Latest / Common Sense Ohio / Ohio’s Data Center Debate: Tax Breaks, AI, and Community Concerns

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Ohio’s Data Center Debate: Tax Breaks, AI, and Community Concerns · Common Sense Ohio

0:18
All right, here we are. It is common sense. Ohio, flying blind.
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No video today. It's all right. It's okay, man. It's all
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right. So it is June 3rd.
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You know, there's a. There's a movie out I haven't. My sons want to go
0:33
see it. It's about the weatherman on D Day, which is right around the corner.
0:35
Oh, yeah, I want to see that. Yeah, that looks like a pretty good movie.
0:39
I think I'll grab my father, who is still with us on
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the planet, and take him to that movie. Yeah,
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the guy who played Tarzan, Brandon, that actor, they
0:50
say does a great job as Eisenhower. Oh, I bet. Yeah. I mean, it's getting
0:54
great reviews. Yeah. And so I'm looking forward to seeing that.
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Anyway, that is not this day in history, as it turns out, but other things
1:01
happened this day in history. Well, d day
1:04
was June 6th, so. Right around the corner. Yeah. I mean, it's
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kind of pertinent. I don't want to jump the gun. No. But D Day, you
1:12
know, we go, he makes that decision, probably June 5th. Yeah.
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And look, for those who don't know, there was a famous. I say this even
1:19
in my own life. Sometimes somebody's like, what are we doing? I say we go.
1:23
Yeah, that was Eisenhower saying, we're going, we're going tomorrow. I don't. Damn the weather.
1:26
There's a little bit of a clearing. We're going to go. So anyway, Steve,
1:30
let me recommend. So you know the actor Pierce
1:33
Brosnan, former Remington Steele and then James
1:36
Bond. Yes. There is a great D Day movie
1:41
that he stars in. It's called the Last Rifleman
1:45
and it's a true story. It's about this
1:48
British, a veteran who's like
1:52
90 years old and he's in an
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old folks home and the 70th anniversary of
1:59
D Day's coming up and he
2:03
snuck out and all of Britain, like
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all the police, I mean, they contact the French police,
2:11
everybody's looking for him. Right. And they found
2:15
him. And he was able to sort of.
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He was able to sort of weasel his way into
2:25
attending the services before they
2:29
formally arrested him. But it is very touching and
2:32
it's a true story and it's another D Day
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movie that I don't want to ruin the
2:40
plot, but what happens to his unit when they do the flashback scenes
2:44
is just profound. Yeah, there's so much. There's so
2:48
many stories surrounding D Day, you know, yes. And I've
2:51
read some of them, not all of them, and
2:55
it literally chokes me up every time. Like, you dig into that and if you
2:58
let yourself go there, what these guys did and how
3:02
little our current society regards
3:05
or considers what they did. Yeah. Is gross.
3:10
One of the things that happens in the movie, and this won't ruin anything,
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but he. I don't know, his bicycle or whatever he was
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borrowing didn't work, or he needed a ride. And a bus
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full of German veterans from D Day who came in
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for the ceremony gave him a ride,
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and he could not resolve his feelings with him.
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They wanted to befriend him. And he was just like, you
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shot too many of my friends. Like, and it's,
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you know, and who are we to judge that? Well, and instead of making it
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a sweet little Hollywood thing where everybody, like, you
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know, forgives and forgets, it reminds you
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that, you know, this was hugely traumatic for these young men.
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And, you know, you talk to veterans of
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the Japanese battle. The Japanese side of it was even. It's even worse, I think.
4:03
Yeah, that was vicious. There's people from Pearl harbor that just could not meet with
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those pilots. When they would come in, you know, they were like, you
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know, I'm sorry, we can't be friends. I'm sorry. Just
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can't do it. I mean, that's the human side of life, right? Yeah.
4:18
Like you said, Hollywood tends to sort of button those things up in a nice,
4:20
tidy bow. And everybody's warm and fuzzy and everybody gets along and they have,
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you know, whatever. But at the end of the day, it's. Yeah,
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it's. You know, what happened to those people
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was. You know, I'm reading this book right
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now called Guts and Glory, and it's about Hollywood
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and the Pentagon and
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portrayal of war movies. And.
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Yeah, there's this tendency to want to make
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without glorifying war.
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Just the fact that you show heroics
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happen in movies kind of makes
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it easier to convince people to go to war,
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to the public, to support war. And it's an ugly
5:13
thing. There is just nothing. There's nothing
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glorious about it. It's when everything else
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fails that we have war. Yeah, but
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Hollywood's always done that, though. I suppose. It's always done, like, always glorified
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war, probably more so than it does now. What really changed was, like, in the
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mid-60s when they started, you know, when the Vietnam went sour
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and you had, on the one hand, John Wayne making the Green
5:39
Berets. Right. Which showed the positive. But
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then you had, you know, Coming home and, you know,
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the Jane Fonda with her husband, you know,
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falling apart and, you know, the other
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side. Yeah. And then in the 80s, you have all the. There's some of those.
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Vietnam, born on the 4th of July, 4th of July. And what was the other
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one? And that's a true story. And it's pretty ugly.
