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From Death Penalty to Data Centers: Ohio’s Evolving Policies and Perspectives · Common Sense Ohio

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All right, it is that time again. Common Sense, Ohio. I missed
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it last week. I just felt like I was. Everything was off. I
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felt like nothing made sense. And the weather
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was spectacular. There was just no sense of the world. If you felt that way
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too, it's because you didn't get your weekly dose of common sense. But we're back.
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June 26, 2026. Interestingly, you know,
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it's funny. History is a funny teacher,
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you know. Yeah. And two years ago today, the Dobbs decision
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has been that long. Right. Dobbs, basically
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eliminating the fictitious constitutional right to get an abortion. Right,
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right. The penumbra. The penumbra. Right. Do
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the math or do the research. Look, yeah.
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Even liberal legal
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scholars like Ruth Bader Ginsburg knew this
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new. That it was complete bullshit. Yeah.
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Roe was an invent anyway, that was two years ago today. But in the Cold
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War. So going back to 19.
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Oops. Going back to
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1948,
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I believe. Let me make sure I got the year right, because I was. And
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while you're checking that, I think it's good to mention that abortions are
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actually up about 10% since
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Dobbs. Is that right? Yeah. And what they say is, because
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the whole mail order thing, where you
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can get the day after pills
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went nationwide, and basically
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even Trump's DOJ said, hey, this is a state issue from
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now on. Yeah. And this was the argument I always had. There's no federal
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enforcement. To be intellectually honest about this, I always
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said, look, first of all, I don't agree with
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abortions. I. I have my own opinions on that based on logic, reason,
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and common sense, as well as some of my
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religious beliefs. Right, right. But aside from that,
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this was a constitutional debacle. There was
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never written in the Constitution a right to go get an abortion. No. It was
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foolish. It made no sense. And I used to argue with even the most
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stringent, like other academics and lawyers, and they would argue with me, and I'm
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like, listen, just because you get rid of the constitutional right doesn't mean you're gonna
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get rid of abortions. It's gonna go to the state level. Yeah. And I
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used to predict this. There'll probably be more abortions. Yeah, there have been.
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Because, you know. Anyway. So. Yeah. But anyway, turning
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back to the Berlin Blockade, Norm, 1948.
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Oh. You know, we decided long ago after. We decided after
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the war that we weren't gonna go fight the Soviets. America didn't have the stomach
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for it, and I don't blame him. Yeah. We just chopped up Europe a little
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bit. Yeah. You take that. We'll take this. In fact, let's just cut Berlin in
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half. Yeah, yeah. And create these zones where France,
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Britain, Russia and the United
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States, the four Allied powers,
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you know, they chopped off Germany and they administered,
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you know,
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the affairs of their district. And they kind of did
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that with Berlin and the three powers, the
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three non Russian, created this West
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Berlin district. And the Russians were like, hey,
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it's a little. All of Berlin was floating like an island
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in their administrative area. And they were like, well,
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we'll just take it. We'll just take. Yeah, we'll
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deny you a route to resupply
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the part of Berlin that you supposedly are
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administering. So we did this airlift that you're talking about, Berlin
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airlift. Go read about it. It's really sort of fascinating. And
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we took casualties. What dawned on me is this, with all
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this immigration and border and all this other crap,
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what you never see out of a free country
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is a wall that keeps people in. That's right. Ever.
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Yeah, ever. Right. And that's what
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inevitably occurs in these types of
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communist countries. That's right. People want to leave.
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They don't want to stay there because it sucks. Yeah. And I remember as
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a kid watching a movie, I think Disney made it, it was about a family
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who was trapped in the east and they took a balloon right over
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the Wall. And I remember also as a. Maybe I
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must have been 12 years old, going to visit the Berlin Wall. I mean, there
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were guards on the top with guns, not to keep
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us out, but to keep them in. Yeah, exactly. Now, we couldn't just storm it
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either, but they had the Zone and everything else. I mean, it's just crazy
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times. And what you say goes back to antiquity. Hadrian's
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Wall, you know, that the Romans built in England to
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keep the wild Celts
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out of the Roman part of
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Britain, the Great Wall of China, you know, again,
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to keep the Mongols out. Yeah, that was to keep the marauders out.
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Exactly. But it wasn't to keep their people in. You could always leave.
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But the thing is, when you have a good free country like ours, people don't
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want to leave. No, you're bs. You don't want to leave. Suddenly we're finding
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out, or the media is fighting out with all these World cup
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fans in America from Europe,
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that all this terrible perdition that they were
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reading about and hearing about on like the BBC and
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other foreign media, they come to America and they're like,
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this place rocks. They're even singing our national
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anthem in bars at night, like
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the Scottish fans after America beat
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Australia singing our national anthem. It's pretty incredible, isn't it? I mean,
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it just blow me away. It's like, yeah. So they kind of like,
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you know, once they experience things, they kind of like it. You know,
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they're like, you guys have a lot of freedom here. You could do what you
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want. You could. You know, you have so much
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material choices to make here, whether it's
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food or, you know, retail shopping.
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It's just unbelievable what your market economy has
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allowed you to have, rather than a command economy. Well, and what's
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fascinating, I've told this story probably on this show and lots of times in my
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real life. I represented some folks one time that were Armenians,
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but they came from old Soviet times. Wow.
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Yeah. And they came here and they, you know, they started
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businesses, they did whatever. And the guy just looked at me and goes, you people
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are nuts. Yeah. You can do whatever you want here. Right. What are you
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complaining about? Exactly? You can just go start a business. Right. Go do
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it right now. You can also fail. There's
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an analog. So you ever play chess? Sure. Yeah.
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There's an old analogy, like when the chess piece is in the middle of the
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board, so your queen's in the middle, it has the most impact because she
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can go all sorts of places. She's in a corner. She can all go like,
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we're in the middle of the board here, guys. You got the queen in the
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middle of the board. You can do whatever you want. Now. You can also
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go commit suicide. You can also decide to do nothing and
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stay there. And then somebody's pawn is going to take you. Yeah. With that freedom
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comes responsibility. Yeah. So I was thinking about this.
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You brought up something that happened on this
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date, and really not a signal
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kind of event occurred during the Revolutionary War period, but
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more debate on June 24 about how
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to declare independence. Whether to declare independence.
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This is within the Continental Congress, and they're considering this
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resolution by William Henry Lee,
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you know, curiously enough, Robert E. Lee's great grandfather. Oh, is that right?
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, who would himself
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lead a revolution against America
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of his own kind as a Confederate commander. But at any
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rate, I was thinking about the contradiction between the
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election results last night and what they were debating
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in the Continental Congress. And give me a minute here.
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So I'm thinking of what American revolutionaries
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were, like, 250 years ago. Okay. They were largely
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British educated. They were from British families. They were of
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the mercantile class. Right. So they had a stake
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in Adam Smith economics.
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Like, work, your Ass off. You have
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an opportunity. If we get our freedom from the King,
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we'll have an opportunity not for an equal
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outcome, but for an equal opportunity to succeed
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everybody in this country. Then you
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won't have these onerous taxes, you won't have
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impressment, you won't be forced to house
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British soldiers in your house. All of these
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things in our Bill of Rights and in our constitution will be in play
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is what they're envisioning on June 24,
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1776, as opposed to the revolutionaries today.
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Like Mamdani has this now he's a power
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broker and he's gotten all of these socialists and communists.
