought this through too. That may not— it is horrible, but it may not be as horrible as we think ultimately. Because look, I think, look, what's the goal? And you and I have sort of traded blows on this before because there's the goal of what's the agenda, what do we want the country to be, what's the long-term vision, right? But none of that can be had unless we win the short-term elections, right? And, you know, Trump is not taking baby steps here. He's taking— I mean, he's hitting— he's swinging for the fence on everything he's doing, on everything. Yeah. So he's trying to get as much done as he possibly can, but the risk of that is you lose it, you lose the short-term battle, and you— like, the ultimate Trump legacy would be a Marco Rubio or JD Vance or whoever in the White House, uh, next.

The shame of it is, is that, you know, if the Republicans are poised to lose either house, this slim opportunity that exists right now, but for like 3 GOP senators and John Fetterman—

what are they thinking?

It's a Save Act. You know, I mean, there's a few things— there's a lot of things Trump cannot do with a wave of his executive pen. And one of them is, you know, of course, legislation. And that's something that the next president, whoever succeeds Trump, is not able to easily undo. So that if you get a Gavin Newsom in there or an AOC or God forbid, whoever else, they can't undo the SAVE Act with a wave of their pen.

No, it's really important.

This is what's frustrating about possibly losing either house.

Well, let me finish.

They can only do this now.

They can only do it now. But the point I was going to make about the midterms, and I want to talk about that, the point I was going to make in midterms I forgot to make a second ago is that we lose the midterms, then the chaos will shift to the Dems because they will create the chaos. There's going to be 2 more years of impeachment crap. And I think the country was sick of that last time.

Oh, God.

In the main. And then that maybe will help our chances of winning the executive again and taking over the White House again with Vance or Rubio. But to your point, now's the time for the SAVE Act.

Oh, God.

And now's the time to get that done. I don't understand. I mean, I think I saw the recent poll was something like 84% of both sides are in favor of this.

It's off the hook. Of course, good old, you know, blue-collar union Men and women want to make sure that their votes count and not somebody who's here illegally. Some Venezuelan gangbanger, you know, shouldn't be able to vote. And Democrats agree with that. Yeah, I don't know why their elected representatives drag their feet on this issue. It's a— it's something where they could reinforce the voting, if you will, the weight of their own union.

Can we— can we at least agree on this, that we want— we want one person, one vote, and you got to be a citizen to vote. Can we at least agree on this?

Right.

And look, I get it, the SAVE Act— probably actually I don't get it. I don't understand what the beef is. The only beef I would have with it is more technical or more legal in nature, and that is the states should govern their own electoral process. And there's some constitutional issues there. But in the main, I don't think the idea that we have to supply some sort of identification and establish that you're a citizen in order to vote— I don't think that's a huge stretch for most of the American public.

Well, the SAFE Act specifically addresses federal elections.

So yes, you know, even the state controls federal elections, at least with respect to the presidency. I mean, the electoral rules are left to the states to establish.

Yeah, I think actually I don't want to dig into it, but I think, I think on federal elections, it's pretty clear that Congress gets to, gets to set the standard because it sets forth in the Constitution who is eligible to vote. So I think that— I think there's some federal nexus there, but I don't want to get technical on that. I agree with you that it can't be a poll tax. So the identification means to establish you're a citizen should be at no charge. There should be some kind of process that short of a passport that costs, you know, $200 or whatever it is now, You should be able to establish you're a citizen for free. And then that way it's not considered a poll tax. It's, you know, whatever process you have to go through, there shouldn't be a charge.

Well, it shouldn't be any more complicated than anybody who has moved to have to reach out to the Board of Elections and change your address and get your— and reestablish where you vote in the new district. I mean, it should be. Is that an— is that— is that an unconstitutional impediment on the right to vote? I would think not. Everybody does it anyway.

Yeah.

Yeah. So look, if you go vote at your local church or you vote at your local high school, you vote wherever you vote.

Yeah.

You can't vote there if you change your residence. You're going to have to go take some action to change that in the voter rolls. And that, that's the same kind of impediment that this should be.

Yeah, I've heard, Steve, there's these weird cases. I shouldn't call them weird because people are allowed to do whatever they want. It's a free country. You— there are people who are born that don't have a formal birth certificate. And this is apparently pretty common on Indian reservations where babies are had at home. Okay. And the Indian Nation, which is a nation right within our nation, these Indian reservation people often do not provide any kind of proof of birth or certificate. And so there is a tribal membership card or some kind of ID, but it's not the same as what you would have, say, here in Franklin County if you're born at St.

