Latest / Brian Thomas / Friday Mornings with Jack Windsor - Immigration and Accountability in Ohio
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Is then, of course, the return of Jack Windsor, editor
- 0:02Speaker 1: in chief of the High Press Network. You can find
- 0:04Speaker 1: them online at the Ohio Pressnetwork dot com. That makes sense.
- 0:08Speaker 1: Welcome back, Jack Winsor. It's great to have you on
- 0:10Speaker 1: the fifty five CARC Morning Show.
- 0:11Speaker 2: Sir so.
- 0:11Speaker 3: Operation Buck Guy, as you know, was a deliberate, high
- 0:16Speaker 3: intensity effort by DHS and Home Security Investigators HSI deploying.
- 0:23Speaker 3: My understanding is up to three hundred additional ICE agents
- 0:26Speaker 3: in Ohio, concentrated in Columbus, but of course spanning the
- 0:30Speaker 3: entire state, and it prioritized brian the arrest of non
- 0:34Speaker 3: citizens without legal status, emphasizing those with what we would
- 0:39Speaker 3: call egregious criminal records, labeled the worst of the worst,
- 0:42Speaker 3: and the operation underscores a resolute stance on immigration enforcement,
- 0:48Speaker 3: of course from the Trump administration, and the last tally
- 0:51Speaker 3: that we had was two hundred and eighty arrests Now,
- 0:55Speaker 3: I don't try to hang out on Reddit a whole lot,
- 0:58Speaker 3: because generally we find the mouth breathing neck beards there
- 1:02Speaker 3: more or less sane minded people, but the trotal peers.
- 1:06Speaker 3: There are watchers and trackers still telling us that ICE
- 1:10Speaker 3: is huvering around Ohio State University Sawmill Road, so Ice
- 1:15Speaker 3: still is in town. I've reached out to Tricia McLaughlin,
- 1:17Speaker 3: my strong contact at the Department of Homeland Security, to
- 1:21Speaker 3: figure out where that operation has turned. But there have
- 1:23Speaker 3: been a lot of arrests.
- 1:25Speaker 1: Okay, when you mentioned the two undred and eighty arrest figure,
- 1:27Speaker 1: whether it's accurate, and I appreciate that we're dealing with
- 1:30Speaker 1: sort of fog of war type reality here, but that's
- 1:33Speaker 1: just in the the greater Columbus area.
- 1:37Speaker 3: Well, my understanding is that is all over the Buckeye.
- 1:41Speaker 2: Stick, oh the whole state of Ohio.
- 1:43Speaker 1: That seems like an extraordinarily low figure, unless, of course,
- 1:46Speaker 1: Ohio has not been an illegal immigration magnet.
- 1:51Speaker 3: Well, I can tell you that we've sent one hundred
- 1:53Speaker 3: and thirty five million dollars of cash in suitcases to
- 1:57Speaker 3: places like Minnesota and then Dubai, allegedly through the Somali
- 2:03Speaker 3: population in Columbus and Brian. I think that's probably the
- 2:07Speaker 3: main reason Columbus was the focal point. And this is
- 2:11Speaker 3: where it gets really dicey, and the mainstream press doesn't
- 2:14Speaker 3: talk about this much, and so I'm gonna get a
- 2:15Speaker 3: little granular here without being confusing on a morning show,
- 2:19Speaker 3: because I know we all need our caffeine sometimes, but
- 2:22Speaker 3: there's kind of this misnoet.
- 2:23Speaker 2: To tell you what Jack hold on.
- 2:26Speaker 1: Since you're gonna get granular, and I'm at eight thirty five,
- 2:29Speaker 1: let's bring you back and then you can get granular. Well,
- 2:31Speaker 1: now I'll be it's very interesting stuff here. Jack's being
- 2:33Speaker 1: gonna be gonna be talking about the ohiopressnetwork dot com.
- 2:37Speaker 1: Great site, bookmarket WHI you're there, you'd be glad you
- 2:39Speaker 1: did that as well for the concert reporting they've got
- 2:41Speaker 1: going on.