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They won their primaries last night and what do
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they want? What is their revolution about?
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It's about disgorging from their fellow citizens
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largesse. It's about freebies. Well, we want free
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daycare, we want free buses, we want free college
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education. We don't even want just. And then
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often we don't even want criminal penalties
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for breaking the law for shoplifting, or even
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to deport non citizens for murder or rape.
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So I'm thinking about what 250 years ago
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a revolutionary was and what it is, what it means
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to Americans today. And it's so vastly. I feel like I'm on
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another planet. It's 180 degrees opposite. And when they say they want
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free, we just want free stuff.
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That's really just another euphemism of saying we want to take
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your stuff and give it to you, or this guy's stuff and give it to
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you. And we're the ones of course, that have the
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deciding. We're the ones that know best on who gets what right.
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Right. Which is another euphemism to say give us power.
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Yeah, give us power. Because we're going to decide. And then magically, at
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some point, 500 years in the future, all this will disappear and we'll live in
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this utopian dreamland that they've never ever,
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ever, ever, ever, ever, ever been able to achieve. Because
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it's against human nature in every way, shape or every. And you talk to like
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your Armenian clients or people from Poland or
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our first lady who came from the
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oppressed Eastern European area
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when it was under Soviet rule. And
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they'll all say it doesn't work.
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What are you people doing here? You have literally
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a utopian situation where you can
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dictate what you want to do for a living and how hard
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you want to work. If you want to be lazy, you can be lazy. If
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you want to work like Elon Musk and become the world's first
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trillionaire. You can do that too. Well, and not only that, the consequences for doing
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that in our country right now and really for the last maybe,
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I don't know, fifty hundred year. I don't know. But the consequences of doing nothing
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aren't that bad anymore. No. Right. So you can still, like, if you want to
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be lazy and you don't want to buy, you don't. And let's take lazy out
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of it. If you don't care what you have around
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you. In other words, you don't want the big house. You don't need the big
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house. Need all of this. You don't need the fancy car. You want to
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subsist. You can do that. You can do that. And you can do that by
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doing virtually nothing. Yeah. In this country. And you'll still get an iPhone and a
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computer and. And access to TV and the Internet. We are at
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that point. Excuse me, Steve, I'm sorry, but stepped on you there. But
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we are at that point now where
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the majority of the people are not paying
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any federal income tax. I mean, we have
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gone past that 50% line. That is insane. Which
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is just insane. And these people are celebrating. I mean,
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so no skin in the game, Steve. It can't survive.
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So this is. This is not long. This is not
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sustainable. Unsustainable is the right word. Exactly right. And
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how it ends, I don't know whether it ends violently, whether it ends just it
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dies on the vine sort of slowly, or whether something in the middle,
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it cannot sustain itself because as Margaret Thatcher said, you run out of other people's
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money, and sooner or later you're gonna run out of other people's money. Well,
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you mentioned violence. So that same group of people,
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the Democrats, Socialists of America, they have now
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started militias. Like they actually have.
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Like they are talking about, you know, at any
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cost, at any price, by any means. They're using that
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kind of rhetoric that sounds a lot like, you know,
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Castro, it sounds like. Or Khrushchev or
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Stalin. It has that ring to it, like, you know,
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let's use the Second Amendment to stock up, not for the
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purposes of individual rights, but for
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the purposes of overthrowing if at some point
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the status quo. Yeah. Which will be our freedom. They're
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detractors, right? Yeah, yeah. They don't. I once
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said to somebody, I'm not going to mention who it was, but it was a
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text, and clearly we were on different ends of the polar planet.
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And I think it was about this. It was about when
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I think Amy Coney Barrett, in the middle of COVID writes a decision that
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basically says you can't shut down the church or
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synagogue at the same time you're opening up the private stuff. You know,
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you can't do that. Something like that. Right, right. And
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I rarely post anything. I posted something, and this guy reached out to me sort
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of in Facebook and said, well, that's interesting. Yeah, it makes sense. You're treating other
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people unfairly. And he was clearly a communist. You know, he was.
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But he was trying to get his head around what I was saying. Yeah. And
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I somehow led to this final statement. I said, yes, but I will always choose
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individual rights over a collective goal. You know, it's
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like, you know, always. Because individual rights lead to better for
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everybody. Right. Ultimately. So I always choose individual rights
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over collectivism because it's collectivism that takes away individual rights.
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Right. And that's what these guys are doing, that they. They want to take your
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rights. And if they want guns, rest assured, they want to take
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yours. Oh, for sure. Absolutely. They're not saying we're all going to
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have guns and protect ourselves from the government. We're saying we're going to have guns
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so we can force what we want on you. Yeah. They have the right think
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to use Big Brother talk because they know better. So fitting right
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into that, Steve, is this. Even though it seems
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like small beer, I think it illustrates your point, the point
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you just made about individual rights. Perfectly. So there is
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a long stream of Supreme Court
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decisions upholding the individual right to
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express or to hold your individual
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religious beliefs and political beliefs. And they
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had a gay pride night out in San Francisco with
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the San Francisco Giants. And at first, these
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pitchers, three of San Francisco pitchers
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were wearing hats where they added a
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reference in the Bible to a particular line, like in Genesis
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or whatever. And they would scribble that. Three
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pictures scribbled in white letters, very small.
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They didn't, like, cross out the gay logo, but they
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added their own Bible quote
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on their hat. And Major League Baseball and
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the Giants management came down on these guys and said,
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you do that again, there'll be some enormous fine or
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you might be suspended. And then the Department of
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Justice opened an investigation into this, which
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is currently pending based on these Supreme Court
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decisions. Like, famously, there was that Walmart case where the
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lady was wearing a crucifix and her manager said, you can't wear a
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crucifix at the register at a Walmart. You know, that's
16:45
oppressing other people. And the Supreme Court upheld their right. Her Right
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to have a crucifix. Yeah, it's an interesting. So I gotta. Let's chop
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this up a little bit. But we have a First Amendment right that guarantees,
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among other things, the free exercise of our religion. In other words, the government.
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And almost like in conflict to that, we have an establishment clause, so the
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government can establish a religion, and we have the right to free
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exercise of religion. So we have these things.
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But it does not prohibit. If you read the Constitution, nowhere would the Constitution
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say that I, as an employer, can't prohibit. Preclude you
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from wearing a cross when you sit at your desk or preclude you from
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praying five times a day or however many times a day. Facing
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it doesn't say it because I'm a private individual. Now, if there's a law. If
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the government passes a law that says you can't do that, that's a different thing,
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because now you're impeding on the free exercise of religion. By government, I mean,
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any government, whether it's the federal government, a state government,
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a city government, a local township government, or even, you
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know, the smallest of form of government you can have. If it's government action. Right.
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Can't do it. So we're entering into this weird realm where the
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government is telling private companies what they can and can't do. Yeah. And this
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has always been the problem with the civil rights laws, the Title seven,
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you know, it's always been the issue because you're imposing upon private
18:06
citizens what they can, how they run their
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businesses. Right. And I have always. I forget who the center
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was it when all this stuff, when the Civil Rights act, he goes, I
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prefer my. My freedoms. Like my coffee. I just. I want it straight, you know?