Ann's Hospital or something. It's, you know, you don't get something from the state saying we certify that you were born here. So there are these issues to work out, but I don't think any of them are deal killers.

These people don't care about the opposition of this. They don't care about these issues in any other forum. That's exactly right. They don't care about these issues with driver's licenses or anything else.

That's right.

I mean, you can just solve it then.

Or getting married or anything.

Or getting married. They want the government in your life for everything.

For everything.

They want to force you to register, get on a list, even get on a list to buy a firearm.

And we just talked about airplanes. I mean, to fly.

Right, to fly, you've got to go identify yourself. And look, I get it that voting is a constitutional right and it's got its own rules. But come on, at least be intellectually consistent with this. And it's—

these issues are able to be addressed.

Yeah, you could— there's a solution.

There is a solution. There's a way to demonstrate that a child born in an Indian nation in the United States is a U.S. citizen. And, you know, there's a method, there are means to do that, and it shouldn't cost that family or those voters a single—

what about Medicare? Medicare— healthcare is a human right.

Bernie.

It's a human right and everybody ought to have it. Do you have to identify yourself for that to get those benefits? If it's a human right, isn't that the same?

I know. Yeah. So we'll see what happens. But yeah, turning to the war in Iran, we have a version of Baghdad Bob, but now it would be Tehran Tim. Something. So he, he is denying— on one hand, you've got these people taking to the cameras very bravely, I might add, because there's probably a missile heading there. But there are people saying, oh no, we're not in negotiations with, um, with the Trump emissaries, um, we're not discussing a cessation of hostilities. But, uh, Pakistan leaked this morning that there is a 15-point treaty proposal from the Trump administration to the Iranians.

And it's very detailed, evidently. I don't think it's been fully published or commented on in detail, but apparently there are discussions underway. And Trump has commented to this extent that Hagseth, the Secretary of War, and the 5-star general— I think he's 5-star— isn't he, Troy? Dan Caine? Or is he a four-star? The chairman of the Joint Chiefs. They're not happy about this negotiation. And Trump said that they're the only two people in the cabinet that aren't happy that we're negotiating with the Iranians. They want a complete and total obliteration. But Trump is going to see, I guess, and maybe it's for deniability purposes, just like he negotiated before the war kicked off.

I think that's what this is.

He's a four-star.

He's a four-star.

Thank you.

But I also think, I heard somebody buzz through these points, and I also think that they're not unreasonably calculated. I mean, it's not too much for Iran to agree with.

Yeah, like one of them is to have the IAEA conduct inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities.

Right.

And the other is to transfer their program from military to civilian so they can have nukes. Yeah, but for power, for power.

And if they need it, we'll help them do it. I mean, but we're going to take control of it. So none of this, none of this is really unreasonable. So there actually is a little bit— there's a possibility that we can get an agreement. But when they don't— yeah, when Iran doesn't agree, I think then you've got— Trump's got cleaner hands to say, look, I've tried everything I can here, right? So now we're just taking it.

And I think even if they did agree, Steve, The Iranian government now is so fractured and so, you know, there's no command control. I think that the IRGC missile batteries covering the Straits of Hormuz, those guys aren't going to stop. They're not going to stop now. They're going to continue to rain their terror down, even if the government back in Tehran ostensibly settles the war, they won't be able to control their radicals and they're going to continue to do Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip. I mean, this is going to continue to go on with the elements that will not give up their arms and won't quit and won't lay down. So Netanyahu and Trump and, you know, the other powers that are helping us as a coalition, I think are going to continue hostilities. But it won't be taking out the power grid in Tehran. So it is a positive development were this to work out, but I don't think that it's going to be in any way an end to hostilities.

No. And ultimately, you know, the endgame is it. So, yeah, like, what's it look like when we're done? That is it. And as you pointed out, the leadership, there's nothing there. Right now. So it'll be very curious. I'm very curious to see how—

and, and, and, and Tehran Tim is taken to the mic and saying, oh no, we're not negotiating at all with— like, it's America begging us to stop. We're the guys winning this war, you know. So you've got that guy saying this stuff at the same time his government supposedly is negotiating. So it's, it's, it's like Baghdad Bob all over.