- 2:42Speaker 2: More with Jack Winsor after these brief.
- 2:43Speaker 3: Words, fifty five krc Steve talk station.
- 2:50Speaker 1: Hey thirty nine here for the bove KRCD talk station
- 2:52Speaker 1: Brian Thomas with I can see him, you can Jack
- 2:55Speaker 1: Windsor he's at the ohio Press Network. Great stuff from
- 3:00Speaker 1: Jack and all those who help support a hiopress network.
- 3:04Speaker 1: You can do the same thing. Just bookmark the site,
- 3:05Speaker 1: read what he's got to say, and of course support
- 3:07Speaker 1: the site information they provide. Jack Winsor we're sticking with ice.
- 3:11Speaker 1: You're getting ready to get what you called granular. And
- 3:14Speaker 1: remember I've got a weed dwelling audience. Jack, So don't
- 3:16Speaker 1: feel too afraid to get into some weeds that most
- 3:19Speaker 1: of the people you talk to might not be hipped to.
- 3:22Speaker 1: But give us the straight to the straight skinny there, Jack.
- 3:26Speaker 3: Yeah, So I'll just I'll keep it simple. So DHS
- 3:30Speaker 3: they really surged resources here to Ohio for that operation Buck. Guys,
- 3:34Speaker 3: we just talked about before the break. Two hundred and
- 3:37Speaker 3: eighty arrests were announced. And you know, one of the
- 3:41Speaker 3: things that the press likes to talk about, Brian, is
- 3:44Speaker 3: that citizens could be investigated or arrested and that should
- 3:49Speaker 3: be illegal. That's not the case. Homeland security investigators can
- 3:55Speaker 3: certainly investigate citizens or for nationals who here. And part
- 4:01Speaker 3: of why Columbus was targeted we now know in retrospect.
- 4:06Speaker 3: Right when Operation Buckeye was announced late December, we didn't
- 4:11Speaker 3: know this. Now we do. One hundred and thirty five
- 4:14Speaker 3: million dollars left John Glenn Columbus International Airport and it
- 4:19Speaker 3: was essentially a Somali cash smuggling operation. And so all right,
- 4:25Speaker 3: quote ono.
- 4:26Speaker 1: We know about this because the TSA agents observed the
- 4:32Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of dollars in suitcases that were going
- 4:35Speaker 1: through the bag scanners at the airport, right, Well, that.
- 4:40Speaker 3: Would seem to be the case. We're still trying to
- 4:41Speaker 3: get the story straight on that, and I don't want
- 4:46Speaker 3: to get accusatory. All we know at this juncture is
- 4:49Speaker 3: there's one hundred and thirty five million dollars. I'll keep
- 4:51Speaker 3: it at that. We are looking into that. By the way,
- 4:55Speaker 3: John Solomon at just the News has done a fantastic
- 4:58Speaker 3: job breaking and covering the story, but that's part of it, right,
- 5:02Speaker 3: So I really just want to debunk that mainstream media
- 5:07Speaker 3: myth that because ICE or DHS is involved, that they
- 5:11Speaker 3: can't look into people who might be alleged citizens or
- 5:15Speaker 3: foreign nationals. That's absolutely not the case. If there is
- 5:17Speaker 3: a foreign component and it's a threat to national security,
- 5:21Speaker 3: then all bets are off and they're here to investigate.
- 5:24Speaker 1: It's the commission of any American citizens get arrested for
- 5:27Speaker 1: crime all the time. If there's reasonable suspicions there's a
- 5:30Speaker 1: crime going on. Doesn't matter whether you're a US citizen
- 5:32Speaker 1: or a foreign national, you're going to get investigated.