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Yeah, yeah. Or with my liquor, I want it straight. No mixers, you know, because
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it. Look, it sometimes can lead you to these things you don't like,
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but at least it's free. And then the idea is the market would come. So
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if I say, I'm not going to hire women because I don't
18:34
like women, well, guess what? Or if you said that in your law firm
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and I say, well, that's interesting. Norm's next door to me. I love. I'm gonna
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hire all the women I want. I can't, because then I can get more business.
18:44
Right? That's the idea of it. Yeah. Yeah. I think what makes
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the baseball thing
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more of a civil rights case is that
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they were compelled, they thought, to wear the gay
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pride hats. Okay. So their
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employer was saying, hey, this political speech, or
19:08
if you want to look at it, possibly a religious
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tenet, we're going to
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impose upon you by you wearing this
19:20
hat, your endorsement of gay pride
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and whatever message that means and all of
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the attachments to that logo, you know,
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we're making you wear this hat. Major League Baseball, after the
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DOJ announced they were looking into civil rights
19:37
violations, then backed up and said, well, wait a minute,
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the Giants did not. They
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did not use the correct policy. The correct policy was
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and is that you are not
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required to wear special endorsement
19:57
hats or T shirts or logos that the players
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actually had the right to just say, I want to wear the standard
20:05
Giants hat. I don't want to wear the Gay Pride hat. I just want to
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wear the regular black and orange hat or whatever it is.
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But they were being told, Major League
20:17
Baseball says the Giants failed to tell them they had that option.
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And so these players thought, well, if I'm going to be compelled to wear this,
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then I'm going to express how something that I believe
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in. And so they were not basically
20:34
against the gay pride event. They just
20:38
wanted to say, okay, if I have to wear this, then I'm also going to
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say that. Yeah. And just to be clear, the DOJ is acting under the Civil
20:45
Rights act, not the Constitution. That's right. Not the Constitution. That's right.
20:49
And what they're basically saying is you can't compel certain religions. Religion. You can't compel
20:53
certain people. That's right. And again, because in
20:56
a way, the Giants were compelling. That's right. An endorsement
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of a lifestyle. And maybe these guys, you know, I
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haven't interviewed the three pitchers. Maybe they would say, I don't care,
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you know, about what other people do. I just wanted to express myself.
21:12
Or maybe they do have a problem with the lifestyle. Yeah.
21:16
And, you know, at the end of the day, I understand what the law says
21:19
the Civil Rights act says, and maybe DOJ has a point, but I'm not saying
21:22
I agree with it. Yeah, sure. I'm not saying I agree with it because I
21:25
do think on some level the NBL should be able to say, look, you gotta
21:28
wear it, or. Well, I know you're kind of saying that those civil rights
21:31
laws themselves are really sort of out of order, that
21:36
they really. They either went too far or they shouldn't
21:39
exist in toto. And I understand the
21:43
intellectual argument for that. Like, you know, if. If you're
21:46
Woolworths back in the 1960s and you have no black
21:50
served in the front window, well, you're an idiot because you're turning
21:53
down Business. And I follow what you're saying, because maybe the
21:57
Waffle House next door says we serve all. Yeah,
22:01
they're going to get more business. And I get it. There's an argument. This is
22:04
an academic. It's a public accommodation kind of. This is an academic argument because,
22:08
you know, on the one level, we did have some extreme problems in the country
22:11
back in Jim Crow days. We had some extreme problems with some segregation. And if
22:14
the government wanted to get involved, they had to do it somehow. You know, perhaps
22:18
a constitutional amendment or something might have been. But I just, as a purist,
22:22
they were a little over their skis on it and. Well, look. But it's already
22:26
been decided. It is what it is. I'm a lawyer. I appreciate it. The law
22:28
is what it is. Yeah. And it's pretty old now. I mean, it's
22:32
been around. It is now. It's been around. So at the end of the day,
22:36
the MBL backed off. They did. They backed
22:40
off. And I think they found a compromise. Yeah, yeah. And they have
22:44
that. What do you call it, that antitrust
22:47
exemption that Congress gave them. And I think they
22:51
were looking at that and thinking, do we really want to
22:55
doodle around with that? This is it. If you make a deal with the government.
22:58
You made a deal with the. That's right.
23:02
You did some research into the Supreme Court case on the
23:06
marijuana recreational user getting his gun rights back.
23:10
Yeah. Sort of an interesting case. So this is. Comes from a string of cases.
23:12
It started with Heller and going
23:16
back that says we have an individual constitutional right to bear arms.
23:20
It's an individual right. And then
23:24
as the Supreme Court addressed this issue,
23:28
I think Bruen was the case that sort of says, look, here's how we're going
23:32
to analyze Second Amendment issues. We're going to look at the history, text and
23:35
tradition of the constitutional amendment or of the
23:39
Constitution and determine if a government regulation or
23:43
government law violates it. In other words, it used to be a different standard called
23:46
strict scrutiny. For you legal geeks out there, it means that you really had a
23:49
good reason, you had to have a good reason to violate somebody's constitutional rights. But
23:53
now they've sort of changed a little bit. And they said, look, if conduct is
23:57
permitted based on the history, text and tradition of
24:01
our country and our Constitution, well, then you can't pass
24:04
a law that violates that or that prevents that. And that's sort
24:08
of the backdrop for this case, which was United States versus
24:12
Himani. And basically the first sentence is great, or the first
24:16
paragraph is great. Gorsuch writes the opinion. Ali Humani uses
24:20
marijuana a few times a week. That fact alone, the government says, means he is
24:23
automatically banned from possessing a firearm under federal law.
24:27
And because Hermani admits, or Hermani admits he owns a gun
24:31
despite this ban, the government now seeks to prosecute him in
24:35
imprison him for up to 15 years and disarm him for life. This case
24:38
poses the question whether the government's prosecution of Mr.
24:42
Hamani is consistent with the Second Amendment. Like, I love Supreme Court.
24:46
Right? Like when it's written. Well, it's like I like if I taught legal writing
24:49
in school or in law school, I would say read this. Yeah, that's very succinct.
24:53
It says it in like four sentences. Right? What it is, Right. No big
24:57
words. Yeah. Just here's what it is. Common people can read that
25:01
and get it. Yep. Yeah. Enter the Federal
25:05
Gun control Act in 18 USC
25:08
section 1922 or 922G.
25:12
It basically has this list of things that disarm people. Ones if you have a
25:16
conviction, if you have committed domestic violence or,
25:19
you know, and a conviction, by the way, is something that is a felony. So
25:22
more than a year imprisonment would carry. And on that list
25:26
is anyone who is an unlawful
25:29
user of or addicted to a controlled substance,
25:33
you're automatically banned for, from
25:36
guns. Now, for those of you who have any interest in
25:40
the most famous case probably ever of somebody being sort of targeted for this, it
25:43
would be Hunter Biden and anybody who's bought a gun that has
25:47
a little checkbox in those forms. Right, right. One of them is, are you an
25:51
unlawful user of marijuana or any other illegal drugs? Yeah. And the
25:54
court basically says limited to the facts here. So they're not saying anything yet
25:58
broadly about other drugs, but limited to the marijuana user here.
26:02
They're saying it's unconstitutional, this is unconstitutional for the government
26:06
to apply this law, to apply this restriction against
26:10
Hamani's gun rights. And I
26:13
love it. Yeah. We still have this
26:17
dichotomy, I guess
26:21
Trump the department of.