Well, and it just seems that culture, they always have to save face. You always have to give them Yeah, some face-saving.

Yeah. And I think that's what's going on. It is notable that Norm Schwarzkopf and the ally, the coalition of what was it, 26 countries or whatever it was, 30 countries during Desert Storm I, they did— we did negotiate an end to the war with Saddam Hussein's generals. Remember that scene where they all went in that tent and they— and Schwarzkopf said, I got suckered into letting them use helicopters. Which they used to mow down the Kurds. So it's not like we haven't done this before. You do do treaties with your enemy. I mean, you don't do treaties with your friends generally.

You settle wars with your enemy.

We'll see.

Yeah, we'll see. Big news in, I think, this is epic, it's a landmark decision, I think, possibly if this catches fire. But there was a decision also yesterday in another forum, and that was in New Mexico, where a jury awarded $375 million to the state of Mexico, which sued Meta, which is Facebook, over a child endangerment statute statute, which basically their case was more or less a products liability case because Section 230 basically protects the big data, big internet from anything put out there on their platform. They're not liable for the content. But what this theory was, this legal theory was products liability. That the design of Facebook itself— and now it's been expanded, the same theory to YouTube— that the design of the platform itself, not the content, the design of the platform is in itself addictive and manipulative and harmful.

You don't say. You don't say. I never would have known.

And apparently there's hundreds of these cases all over the country.

This is— no, this is a very— look, Say what you will about the trial lawyers, but the legal system—

They're finding a way.

In our free society, the legal system moves the needle perhaps too slowly at times, and maybe you can even say too quickly at times, but it does move the needle. It changes the marketplace in a very real way that doesn't require the government's thumb on the scale. And that's what's happening here.

Yes, that's definitely what's happening. And Zuckerberg himself was deposed and testified during the trial like he was on the stand.

And did he acknowledge that they intentionally created an addictive platform?

Well, what the judge permitted— this is really interesting. There is video of Zuckerberg before Congress, and he turns and faces the audience at one point. And I think it's before he actually sat down and testified, but he turned around and looked at the audience of mothers and fathers and said, I'm really sorry for what you've gone through, and we're making some changes to address it. And that was kind of an admission against his interest.

Yeah, right.

And they— and I believe the judge in New Mexico allowed that footage to be shown to the jury, which is pretty remarkable.

Yeah, that's an interesting— I could, I could delve into the evidence rules on that. It's an interesting legal twist, but I think it is not a far reach that Facebook and all these other platforms are doing the same thing. But I also think that at the time Zuckerberg was giving that testimony, TikTok had already emerged. And TikTok has taken that platform to its own, now it's out of stratosphere. So Facebook probably can back off on that now because TikTok, they're not winning the war with TikTok anyway. So ultimately, does this change Facebook? I think it does. Does it change TikTok? Maybe that'll be the next one.

Yeah. Um, turning to Ohio— unless you got something nationally here, uh, Steve.

Nope.

Turning to Ohio, I think this bill is very interesting. It's probably not going to get passed, but House Bill 695 was introduced by two Republican, uh, rural, uh, Republican state representatives: Brian Stewart of Pickaway County, which is where Anderlecht is building their mega defense contracting plant to produce drones, autonomous drones. And then Adam Berg of Clermont County, which is down in the Cincinnati area. And this bill is to strip local officials except for cities because they didn't want to get into home rule dispute with the Ohio Constitution on cities. But it's to prohibit township trustees and county commissioners and other local officials from entering into NDAs with regard to data centers or any other kind of state-subsidized—

like a Sunshine Bill, basically.

That's right. That's right. And the testimony so far has been remarkable because you've got this really, even though introduced by two Republicans, this is really, I think, where you're going to find people on both sides of the aisle, on both sides of this issue. It is the mess of data centers, which is now somewhere around 225. Ohio is 4th in the country in data centers, and we are the hottest— like, all the latest ones are happening in Ohio, basically.

So explain, Norm, what's the subsidy process? How's it work?

Well, what has happened is that we've created this very secretive, um, agency called JobsOhio, which we talked about last show, receives its income from formerly what was the Ohio Department of Liquor Control. JobsOhio is a private corporation created by the state of Ohio. The governor and the legislature created JobsOhio as the advocacy, jobs-producing outreach organization for the state of Ohio. And their funding comes from receipts. They essentially run the Department of Liquor Control, the state stores, the state-sanctioned stores which are able to sell alcohol in Ohio. And that's how they get their funding. Now, Dave Yost, formerly the auditor of Ohio, now the AG— Dave Yost took a Supreme Court case to the Ohio Supreme Court, and he lost for the right to audit them, JobsOhio. And JobsOhio, Steve asked how the mechanism is.