- 5:36Speaker 3: That's exactly right. And by the way, ICE is still here,
- 5:40Speaker 3: and what we're hearing is that the arrests are about
- 5:42Speaker 3: two to three per day. So there has been a
- 5:45Speaker 3: tapering off, but my guess is we might see a
- 5:48Speaker 3: surge again. And you know, the bottom line is there
- 5:53Speaker 3: are two things going on. We want to make sure
- 5:55Speaker 3: that people who are here illegally and who are the
- 5:56Speaker 3: worst of the worst. And if you go down that
- 5:59Speaker 3: punch list of people who were arrested, many of them
- 6:02Speaker 3: have convictions or have been sighted and skipped court dates,
- 6:07Speaker 3: and so they have been apprehended. But then there's also
- 6:09Speaker 3: that component of is their fraud, waste and abuse, say
- 6:13Speaker 3: in the daycare system, in the home health system, in
- 6:16Speaker 3: the transportation system, and does it have a foreign component.
- 6:19Speaker 3: The answer is yes, and we're still gathering how big
- 6:23Speaker 3: that is. But Brian, we're probably talking about billions of
- 6:25Speaker 3: dollars when it's all said and downe.
- 6:27Speaker 1: So in other words, we're analogous to the situation that
- 6:31Speaker 1: we've all been made aware of in Minnesota.
- 6:34Speaker 3: I would say yes, And in fact, I don't know
- 6:37Speaker 3: if you know this. You may. I was boots on
- 6:39Speaker 3: the ground with a very very interesting character.
- 6:42Speaker 2: I like him.
- 6:43Speaker 3: His name is John Rocker for former Major League Baseball star.
- 6:47Speaker 3: He came to Columbus, Ohio to check it out and
- 6:49Speaker 3: one of the things that we just stumbled on was
- 6:51Speaker 3: the Somali Education Resource Center. Now we couldn't find it
- 6:54Speaker 3: because their online listings showed them closed and they were
- 6:57Speaker 3: not where they were supposed to be. We got there,
- 7:00Speaker 3: it is an office building. They did have a working
- 7:04Speaker 3: doorbell and video monitoring system. Well. As it turns out,
- 7:07Speaker 3: they've received forty three million dollars fourteen million dollars last year,
- 7:11Speaker 3: but their credentials were revoked midyear, and so when we
- 7:14Speaker 3: started having conversations after being out on the street, what
- 7:18Speaker 3: we learned was six and a half million dollars may
- 7:20Speaker 3: have been paid to the Smalley Education Resource Center improperly.
- 7:23Speaker 3: So lawmakers now are working to call that back. But
- 7:27Speaker 3: the key to that is that ties directly back to Minnesota.
- 7:32Speaker 1: Wow, But trying to claw back six million dollars from
- 7:35Speaker 1: what someone I'm sure has zero assets at all, and
- 7:37Speaker 1: all that money's already been sent back to al Shabab
- 7:40Speaker 1: through Minneapolis or even directly via wire transfer, You're never
- 7:44Speaker 1: going to get that money back to Where's the failure?
- 7:46Speaker 1: Jack Windsor, I mean, I got to this is statement,
- 7:49Speaker 1: where's the failure? Jack Windsor, are do you place any
- 7:51Speaker 1: blame at the hands of you know, Thedwine administration or
- 7:54Speaker 1: maybe auditor Key Faber. I know he's trying to crack
- 7:56Speaker 1: down on some of this a lease he's paid lip
- 7:58Speaker 1: service to that. I mean, is this a just across
- 8:00Speaker 1: the across the board, just collective, typical government program where
- 8:05Speaker 1: no one bothers to follow where the money's going.
- 8:09Speaker 3: Yes, it is. And look if the Wine is going
- 8:12Speaker 3: to stand on his little soapbox, which he needs literally
- 8:15Speaker 3: because he's about my height, if he's going to stand
- 8:17Speaker 3: on his soapbox and say, you know, the buck stopped
- 8:20Speaker 3: with me during COVID, well, then Governor, the buck stops
- 8:23Speaker 3: with you on unemployment, on Medicaid now on this And
- 8:27Speaker 3: so we've heard this from everything is fine to Wine before,
- 8:30Speaker 3: right Brian, where he's come out and said, oh, you know,
- 8:33Speaker 3: the improper payments through the unemployment system are not significant. Wrong.