26:25
What would it be? Department of Health and Human Services
26:29
or whoever decides what schedule a
26:32
particular drug is on. They have taken marijuana
26:36
now off of that highest level
26:40
threshold of drugs federally. Now
26:44
they haven't legalized it like many of the states, or I should say
26:47
most of the states. But, but so we still have this
26:51
federal versus state inconsistency, let's
26:55
put it that way, where some states say, hey, you know,
26:59
it's just open season state sanctions and
27:03
state licensed stores are selling this stuff
27:06
for recreational Use, including Ohio. And
27:10
so, you know, you gotta say, you gotta say, like
27:15
Trump has addressed the contradiction in, in part by
27:19
taking it off the highest schedule. But it's still
27:24
illegal federally. Yeah, it's still legal federally. And this is coming up.
27:27
Well, look, I'll just give you there's a case I'm working on, in fact, I
27:30
have a hearing on it today, I'll bet, where the police stop a car
27:33
based solely on the odor of marijuana. They search the car. Yeah.
27:38
So there's a rule that says if you stop a car, a police stop of
27:41
motor vehicle is a significant intrusion that requires justification under the Fourth Amendment,
27:45
reasonable suspicion. And they can search. The police can then
27:49
search the interior compartment of the car, even closed containers, if they have something called
27:52
probable cause. What's probable cause? I don't know. But they know it when you see
27:55
it. Yeah. It means something more than enough to stop a car. Less than four.
27:59
Yeah, whatever. Yeah. So you have some, or you have some
28:04
basis to reasonably conclude that there is evidence of
28:07
contraband in, say, the center console. Yeah.
28:12
And in this case, they're using the odor of marijuana
28:15
as the basis to develop probable cause to do the search or further the
28:19
investigation. And our argument is, look, it's legal conduct
28:23
under the Ohio Constitution. Yeah. The government's argument is going to be, the
28:26
prosecutor's argument's going to be, yeah, but it's still illegal under the federal Constitution.
28:30
And I'm going to say, well, look, how is that? So on the one hand
28:34
you are giving it, on the other hand you're taking it away and you're
28:37
punishing somebody for exercising their constitutional, Ohio.
28:41
Constitutional right. Right. Or at least statutory rights. Right. But
28:45
not even though it's in flux or in contradiction with the feds.
28:49
That's a due process. So we're gonna like, this is coming up everywhere. It's a
28:52
mess. It's a mess. It's coming up everywhere. It's a mess. It, it, it needs
28:55
to be resolved somehow. And
28:59
at any rate, I, I think it's a good decision. I, I,
29:03
you know, and that's not coming from
29:07
a pro pot point of view.
29:10
It's just that in the scale of
29:15
offenses, recreational use of marijuana
29:18
to me is no worse
29:22
than recreational use of alcohol. In fact,
29:26
it may be less worse. It may be less worse. And I think
29:30
that kind of medical research, now that it's off the
29:34
schedule, I think we're going to learn a lot more about marijuana
29:37
and what the downsides are and the possible upsides. Well,
29:41
look, I guess we'll find out it's a drug. It is a drug. And it
29:45
wouldn't surprise me if they, if they, being the studiers, the researchers
29:49
find something that is beneficial about the drug, it will also not surprise me if
29:53
they find exactly what is not so good. Yeah, about the. I choose not to
29:56
use it. Yeah. You know, like the wine producers like to say,
30:00
oh, a glass of red wine, you know, actually help your health.
30:03
Nonsense. Yeah, nonsense. You know. You know, but no,
30:07
wine is still better for your health. Right. And even tobacco, years ago,
30:11
they, they would have like a doctor on TV saying, you know,
30:15
I use filtered palm oils and they're great. And they,
30:18
they actually maybe keep colds away, you know, like,
30:23
you know, so all of this we'll find out in due course.
30:27
But I think, yeah, taking away somebody's constitutional rights,
30:31
I mean, what's next? A guy can't vote? I mean, what else are you going
30:34
to take away from him? So I'm glad, I'm glad for that
30:38
decision. Even though I have my reservations about marijuana
30:42
use. I thought, I thought we'd bring up, maybe do
30:45
a deeper dive than we've done in past shows about
30:49
data centers in Ohio. And the reason is
30:54
the news hook is this week it came out that the,
30:59
the people who wanted to put a ban on the ballot
31:03
this fall on data centers
31:06
put a statewide moratorium on new
31:10
data centers that haven't broken ground yet,
31:14
failed to get enough signatures to put it on the ballot.
31:18
They're still going to collect them. I'm sure it's going to be on the ballot
31:21
at some point. But
31:26
there's also, at the same time, you got Governor DeWine's
31:29
study group, and you've got various
31:33
pieces of legislation cooking in the
31:36
General assembly. And one of the House bills
31:41
is kind of an omnibus of different ideas, and
31:44
it has bipartisan support for lots of
31:48
pieces of it. And the Buckeye Institute, whom
31:52
we've had on the show,
31:55
gave testimony and I think, and they're
31:59
largely a conservative think tank.
32:03
And it shows to me that conservatives,
32:07
if you will, Republicans are starting to grasp
32:11
that not only are there some injustices going on
32:15
out there and some skullduggery by developers,
32:18
but. But there's also a political battle happening
32:22
out there in really bright red MAGA land. And
32:26
I think they're starting to come to grips. Even if Vivek
32:29
and Amy, you know, the two candidates for
32:33
Acton for governor, even if they aren't really on board
32:37
yet, I think it's good. So the
32:40
Buckeye Institute said that four big things.
32:45
We should restrict DNA
32:48
or DNA NDAs as a tool
32:52
to keep the public ignorant of pending data centers
32:56
being planned. What's the
33:00
counterargument be to that? Well, like the. Well, so
33:04
the data center people like Google or whoever it would
33:07
be that's building one, or Meta, they would say,
33:11
well, our competition then will know that we're
33:14
planning one in New Albany or Baltimore,
33:18
Ohio, or some other place in Ohio. They'll know what our
33:22
plans are. So we're not really trying to. Their argument is. Of course,
33:25
it's bs. Their argument is we're not trying to keep it from the public.
33:29
We're trying to keep it from our competitors. But
33:32
mayors, township, trustees, county
33:36
commissioners, all kinds of their employees
33:39
are signing these NDAs, or at least acting as if
33:43
one is in place voluntarily as
33:47
they try to, you know, get the ball across the
33:51
goal line of getting these centers built because they think it's
33:54
a boon to their area or it. Or maybe they have a
33:58
conflict of interest. They have some land to sell. So
34:02
one of the Buckeye proposals is to restrict
34:05
NDAs. The other one is to.
34:09
Sadly, they want to keep the sales tax exemption, which has
34:13
cost Ohio $1.6 billion so far that
34:17
John Kasich put into place
34:21
by fiat, like, he didn't even pass legislation.
34:24
He, as the governor, apparently has some emergency
34:28
power. And this has been now through the
34:31
DeWine administration as well. And people,
34:35
including the legislators, are just now finding out many cases
34:39
that this exemption existed. I mean, it's kind of been
34:43
like, under the table. So when you think of jobs, Ohio,
34:46
and you think about all the other giveaways, the tax deferments,
34:52
the free roads, the infrastructure, the water use,
34:57
the annexations, all the other tools that these data
35:01
center developers have gotten. In addition, they've
35:04
gotten a secret sales tax exemption on every piece of
35:08
steel, every piece of drywall, every turbine,
35:12
every piece of copper wire. That's. And I don't. I mean,
35:16
you and I have to pay sales tax on that. You just build a house.