They have doled out billions and billions and billions of dollars in negotiations in advance, promising all of the largesse from state taxpayers vis-à-vis liquor control, all of that money in secret negotiations. And then they bring in township trustees and city council and commissioners, and they're asked to actually pass these rebates and these tax breaks, like 30 years no income tax, things like that, free water, free road building, et cetera, et cetera, to bring them in. And you have cases where, take for example, the Google data center in Franklin County, The city council in Columbus, Ohio was asked and they passed legislation for an unnamed, unknown owner of a data center. They were never told it was Google. They found out 2 months after they passed the resolution to do all the giveaways, the tax abatements, all of the package. They were not allowed to know. At the time of passing this, they weren't allowed to know who it was, which is insane.

This is all public money.

This is insane.

This is all our money.

And, well, yeah. And so Ohio's the hotspot because we're giving away the store.

And at the same time, we've got this push in Ohio to like, what's going on with the push in Ohio, Norman? How does it relate to this with respect to property tax? Like there's always everybody saying we're going to eliminate property taxes, etc. But the problem with this stuff, these things correlate. Because when you bring in a, when you bring in a data center to a small community and everybody's cheering because you got all this new business, all these new people, all this and whatever. And then we talked about this last week too.

That's right.

And people can't afford it when their next property tax bill comes due because now their property value has skyrocketed. Well, that's great, you would say, but not if you don't have a house to live in.

Right. So it's very insidious how they, how they did this. So I got to watch as a spectator from out in, uh, you know, the, the farmland of Licking County. I got to observe how this went down in New Albany, you know, 30, 35 years ago. And what happened is when Mr. Wexner and Mr. Kessler decided that they would create the New Albany Company and start buying up land, they sent out their agents, they created various shell companies, and they sent— and this is all documented, this is not You know, I'm not breaking new ground here. They sent out people with, with, you know, I'm with Company XYZ or whatever.

They went out, knocked on doors and made offers to, you know, people out in the country who bought their homes for $50,000 or $100,000, you know, and some people are living in mobile homes, you know, and they're knocking on doors saying, we want to buy your 15 acres for for, you know, half a million or a million dollars. And these are offers people, you know, blew their minds. And of course they sold. And that's how they built New Albany. And it got to the point, though, where the, the, if you will, the, the homesteader New Albany people, the people who had been there for 100 years, could no longer pay their— as Steve insinuated— couldn't pay their real estate taxes. I mean, because the real estate taxes in some cases were more than what they took in annually from Social Security or, or even their regular employment. You know, if you're a, if you're a mail carrier or if you're a mechanic or—

well, and if you remember, you know, I mean, New Albany, I went to, I went to Big Walnut High School, right?

Yeah.

And that was a small town. Yeah. New Albany was a small town to us. I mean, it was a one flasher town.

That's right.

And now if you go out there, you can't even get through the town.

No.

And all those people who had the farmland around, that's who was impacted. Now it's happening in Johnstown. It's same concept. So I will be curious to see how we give all these tax breaks and incentives to the companies coming in. And at the same time, there's a press to eliminate property taxes. Somewhere the belt has to get tightened because there's a state budget that has to be met. We'll find out.

Well, this, this NDA thing is really To me, it's critical that they pass this bill or do something like this bill, because what happens is they corrupt and they— they— the developers have ways to take local officials and turn them into like they got to get the project over the finish line. They make them part of the team. They take them on junkets. Around the country to look at other sites. You know, they try to convince them. And in some cases, these local officials, having the inside knowledge that these negotiations are taking place, are in a perfect position to buy up land themselves or to exploit—

No, they wouldn't do that.

Land they already own.

They wouldn't do that.

I mean, there's one family in the greater Licking County area that if you add up, I mean, you can go to the Licking County Auditor's Office and look at this one particular family and add up the amount of the, of the real estate transactions. It approaches $1 billion for one family. And we're talking thousands of acres.

Well, they were just lucky they were there in the right place at the right time, you know.