- 8:36Speaker 3: We broke that story billions of dollars. The director left,
- 8:40Speaker 3: and then he came out and said, hey, you know,
- 8:41Speaker 3: the improper payments or lack of oversighted Medicaid, isn't that significant? Wrong?
- 8:46Speaker 3: We found that that might be six billion or more
- 8:48Speaker 3: per year. The director is now gone, and so he
- 8:51Speaker 3: has the goal to get out in front of people,
- 8:53Speaker 3: in front of cameras and say, well, this is just
- 8:55Speaker 3: the cost of doing businesses and there's not significant fraud here.
- 8:58Speaker 3: I think he's going to be wrong again, and I
- 9:00Speaker 3: think that the buck does stop with him. Now, what
- 9:02Speaker 3: I will tell you when we investigated the alleged medicaid
- 9:05Speaker 3: fraud here in Ohio that was initiated by state Representative
- 9:07Speaker 3: Mike Devilla, a Republican out of Borea, what we found
- 9:11Speaker 3: was that the Auditor's office had for a long time
- 9:13Speaker 3: attempted to do some auditing, but the Dwine administration said, no,
- 9:18Speaker 3: we can't do that because it's a hip of violation
- 9:20Speaker 3: to share too much of this information. So there was
- 9:23Speaker 3: a there were There was language put in the biennial
- 9:25Speaker 3: budget that passed last year that gave five million dollars
- 9:29Speaker 3: to Auditor Keith Favor Favor to audit the medicaid system.
- 9:32Speaker 3: So favorite it has now ratcheting powers, and I expect
- 9:36Speaker 3: that he's going to be more able to do the
- 9:38Speaker 3: job he was elected to do. And I don't necessarily
- 9:40Speaker 3: put it at the feet of Keith Faber. I put
- 9:42Speaker 3: it at the feet of Governor Mike dwine.
- 9:44Speaker 2: Wow.
- 9:44Speaker 1: And to the hip of sharing. That's it seems to
- 9:46Speaker 1: be a nonsensical argument because medical providers often share a
- 9:51Speaker 1: hip of hipA qualified information with third parties. They just
- 9:54Speaker 1: enter into a confidentiality agreement where the third parties have
- 9:58Speaker 1: to follow the hipp A law within government. That seems
- 10:01Speaker 1: to me like something that will be presumed.
- 10:04Speaker 3: Jack Well, and that's one and two. I want you
- 10:08Speaker 3: to think about how asinine it is. Right you have
- 10:11Speaker 3: a state auditor whose job it is to audit state agencies,
- 10:16Speaker 3: and you have a governor saying, well, you can't audit
- 10:18Speaker 3: this agency. I mean, it is the definition of insanity.
- 10:22Speaker 1: But it's on my job description, says Keith Favor, I'm
- 10:26Speaker 1: supposed to be doing this.
- 10:27Speaker 2: Jack Windsor will continue. We'll get one more.
- 10:30Speaker 1: We're going to dive onto the area of property taxes,
- 10:32Speaker 1: hot issue and one that I think some of the
- 10:36Speaker 1: elected officials are sweating about, given that there may be
- 10:38Speaker 1: a ballt an issue to a completely eradicate properly taxes
- 10:40Speaker 1: and Jack Windsor from the Io Press Network, one more
- 10:43Speaker 1: coming up.
- 10:44Speaker 3: Next fifty five KRC KRC the Talk Station.
- 10:50Speaker 1: Hey fifty thank you Joe Streker for the Dead Kennedy's
- 10:56Speaker 1: awesome Jack Windsor from the high Press netwhere we call
- 11:03Speaker 1: this appropriately themed bumper music. So Jack, we're gonna move
- 11:09Speaker 1: on over with Jack. Remember he is from the high
- 11:10Speaker 1: Press Network. Find a bit of hot press the Ohio
- 11:12Speaker 1: Pressnetwork dot com and get a subscription. Great stuff focusing
- 11:16Speaker 1: on Ohio, and hopefully we'll go a different direction with
- 11:18Speaker 1: Vive Gramaswami as governor of the State of Ohio, who
- 11:21Speaker 1: will I am certain, use all the resources within his
- 11:23Speaker 1: power to crack down on fraud, waste and abuse. There
- 11:26Speaker 1: is a lot of it in Ohio. But we also
- 11:28Speaker 1: are dealing with property taxes something else is a bit
- 11:31Speaker 1: of a sticky wicket. I know that the budget that
- 11:34Speaker 1: was passed well resulted in some line item vetos by
- 11:38Speaker 1: our favorite friend, Governor Mike Dwine, who thought he might
- 11:40Speaker 1: have had a better plan going on steaming in the background.