35:20
What's the benefit for Ohio? Like, why do that? It's
35:24
bizarre. It really is bizarre. I'm sure it made us more
35:28
competitive, you know, versus other states.
35:31
But we're finding out the benefits of having these data centers are,
35:36
you know, sucking up energy, sucking up water,
35:39
pissing off homeowners that live next
35:43
to these things that have to listen to the thing humming all night
35:47
and light pollution and, you know, the trucks and the
35:51
beating up the roads. So one of the other things is
35:55
they don't want Eminent domain. So another Buckeye
35:59
thing. No. Eminent domain used
36:02
to grab land or to grab new roadways
36:07
for data centers. Yeah. Eminent domain for those who don't know. It's actually a constitutional
36:10
provision, but basically it says every now and then, the government, for
36:14
a good reason, can go take your land, even for private development,
36:18
which we know from. Who's the Supreme Court justice that
36:21
resigned, and then a developer did it to his land,
36:25
and he wrote the decision saying.
36:29
The skinny guy. I can't forget his name, but he wrote that
36:32
crazy decision that said the government doesn't have to take
36:36
your land just for the government to use. They could take your land
36:40
away and then give it to, I don't know, the Trump Organization
36:44
or a data center or somebody to develop
36:48
Suter. Suter. David Suter. Yeah. Which
36:51
was beautiful because he got hoisted by his own petard in
36:55
that case. Well, it says he never actually lost his land, but he was famously
36:58
targeted for the property seizure by angry activists in retaliation for
37:02
his 2005 decision in Kilo vs City of New
37:06
London. You know. Yeah.
37:10
Eminent domain is one of those things that it's like, you sort of.
37:14
You can tolerate it because you can understand why it might be necessary
37:18
sometimes on highways and stuff. Right. They have to pay. The government has to pay
37:21
you value for the land. You can't just steal it and give it to somebody
37:24
else, like Mandame would do. Yeah. Or regulate you out of existence
37:28
and then say, well, since you can't meet our regulations, we'll just take it. Right.
37:32
It's not that. Yeah. The last thing Buckeye
37:35
said, and I agree with this, is they want to restrict the
37:39
abatements on property taxes for these data centers, because
37:43
that truly is outrageous. Yeah. Look, if I'm paying tax, they should pay tax. This
37:46
is. This is the stuff that always pisses me off. Yeah. Like, you know. Right.
37:50
It happens. So I, like the argument would be norm or what say to this.
37:53
I mean, if other states, if this is a. Take data centers out of it.
37:57
Yeah. Like, I know Ocasio Cortez
38:00
famously sort of shunned. Was it Amazon? Yeah. Right.
38:04
In her district, it was something like 7,000 jobs or IT was a huge
38:08
number of jobs. Yeah. Not only in Brooklyn, where they need the job. They
38:11
need the job. Like, so I get it. There's sometimes good
38:15
reason to give some incentives for big business to come in.
38:19
But on the other hand, if nobody gave incentives, it would all be an equal
38:22
playing field. So, you know, it's sort of like. Right. It's like
38:26
Leveling the playing fields on recruiting and college football or
38:30
NFL, how much you can pay people like this nil thing. It's almost like
38:33
you need a national policy because otherwise
38:37
it's a big mess. It's a runaway system. You got Indiana and Kentucky and Ohio
38:41
all vying for, say, the same automotive plant and
38:45
they're fumbling over each other to give away everything.
38:49
So look, but if we're going to stay true to our values
38:53
here, let the market fix it at some point in Ohio. If Ohio doesn't want
38:57
to compete in this level, then Ohio's going to fall behind and eventually they're going
39:00
to have to say, all right, we're going to play the game too. But the
39:02
other way to keep the market right is to keep the playing
39:05
field level. But that would require federal legislation. Yes, it would require
39:09
federal legislation. Yeah. So my
39:13
additions to this data center thing would be. And I'm sure you
39:17
have some ideas, Steve, but mine is
39:21
that I think in addition
39:25
to NDAs, I think there needs to be
39:28
a positive requirement
39:32
requiring local officials to announce on social
39:36
media whenever a developer or
39:39
whenever a. A proposal
39:43
is before them that not only
39:47
can't they sign an NDA, but that they have
39:50
a positive duty to inform the public that
39:54
there's some scuttlebutt that there, that there's inquiries being
39:58
made as to factories. And I'm going to. I'm not going to
40:01
talk about apartment buildings and stuff like that. I'm gonna stick with heavy
40:05
industry. Cause that's what these data centers really are. They're making
40:10
a product. And there is heavy industry
40:13
byproducts from that. Just like a
40:17
steel foundry, just like an automotive assembly plant, just
40:20
like a coal fired power plant, when you have something of
40:24
that scale, a feedlot with fecal lakes,
40:28
when you have something of that size moving into a community,
40:32
your local officials should have a positive duty
40:36
to report that. Well, and I think if it's not already obvious,
40:40
then it should be made even more obvious that
40:44
whatever interest the people on whatever local zoning
40:47
board have in this development. Meaning
40:53
if the data center is buying your land. Exactly. Or your
40:56
uncle's. Or your uncle's land. Yeah. Or somebody. There has to be some
41:00
transparency because otherwise it just. Even if it's not corrupt, it certainly looks like
41:03
it is. Right, Right. And there's many things in our ethics
41:07
laws that talk about avoiding even the appearance
41:11
of a conflict. Not just real conflict,
41:15
but even the appearance. And as an attorney, you have that
41:19
duty, for example. I mean, that is a duty that the
41:22
Ohio Ethics Commission really has. Has not imposed on
41:26
local officials near enough. And the easiest way as a lawyer
41:29
to avoid even the appearance of some sort of impropriety
41:34
is truth is transparency. That's right. Is just tell my clients what's going on. That's
41:37
right. That's right. So when I used to represent the school
41:40
treasurers as a lobbyist,
41:44
there was a requirement that they disgorge other
41:47
businesses that they own, that they have to report that. And I
41:51
explained it this way, even though I had reservations about the privacy
41:55
concerns, because now it's a public record. And what business
41:59
really is it of somebody to know that, let's
42:02
say some local school treasurer owns a pizza
42:06
parlor or where he's partners in a pizza parlor? And
42:10
I explained it this way. Well, if Your school orders 200 pizzas
42:15
for a graduation event and it comes out later
42:19
that you, the treasurer, more or less paid your own pizza
42:23
parlor to supply, you know, like, that's not gonna look good for you
42:27
this way you've disclosed it. Yeah. Like you said, the truth. Put it
42:31
out for bit. Put it out. Exactly. I think
42:34
Jobs Ohio needs to be audited and
42:38
possibly that
42:42
whole funding mechanism where they, where they get
42:45
their budget from the Department of Liquor Control, all of that needs to
42:49
go away. I think Jobs Ohio needs to be a state
42:53
agency, run like any other state agency with a
42:57
director and employees of the state and be
43:00
fully, again, transparent and audited.
43:05
I think that the data centers need to pay for their own
43:09
energy needs without any impact on the
43:12
homeowners. I think. I think the Public Utilities Commission of
43:16
Ohio has been. All they've been is reactive. Oh,
43:20
so they look at the energy requirements and they go, oh, I
43:24
see Duke Energy is saying that they have twice the demand,
43:28
so we're going to let them raise their rates by a factor of two,
43:32
you know, like. Well, no, you should be telling
43:37
the people who want to be hooked up to the grid that aren't on the
43:41
grid yet. Sorry, we don't have enough capacity for you.