And, and so the, you know, the skids were greased. People rolled out of bed one day and said, oh my gosh, Intel and all these data centers are coming to our little corner of paradise. And they had no say-so and they had no notice. And the public officials, their trustees, their commissioners, they knew all about it ahead of time and signed these NDAs. And it's— and they forgot, right? See, you— I'm expecting Governor DeWine and I'm expecting, you know, the big boys, the big rhinos. I expect them to betray me. What, what none of us expected, I don't think, is that the people we have coffee with at the local diner or the people that when you go to a township trustee meeting and you, and you're there on a zoning case or something and it's all your neighbors. Well, what I don't think anybody anticipated is at the grassroots level that so many trustees and so many state representatives and council people would hide something of this magnitude from their fellow citizens.

That's the part that really stings, right? Well, it's a betrayal.

It's always about the money. It's, it's, it's almost always about the money. And that's what this is. This is, this is about the money. I wanted to talk— we were talking about the SAVE Act.

Yes.

About, uh, there was an argument. Did you follow this argument in the U.S. Supreme Court about a Mississippi law that allowed mail-in ballots to be counted as long as they are postmarked by Election Day and received within 5 days of Election Day. And it looks like from the arguments, the court is poised to strike this down. That's right. So this is— I think this is— we're going to see more and more and more and more of this kind of stuff. And interestingly, there you've got 2 Republicans in Mississippi sort of butting heads about this for one reason or another. But the point of the law is simply this, is that Or the point of the argument is simply this: we want to get the votes in by Election Day, and Election Day is in fact Election Day.

It should be a day.

And all this does is delay the results of elections. And if you sort of extrapolate this over all the states and all the delays and all the laws, that's why we end up waiting weeks at times before we get the outcome of an election. So slowly we're chipping away at it.

Yeah, yeah, there was. Now, the decision hasn't happened yet, but the argument seems to suggest there was famously that situation in Pennsylvania where the state elections people disobeyed their own state constitution and the state Supreme Court of Pennsylvania did not uphold the Constitution. Yeah, they said, well, because of COVID we're going to let this one slide.

There was—

so I didn't, I didn't know there was a COVID exception there.

The COVID the it— look, you got your foil hat. Yeah, I got my foil hat on. Yeah, because there's a way to connect all these dots using COVID to win the election. Yeah, because it changed all the local election rules. It basically put a whole bunch of fertilizer on the ground for fraudulent outcomes of elections.

It sure did.

And you could argue— one could connect those dots. I'm not a foil hat guy. One could connect the dots, though. Because as we look back on COVID, it just didn't seem like that big a deal now looking back. So a lot of people made a lot of money and an election occurred in the midst of it. You decide.

Yeah. Yeah. And this is also international in scope. So like Restore UK and Reform UK, the two minor parties, but they're growing in the United Kingdom, in England. Their platforms are that they will, if elected, if they were ever to get into power and be the majority, they would reverse all the firings, all the penalties, and force the government of the United Kingdom to formally apologize to anybody who lost their job, their income, or were even jailed because of the extreme COVID, you know, the draconian laws.

We lived through it, guys. Your neighbors were telling on you. I mean, we lived through it.

We did.

It's nuts. We sat down here in this bunker of 511 Studio C talking treason about how all this crap was going on at the time.

And there were people who actually said that the unvaxxed needed to be taken to camps. We needed to be physically— Howard Stern. We needed to be physically removed from our homes and society, that we were not fit for general circulation and we should have to go to concentration camps. I mean, people said that. They can't take it back.

It was a crisis of the unvaxxed. I mean, it was nuts. It was nuts.

And it was interesting how it seemed to follow ideological lines. And that's the part that— that's the tinfoil hat part. So what— I don't know if it's chicken and egg, which came first, but somehow conservatives ended up being the ones who were silenced, you know, for the most part. Right.

And the Democrats, who traditionally have been outspoken against government, you know, go back in fighting the man, fighting the government, they fell in lockstep. You know, it's like if you didn't get back— like Neil Young. I mean, these people who were traditional rebels against this kind of crap were all in favor of it. And we were the unwashed.

That's right. Your traditional civil rights organizations, much like they're doing now with the trans issue, even though that's not as hot as it was, but it's like, well, why aren't you standing up for women's rights?

You know, like, this is the most—

you're picky choosy about which things you, you know, which women and what rights. And it's like, well, wait a minute, I thought we were all equal, and I thought, well, you know, etc.