- 11:43Speaker 1: So some efforts by our elected officials to give us
- 11:45Speaker 1: some relief and shot down, and then some were advanced
- 11:50Speaker 1: but really not quite adequate. Are we What are we
- 11:55Speaker 1: going to do? Because I guess the looming elephant in
- 11:58Speaker 1: the room is that idea that a ballot initiative might
- 12:01Speaker 1: eradicate property taxes and they are ill equipped to deal
- 12:04Speaker 1: with the aftermath of that, Jack.
- 12:07Speaker 3: Yeah, so let me can I sprint through what was
- 12:09Speaker 3: done real quick and then address Okay, awesome. So I
- 12:12Speaker 3: do want to point out that Governor DeWine did veto,
- 12:15Speaker 3: as you mentioned, four provisions in the biennial budget. But
- 12:18Speaker 3: what lawmakers figured out was if they took each of
- 12:21Speaker 3: those provisions, put them in separate bills, and got Democrats
- 12:24Speaker 3: to support him, then DeWine would actually sign them. And
- 12:27Speaker 3: that's exactly what happened. It was political theater that delayed
- 12:30Speaker 3: taxpayer relief. Yet again, congratulations to Wine, but some bills
- 12:35Speaker 3: were signed at the end of twenty twenty five. House
- 12:37Speaker 3: Bill one twenty four is a foundational reform on how
- 12:40Speaker 3: property values are assessed, and it modifies the sales assessment ratio.
- 12:45Speaker 3: One twenty six fundamentally shifts the burden invaluation challenges, so
- 12:51Speaker 3: it basically says, prove it instead of requiring the homeowner
- 12:55Speaker 3: to come and really the value of their home. So
- 12:58Speaker 3: it flips the script there.
- 13:00Speaker 1: On that note, Jack, real quick, here they have to
- 13:02Speaker 1: provide the comps that they use in determining your homes valuation.
- 13:07Speaker 2: That's right. That's wonderful. Okay, I like that.
- 13:09Speaker 3: It's great, Yeah it is, it's fantastic. Sorry to sprint
- 13:12Speaker 3: through that, and I do no, it's okay. There, I
- 13:15Speaker 3: get rolling and I don't hear well, so I apologize.
- 13:18Speaker 3: House Built one twenty nine addresses long standing school funding
- 13:21Speaker 3: by expanding the twenty mil floor to encompass fixed some levees,
- 13:25Speaker 3: emergency substitute growth, and overall the adjustment should lower the
- 13:29Speaker 3: effective tax rate for homeowners. One eighty six it might
- 13:33Speaker 3: be the most impactful, which introduces the inflation cap credit
- 13:38Speaker 3: for school districts at the twenty mil floor, limiting annual
- 13:41Speaker 3: tax increases to the rate of inflation based on the
- 13:44Speaker 3: GDP deflator. And then there's House Bill three oh nine
- 13:47Speaker 3: that institutes a vital oversight by requiring county auditors to
- 13:51Speaker 3: annually review school district levees for over collections in any
- 13:55Speaker 3: revenue that exceeds VOTA approved amounts due to value increases,
- 13:59Speaker 3: and those excesses can be returned, which is huge. And
- 14:03Speaker 3: then House Built three thirty five caps revenue growth from
- 14:07Speaker 3: unvoted inside millaged and that's like you know, German to me,
- 14:11Speaker 3: but it is a form of relief. But here's the
- 14:13Speaker 3: eight hundred pound gorilla in the room. I think that
- 14:17Speaker 3: repealing property taxes or tearing down property taxes in Ohio
- 14:22Speaker 3: has a ton of momentum. And I think that that's
- 14:24Speaker 3: what we're going to have to talk about in twenty
- 14:26Speaker 3: twenty six because the government, actually it's not even going
- 14:29Speaker 3: to be the state government. It's going to be there
- 14:31Speaker 3: are over sixty five hundred taxing authorities in the Buckeye State.