43:45
You're going to have to figure out another way. But we can't make grandma's
43:49
electrical bill double overnight because you want
43:52
to supply computing power to Meta
43:56
back in the Silicon Valley. That's not right. There's always
44:00
everybody. The mistake people make here is that they attribute.
44:04
They only look at what the good can happen. Yeah, they never look at the,
44:08
like, what are the consequences? What are the actual aftershocks of this? There
44:11
are tons of them. There's tons of these. And my final one,
44:15
Steve and I think you will like this. I think we've talked about this before.
44:19
So Ohio, as a former and well, still current
44:23
industrial state. Right. We have these
44:26
brown sites all over the state that are already, if
44:30
you will, compromised. I mean, they need, you
44:34
know, epa, they need. Before you would,
44:37
let's say, grow corn on them or have cattle graze
44:41
on these brown sites. You'd have to get the pollution out of the ground. Yeah.
44:45
So you're talking about brownfields. Like, and what happens is there's a. There's. The
44:48
EPA gets involved at the state and actually I think at the federal level. Yeah,
44:52
yeah. And they have to come out and sort of give you the.
44:56
Give you the. Because the owners have walked away in many cases. Yeah. So it's
44:59
like an old gas station. Yeah. As underground storage. And they're just like, hey, you
45:03
can have it. I give up. And believe it or not, there's something called Buster.
45:06
Bureau of Underground Storage Tank Removal. Yes. Agency that goes in and they
45:10
get it cleaned up. And you know, some of the worst are dry, old
45:14
dry cleaning sites. Wow. Yeah. I can only imagine if you happen to live
45:17
near an old dry cleaning site. Yeah. That's why the Mad
45:21
Hatter went mad. Because of the chemicals in
45:25
dry cleaning. Yeah, Dry cleaning. And I think also another bad one. I mean,
45:29
aside from paint pesticides. But parking lots are terrible. Oh, yeah,
45:32
right. Yeah. But pesticides, dry cleaning sites
45:36
and hair places. So I've never
45:39
understood this why, like the Columbus
45:43
Chamber of Commerce and, you know, all the
45:47
rah rah groups in Columbus were so thrilled, for example, when
45:50
intel said, well, we're going to go out to a green field. Where
45:53
Biden said, it's just empty space. We're going to go out to. Yeah,
45:57
nobody cares about your farm. Yeah. We're going to go out to a green field
46:01
that's currently growing, you know, corn or
46:04
soybeans or whatever, and we're going to stick our chip
46:08
factory out there. When there's brownfield
46:11
sites all over Columbus and you're just like, well, that would be in the
46:15
Columbus school district, which could certainly use the tax base
46:18
and there's a lot of need for jobs within Columbus. And
46:22
you're just thinking, why didn't they shop this
46:26
around? Because it's still near the airport. There's still plenty of water,
46:30
you know, so why didn't they. I don't know why they didn't. Like, why not?
46:34
Why not? They don't want to bring their executives in to live in those places.
46:38
Okay. I mean, that's the only thing I can think, look, we're going to go
46:41
out to this place where it's beautiful, there's countryside. We can build our own little
46:44
cities out here. Yeah, Fancy suburban
46:47
neighborhoods out here. Look at this quaint little old historic downtown
46:51
area, Norm, with cool little diners and restaurants. And we're going
46:55
to gentrify all this and make. We're going to modernize all this and make it
46:58
look like New Albany. Well, certainly the, you know, and
47:02
by the way, the permits deal with the owners of that land and they're going
47:05
to make millions. Well, the permitting and the regulatory
47:09
side by these rather unsophisticated
47:12
rural townships, they can steamroll them.
47:16
And not only that, the government's created the
47:20
insanity that it would take to develop something like that in the city. What do
47:23
they do? They avoid it by going cities where they didn't create. That's true.
47:27
That's absolutely true. And you see that with the
47:31
rebuilding of, what is it, something like 3,000
47:34
homes or whatever it is in LA. In LA. Right. They can't rebuild. Yeah,
47:38
yeah, because the cities and most cases trip
47:42
over their own. You know what's. Because
47:45
they've made it so complex for people to build even
47:49
a home. I can only imagine. You're right. A data
47:53
center in Columbus. They have to come in and meet all the Columbus regulations, pay
47:56
all the Columbus taxes, do all the Columbus stuff. And then, by the way, they
48:00
have to have their wealthy executives coming into a part of town that is undesirable.
48:03
Well, they live in backslayers, but
48:07
they don't want to do that. Well, some other news,
48:11
Steve, I think this is good, too. The
48:14
Cleveland Clinic has settled a legal case
48:18
with apparently several
48:22
claimants to provide detransitioning
48:25
counseling for those that they
48:29
transitioned who are now saying,
48:32
hey, you horribly mutilated me
48:36
and you did it when I was a child. Makes me cringe. And you
48:40
know, I think it is
48:44
positive that lawyers, doctors,
48:47
the Cleveland Clinic itself, that they got together and
48:51
they came up with some sort of compensation and
48:55
plan to assist those kinds of people. Yeah. But ultimately, you
48:58
know, it shouldn't have happened. But, you know, who's paying for this? We are. Well,
49:02
yeah, we are. Because these lunatics created all this
49:06
stupid policy and engaged in all these stupid practices. Now
49:09
they're going to have to settle billion dollar lawsuits and
49:13
it's not there. It's insurance money. Right. So insurance companies are going to pay and
49:16
guess who they're passing that cost off to. So this is. All of us are
49:20
paying the Price for this lunacy. Well, I'm going to
49:23
throw. I love it that lawyers are making money. I'm going to throw a
49:27
couple of legal things at you here happening in Ohio,
49:31
and these are philosophical things. What do you think, Steve?
49:35
I know you are highly suspicious, if not
49:39
against the death penalty because it's imperfect.
49:43
And it's one of those things that when it's final and the guy's put
49:46
to death or the woman's put to death, well,
49:50
you can't bring them back if it's later found out that the evidence was
49:54
tainted or they got poor representation. But Governor
49:58
DeWine wants to eliminate. It's come out now. He wants to
50:02
formally, and I guess it would be by legislation,
50:06
but he wants to go through some kind of process where Ohio will
50:10
forbear and formally
50:14
get rid of the death penalty as an option. You know,
50:18
I'm a walking contradiction on this. I know you are. Because on the one
50:22
hand, I agree in theory with the death penalty.
50:25
I mean, I think as our good friend Paul Scarcello, who's been on our
50:29
show before, and he's probably prosecuted more death penalty cases when he worked for the
50:33
Ohio Attorney General's office than anybody I've ever met, he just says, look,
50:37
some people need killing. And he says it sort of jokingly because
50:40
really what he's saying is when he says it that way,
50:44
he is pointing out that the standard for when you impose a
50:48
death penalty is, I don't want to say a farce, but
50:53
you know it when you know it, but you can't quantify it.
50:57
Sort of like pornography, right? Yeah. Yeah. So the problem with the
51:00
standard is that, I mean, first of all, assume you get all the. You're only
51:04
getting the people who are actually guilty, which I think is an assumption that's a
51:08
bridge too far because it does happen that people have been executed that were innocent.