But yep, winners, winners and losers.

Um, for me, the winners this week are those two brave pilots of the Canada Air plane that collided with the fire truck at LaGuardia Airport. So they're coming in the tower, evidently. Of course, we have to wait for the, for the report to come out. But initially, it appears because of the tapes that have been played of the tower conversation, the tower gave permission for the truck to cross, to cross the landing strip at, at the same time that this Canada Air aircraft was landing. So he gave permission to the airplane to land and at the same time had forgotten, I guess, that, that, that the plane was inbound. At the same time, he approved this fire truck to go attend to a United Air, evidently some kind of complaint about odor or smoke near that plane. And so they were responding to crossing the landing strip to go over and look at the United plane that was on the ground while the Canada airplane was coming in. And these guys, instead of angling away from the truck and possibly colliding with other aircraft on the other strip or along the, you know, the hangars, which the pilots certainly could have done, they could have— they could have— they could have deviated off of the strip probably killed a lot more people, including people on board.

Instead, they, they landed that thing true and straight right into that fire truck and completely crushed the cabin, which is where they were. They died instantly, I'm sure, because if you see pictures of it, there's no cabin anymore. It took off the front at least 15 feet of the airplane. Smashed it all the way back, and every single passenger so far has survived, and many of them did not even have any injuries. So those guys, I mean, you talk about professional right up to the last second. It's, uh, truly, they should get medals. Their family, the family should be taken care of.

Yeah. You know, Troy, what do you got?

What are you in?

Highs, lows? I was going to tell you 4-star, I'm not mic'd up. I don't think I can give one, but I was just gonna give a fun fact. 5-star generals are only during wartime. We haven't had one since World War II. So Troy from the peanut gallery over there, not mic'd up, even though he's in the command center.

Last one was who again? Do you know?

I know the last one was World War II.

You sure it wasn't Colin Powell?

No, we don't have 5-star generals unless we're like—

Okay, I thought maybe Desert Storm he was elevated. No?

No.

Okay, okay.

Thank you. Well, look, under the radar of March Madness and all the other insanity here in Columbus, the Blue Jackets have been on a late-season surge, a 19-3-4 in their last 26 games as of March of 2026. They are poised, I guess there's this, the betting stats are giving them like something like an 84% chance of making the playoffs. Wow. So look, I'm not a huge hockey fan. I don't really get into it, but there are those that are, my sons included. Yeah. And, uh, oh, that's cool.

So the Columbus Blue Jackets making it big. Maybe for the first time. I think they made the playoffs one other time.

Yeah. Yeah. And of course, they lost that remarkable player, you know, where the two brothers in— was it Baltimore, I think— were killed bicycling middle of the night.

Yeah.

So, yeah, that's fantastic.

That's good news. So I don't have anything bad this week. It's all bad.

Yeah. My, my biggest thing, which we kind of covered, is I just think the biggest loser right this week is going to turn out to be Chuck Schumer. And once again, he's going to capitulate on this TSA.

Yeah, but they don't care. This is the point. I don't think he cares. They're playing a game.

He definitely doesn't care.

They're just playing a game. They don't care. They're taking a stand against what— and they've got— here's what— here's the loser. Here's the real— here's the real bad guy. The media, because they are backing this nonsense. I mean, if this were reversed and the Republicans were holding up security at airports, It would be this catastrophic Trump is an evil devil incarnate.

Right.

And, you know, that's what's going on here. And it's not— I don't care what the cause is. And now they're risking us. Well, at least that's the argument.

I mean, a great example is during J6, you know, everybody talked about how that was just, you know, you know, the official line. It's now getting far more complex now that that's, you know, been examined. But during J6, there were two protesters, you know, on the conservative side who were killed during the riots, right? And they were killed by police. You know, one lady was basically trampled to death, and the doctors were not permitted by the police officers on the scene to treat her. And the other one was shot through a window. Right. So, okay, there's two protesters killed by police. We had two protesters killed by police in Minneapolis, and somehow that turned into a George Floyd-level explosion where now an entire department's being defunded.

Yeah, but, but, but, but in January 6th, it didn't matter.

Well, no, no, because there was a different agenda. So look, that is your weekly dose of common sense. I hope you've had your fill, but no worries if you haven't. We'll be back next week. For Common Sense. You can check us out at commonsenseohioshow.com, and we are coming at you each and every week right from the middle.