- 14:35Speaker 3: That should shock everybody. Yeah, but police stations, fire stations,
- 14:38Speaker 3: schools are going to be like the mice and the
- 14:41Speaker 3: cheese might get moved, Brian, and I think that's the
- 14:43Speaker 3: big conversation that we're going to talk about in the
- 14:45Speaker 3: year ahead.
- 14:46Speaker 2: How about that?
- 14:47Speaker 1: Well, recognizing how federal government works, which is hurry up.
- 14:51Speaker 1: Going back to one of your points about returning over
- 14:53Speaker 1: collection of school district taxes. I like the idea, but
- 14:57Speaker 1: the federal government, when their agencies see that they've got
- 14:59Speaker 1: a on a pile of money they're sitting on toward
- 15:01Speaker 1: the end of the year, they start throwing it out
- 15:03Speaker 1: into the wind because if they don't use it all,
- 15:04Speaker 1: they're not going to get anymore. Who in the hell,
- 15:06Speaker 1: what school district got there is ever going to write
- 15:08Speaker 1: a check to return unspent funds. Don't you think this
- 15:12Speaker 1: is going to result in them just being rather liberal
- 15:14Speaker 1: with their expenditures.
- 15:16Speaker 3: Potentially, But I think what we're going to see, so
- 15:20Speaker 3: follow me on this. It's kind of complex. It hurts
- 15:22Speaker 3: my brain. Yes, However, that makes it incumbent upon the
- 15:27Speaker 3: citizens in that district to hold the district accountable and
- 15:30Speaker 3: to clamor. But secondly, state Representative Mike Devilla is at
- 15:33Speaker 3: it again. He's introducing a bill called the zero based Budget,
- 15:38Speaker 3: which would require because states will likely take on more
- 15:42Speaker 3: responsibility in funding schools, yes they will. So now if
- 15:45Speaker 3: that happens, then they have to come every ten years.
- 15:48Speaker 3: And it's like peeling all the paint off steal before
- 15:51Speaker 3: you paint it again. You've got to prove that you
- 15:54Speaker 3: need this money. I like that.
- 15:57Speaker 1: I love it too, because they sell us to bill
- 16:00Speaker 1: the goods locally, Oh we need this.
- 16:02Speaker 2: The whole place is falling apart.
- 16:03Speaker 1: But when you got people in Columbus who have no
- 16:05Speaker 1: connection to your specific school district, they might look at
- 16:09Speaker 1: it with a clearer set of eyes. Jack wins or.
- 16:12Speaker 1: So that's you know what positive news, and I'm glad
- 16:14Speaker 1: we're going in the right direction. And I'm just waiting
- 16:16Speaker 1: to see what else has done because, like you said, man,
- 16:18Speaker 1: you know, if they unglue, if they take property taxes away,
- 16:21Speaker 1: the whole place is like, oh my god, what are
- 16:23Speaker 1: we gonna do? Jack went to find him online. Go
- 16:25Speaker 1: to the Ohio pressnetwork dot com. Excellent reporting there. Get
- 16:28Speaker 1: a subscription.
- 16:29Speaker 2: Jack.
- 16:29Speaker 1: I can't wait to have you back on the fifty
- 16:30Speaker 1: five Caresing morning. S Jope, you have a wonderful weekend.
- 16:33Speaker 3: It's an honor. Thank you, Brian, and thank you Joe.
- 16:35Speaker 3: God bless you have a great weekend.
- 16:36Speaker 2: And you sir eight fifty six early on the program,