51:11
Yeah, it has happened. And then you've got to decide. The harder question then is
51:14
who gets to live and who gets to die. And then how do you standardize
51:17
that across Ohio with different jury pools and different
51:21
people and different this. And let's just stipulate there is no way to do. There's
51:24
no way to do that. There's no way to do that. And the implementation of
51:27
it then is very difficult. And then, you know, it cost a lot of money.
51:30
There's a lot of. But really, I think this is a lot of a do.
51:34
I don't say about nothing, but I have seen in the last 20 years
51:37
I've been practicing 31 years now doing criminal defense work. I haven't seen a
51:41
death penalty case in Franklin county in the last 15 years. I don't think.
51:45
And I think they're. They're fewer and fewer and fewer in number
51:49
because it's just not for all the reasons we're talking about. And juries are not
51:53
imposing the death penalty in many cases. And the ones they are.
51:57
Some people need killing, I guess, is what the other side would say. So, look,
52:00
I'm. Like I said, I'm a walking contradiction. What's
52:04
DeWine got to do with it? Well, he's the governor, I guess. So he's. He's.
52:06
He doesn't get to. Now DeWine doesn't get to just say no death penalty. Right.
52:10
He's imploring the General assembly, our legislative body in Ohio, to abolish
52:14
it. And they have every right to abolish it if that's what they want to
52:16
do. Okay. Throw another one at you.
52:19
I didn't actually know this until I went to my class reunion, my high
52:23
school class reunion, and I
52:27
reunited with a friend of mine, a
52:31
classmate who's on the Ohio Supreme Court,
52:35
Pat Fisherman. And Pat told me. I
52:38
don't know how I missed this, Steve, but I thought the term
52:42
limits in Ohio for public officials were for
52:45
legislative and administrative
52:49
offices. I don't know how this got by me.
52:53
It shows you how. You just can't know everything. The Supreme
52:57
Court is also term limited, and that blows me away, really,
53:00
because we don't have that on a federal level at all. Yeah.
53:04
Federal life appointments. And of course, they don't run for office. No, they're appointed.
53:08
They're appointed and approved. They're elected in Ohio and
53:11
they can only serve two terms. Yeah. Which I did not. That did
53:15
not confuse. I think I did know that, but I've never really given it much
53:17
thought. Yeah. And. Well, I think he's a hell of a jurist, and
53:21
it's not because he's a friend of mine, but
53:25
I hate to lose that talent. I mean, I think that's terrible
53:30
that term limits are. It's one of those
53:33
debates, right? There's pros and cons of all that stuff, man. You get a good
53:37
Supreme Court justice. And Pat,
53:41
he has not ruled. It's not like my
53:44
agenda is the same as his. He's ruled for. Against.
53:48
Just as an example, he's ruled against some of the
53:53
redistricting proposals by the Republican Party. And
53:57
he's a Republican, so he's been part of that majority
54:00
that turned down two or three maps. This is what I like to say.
54:04
He's a good guy. And if you fall even the US Supreme Court politics and
54:07
the law are not the same. Yeah. Just because you got
54:11
appointed by a Republican or just because you identify with the Republican Party. Just because
54:15
you got to let. Once you like the law. Like you've seen me here. You
54:18
are correct on this sort of weave around. Oh, yeah, we talked about the Civil
54:22
Rights Act. Right. Yeah. So. So look, it's the law and political. You may
54:25
disagree with it, but it's the law. So you have to follow it. And as
54:29
lawyers, we are hopefully trained.
54:33
Maybe not if you're not. This is what people hate about lawyers because we're trained
54:35
to look at it both ways. I mean, you can just sort of say, all
54:37
right, I get this. But over here is this. And you and I
54:41
have gone at it on this kind of stuff. Sure. Yeah. Because I just sort
54:45
of have to look at it like, look, here's the trade off. Here's what it
54:47
is. We have no choice. We got to follow along. Yeah.
54:51
You're denying the public the right to reelect
54:55
somebody that the public otherwise would reelect. I guess
54:59
in the case of Supreme Court justices, I guess that would be
55:02
my one exception because I think eight years
55:06
might not be enough. Like two four year
55:10
terms. I think that, I think I agree with you. Somebody gets some gravitas
55:13
at a certain point. Point. And I'll just tell you, Pat
55:18
left a major law firm. He
55:22
took such a haircut to become a Supreme Court justice that
55:25
it is. I know people won't believe this, but it
55:29
really is to people like him, a service to
55:33
society. He gave up a huge
55:37
legal practice at a law firm to become a
55:41
justice. And now he'll go back to that and God bless him.
55:45
But I can tell you this. If we didn't have term limits,
55:49
I think he'd run a third time. But he's done in two years. So
55:53
I just thought I'd throw that out because I wasn't aware of that.
55:56
And it just shows you that. So just so you know, states with
56:00
initial elections. 22 states have initial elections for their Supreme Court judges.
56:05
Partisan elections. Are eight states
56:09
nonpartisan. Are 14 states with
56:12
appointed the highest one nonpartisan? So you know it's not a
56:16
Republican versus Democrat. Yeah. States with a point of
56:20
system. 16 states appointed by the governor. There are
56:23
14 states appointed by the legislature. Two more retention election states.
56:27
It's all over the map. They combine the two. 18 states here initially
56:32
appointed to the bench, either by the governor or the General Assembly. But then if
56:35
you want to keep your job, you got to go get a retention election. So
56:38
all sorts of different ways. Yeah. It's also final thing,
56:42
Ohio related, this ufc, you know, the big
56:45
fight on the White House lawn that by all reports
56:49
was a huge success. Supposed to, I, you know,
56:53
I didn't watch it. I'm not a wrestling guy, but I'm told
56:57
that the, the meets, that the contests were
57:00
thrilling and lots of upsets, and that was a
57:04
very high quality event.
57:08
A local Danville, Ohio, that's out in Knox County.
57:13
Young guy, he took the 3,000 bucks he got for
57:16
graduating from high school, and his mother noticed he
57:20
was buying body armor and guns and that he
57:24
was communicating with people that
57:28
she didn't know and that he was acting strange. So she
57:31
reported it, I guess, to the Danville police or the
57:35
Knox County Sheriff. And they in turn got hold of the FBI
57:39
and they uncovered something like, is it 13, 14 people
57:43
and growing that had this.
57:47
None of them were in D.C. they didn't follow through, but
57:50
they were putting together some concepts to
57:54
assassinate people, to kill them at this
57:58
event. And we'll never know if
58:02
they maybe would have done something later on or how
58:05
far they got. But at any rate,
58:10
the two amazing things about this is that this was
58:16
interstate in scope. So it's clearly within the FBI's
58:20
purview. It's. It's not something that just happened in Ohio. This
58:24
guy had accomplices or
58:28
schemers that were in on it in California. I think one
58:32
of them was a non US citizen, a
58:35
Mexican citizen. So we'll
58:39
see. But the other amazing thing to me is
58:43
just the idea of a parent turning
58:46
in their son, reporting on their son. I
58:50
think the mother is a hero in this case. It's gotta be one of the
58:54
hardest things she's ever done. It's gotta. I mean, you know, because, Steve, you've been
58:57
there in sentencing, when a mother comes in and
59:01
she's bawling and asking the judge for mercy for a
59:05
son who maybe, you know, did something terrible, what she
59:08
did here was the ultimate act of motherhood. I mean, it
59:12
really, I mean, even, I mean, you. I could drill down on this. You see
59:16
this man? I mean, look. So you have. The ultimate act of
59:20
parenting. You and I have talked about this is not protecting your
59:23
kids, but the opposite.
59:27
Offering only the boundaries necessary for them to move forward and
59:31
grow on their own. And I've had to watch my
59:35
kids fall down the stairs metaphorically many times
59:39
and cringe Because I knew that I could have stopped them,
59:42
I could have helped them them or I could have done it for them. Right.
59:45
I, I, this is true. I was in, I was in a meeting one time
59:48
with one of, one of my sons at their parents ever the, the school. And
59:52
they were like, well, you know, your son may not pass the whatever grade and
59:55
whatever. I said, okay, flunk them. Yeah. And they looked at me like I was
59:58
crazy. Yeah. And I, I said, I'm serious, guys. Yeah.
1:00:02
Look, it's fifth grade. Yeah, who cares? I believe in
1:00:06
object lessons. What's he going to learn, you know, to
1:00:10
help mold a child? You know, object lessons are good.
1:00:14
You know, my son Paul, at one time, I love
1:00:17
this story, but he came home from grade school and he
1:00:21
obviously had heard about something called Children's Services,
1:00:25
right? So I punished him for something.
1:00:29
Now, none of my punishments were physical in nature, but, you know,
1:00:33
like, you can't use a computer for a week or whatever it was. And,
1:00:37
and he wailed and he stomped around the house and he said, I'm
1:00:40
gonna call children's Services. And I got out a quarter. Here
1:00:44
you go. Please, please call Children's Services.
1:00:49
Nothing would please me more than to hear you come back after a week
1:00:52
of eating hot dogs and baked beans about how
1:00:56
miserable it was. That's a group home. Yeah,
1:01:00
right? Winners and losers. Yeah, let's do it. Okay,
1:01:04
so the Senate, with
1:01:08
four Republican, I don't know, I don't
1:01:12
want to call them traitors. What would it be? Outliers
1:01:16
passed this war powers referendum,
1:01:20
which really has no effect on the
1:01:24
US Iran war, because we're currently in a
1:01:28
ceasefire. There's this memoir of understanding
1:01:32
that may or may not lead to a treaty. But at any
1:01:36
rate, Senators
1:01:39
Cassidy, who Trump famously
1:01:43
endorsed his opponent, and he's going to
1:01:47
lose office. Ron Paul,
1:01:50
libertarian, who's just against any kind of executive power.
1:01:54
Susan Collins, who's running against this Nazi guy, and
1:01:58
then Lisa Murkowski, who's just, she's the biggest
1:02:02
rhino in the Senate. So they all voted to
1:02:05
take away, in theory, Trump's power
1:02:10
after this stipulated period of time in the War Powers Act,
1:02:14
I think it's 60 days, they
1:02:17
voted with the Democrats to take away his right to prosecute the war
1:02:21
in Iran, which most scholars say, well,
1:02:25
now that we've had a ceasefire, the clock will start again. It's a new set
1:02:28
of data, It's a new 60 day period if it ever goes back.
1:02:32
But to me, it's upsetting that you would do that
1:02:36
because all it does is give Iran this idea that,
1:02:39
hey, we're starting, you know, Trump is losing
1:02:43
the support of not only the Congress, but the American people.
1:02:47
My winner would be John Fetterman, who voted against
1:02:51
the War Powers act because he has said many times for
1:02:55
47 years, everybody said they can't have a nuke.
1:02:59
Trump actually takes action to
1:03:02
wipe out, at least for the next 20 years, their nuclear
1:03:06
program. And so, no, he did the right thing.
1:03:11
Maybe gas prices are higher in the short term,
1:03:14
but that's a small price to pay to take a
1:03:18
nuclear power off the table. Interesting. And I wonder
1:03:22
if this latest peace deal or the truce is. So he gets a new set
1:03:25
of downs. Maybe Trump really is playing three dimensional chess.
1:03:29
Yeah. A lot of people think he is doing a rope a dope thing. Let's
1:03:32
get through the midterms. Let's just string. If Iran wants
1:03:36
to string this out, I'll rope a dope with him. And then after the midterms,
1:03:41
if I still have a Republican House and a Senate. Rock and roll.
1:03:44
We're rocking and rolling. All right, my good and bad. Yes, sir. We'll start with
1:03:48
the bad. People who hate the country just
1:03:51
because they don't like the president. People who
1:03:55
are metaphorically pissing in the.
1:03:59
In the Lincoln pool. A reflection pond.
1:04:03
The reflection. It's like, come on, guys. Yeah.
1:04:07
Why? Come on, it's still a country.
1:04:11
If Biden would have done this, would you have had the same reaction? The answer
1:04:14
is no. Well, and in fact, Obama did spend 14
1:04:17
million to try to clean up the reflecting pool,
1:04:21
and Trump spent just about the same amount. But it's a crime
1:04:24
when he does it. Yeah. It's just so insane. So that's my loser. All you
1:04:28
people are losers, right? Look, I get it. Don't vote for the man. I could
1:04:30
care less who you vote for. I mean, I care who runs the country, but
1:04:34
I don't hate the country because when. When the people that I didn't vote for
1:04:38
are in charge of the country, guess what? I still love the country. Exactly. Which
1:04:41
brings me to the good. Exactly. Robert Van
1:04:44
Winkle, AKA Vanilla Ice. Ice. Ice,
1:04:48
baby. You win this week, my friend. You win because. What's he say?
1:04:52
He performed at the I love the 90s portion of the celebration. Yeah.
1:04:56
And he basically just said his quote. Shut up and play. Yeah, shut up and
1:04:59
play. I'll play for Putin if that's what you want. I'm playing my music, man.
1:05:02
We're going to have fun. We're going to celebrate the country. Agreed. That's exactly what
1:05:05
should have happened. Agreed. And these artists who think that because they can play an
1:05:08
instrument, they can play some music, they can act on TV or on the stage,
1:05:12
I think you have God given talent that is remarkable. But that
1:05:16
doesn't mean that you understand politics any better than the rest. Right? Right.
1:05:19
And I don't need to hear your opinions on it. I could give a rat's
1:05:22
ass about your opinion unless I ask for it. Right. A
1:05:26
good example of how the country has changed would be
1:05:30
like when you look at presidents who were controversial, like
1:05:34
Lyndon Baines Johnson or Richard M. Nixon,
1:05:38
you would have people who were clearly on the other side of the political
1:05:42
spectrum, like Diana Ross or
1:05:45
Stevie Wonder. They would go and perform at the White House.
1:05:49
And they weren't there to say, nixon's my guy. They were there
1:05:53
to say, we love the country and I respect the office of the President.
1:05:57
The President's asked me to perform and I'm not going to do
1:06:01
it for him. I'm going to do it for the office and
1:06:05
for the country. As they say in the military, salute the man or salute the
1:06:07
rank, not the man. And I'm not going to. You know, Aretha Franklin. You know,
1:06:11
these kinds of people who were great musicians would
1:06:15
just go and do their art and they
1:06:18
weren't using the occasion to chastise
1:06:22
the President. So stupid. All right, well, look, that's your weekly dose of common
1:06:26
sense, at least for now. We
1:06:30
are coming at you right from the middle till next week.