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Yeah, it's ugly stuff. So anyway, this
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week, a little bit, if I can do the Revolutionary War, I
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had something for that, too. Go ahead. Before we get to there, I wanted to
6:16
at least point out that Grover Cleveland became the first sitting president
6:20
to marry in the White House on June 2, 1886,
6:24
which was yesterday. Wow. It was an interesting trivia. And I did this
6:27
because he's from Ohio. Yeah. His new wife, a young woman
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27 years his junior named Frances Folsom, she
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was the daughter of a former law partner of Cleveland's
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in Cleveland's legal ward. So Cleveland was taking care of her. So his law partner
6:41
dies. Everybody sort of expected Cleveland might hook
6:45
up with his law partner's widow. But no, no, no, no, no, no. He gets
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close to the young daughter and marries her as
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soon as she turned 21 years old. So I never knew that story. Yeah, I'm
6:56
sure there's some controversy there. That is. Wow. That is swimming around
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in the background. But anyway, growing. Robbed the cradle, didn't he? Maybe a little too
7:04
much. I think she was pretty young when he died.
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When she was 11, her father died and Cleveland became her legal guardian,
7:11
remaining close friends with her mother. His pet name for Francis
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was Frank. I mean, look, the whole thing just gets really weird. Yeah. But
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anyway, you had something on the Revolutionary War, but I
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think the Coercive Acts, or Parliament
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completed the Coercive Acts with the Quartering act on this day
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in history or Yesterday in history, 1774.
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So whatever that. Wow. Okay. Well, on this
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day or this week in 1776, so
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250 years ago,
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the ancestor of Robert E. Lee, the
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guy who became superintendent of West Point
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and then, of course, famously commanded the Confederacy,
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the Confederate army, in the Civil War, his
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ancestor Richard Lee was president
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of the Continental Congress. And he moved
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today for a
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Declaration of Independence to be drafted.
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And they appointed a committee this week, 250
8:18
years ago, of Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin,
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John Adams, Roger Sherman, and Robert
8:25
Livingston, those five people, to write
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and draft the Declaration of Independence. And
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I think most people say Thomas Jefferson did most of it
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by candlelight late at night and pored
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over it. But at any rate, gosh,
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a declaration was passed and signed Only a month
8:48
later. So we are in that one month zone.
8:52
The final 30 days of
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America being under,
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like being consenting to be under British rule.
9:03
There's only 30 more days before they declare independence.
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Yeah, I mean, I mean, we're coming up to it. Yeah.
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Well, speaking of which, this, which brings us to the next thing. Like there's all
9:14
these celebrations are supposed to happen. Yes. 50 years
9:18
in. Yes. And it is, of course, and I hate
9:22
Trump. It's all turned into I hate Trump because nobody will
9:25
perform. I mean, listen, people. Yeah, it's the country. Steve,
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do you remember the bicentennial? You were a young man, six years old. I
9:33
remember. Okay. Do you. Now, Gerald Ford, who was
9:37
president then, was not super popular. Like inflation
9:40
was crazy. It got worse under Carter, his successor,
9:44
but he had pardoned Richard Nixon and he was not.
9:48
And of course he was on the, the committee that
9:52
investigated jfk. So there were a lot of negatives about
9:56
Gerald Ford and he had been. There were assassination
9:59
attempts on his life too. So,
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I mean, I remember pretty well. So I was a senior in high school.
10:07
I graduated 50 years ago from high school and
10:11
I remember the bicentennial pretty well. And people are,
10:15
you know, people have kind of forgotten. You know, we came off the Vietnam War
10:19
like society. We were not super pro. This is
10:23
before Reagan. And we were not like super patriotic at that
10:27
time at all. No, it was. Recruitment was down for
10:30
the army post Vietnam. Like it was an ugly time. It
10:34
was very similar time. Maybe it's on the backlash of what we're going through. It
10:37
was like the backlash of what. The functional equivalent of what we're going through now.
10:40
These people hated the country. They were. That's right. You know, there was all the
10:44
young kids who said, that's right, kids. I mean, you know, the college, college age
10:47
kids protesting everything. Yeah. And you know, a lot of
10:51
socialism and communism and all that stuff, the rise of cocaine and disco.
10:55
Like, it was kind of like, it was a weird time. People
10:59
were focusing like on
11:02
sensuality. It was kind of like the decline of the Roman
11:06
Empire or something. You felt like society was cratering.
11:10
But you know what, though? I don't know what a
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six year old would experience or will experience in a
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month. Yes, good question. But the entire year
11:21
I have these. Do I remember vividly? I don't. But I've
11:25
gone back and seen this day and whatever. And I
11:28
remember patriotism, even the
11:32
commercials on tv. People still love
11:36
the country on some level. And now it seems worse.
11:40
People won't even celebrate the country You've got like the Hasan
11:43
pikers out there saying, I feel not patriotic to any, to anything at all, let
11:47
alone this country. It's like, you know what? F you guys get out, leave.
11:51
Right? Leave. What are you going to do? Like, where is it going to be
11:53
better and what are you going to do? Like, I could see, look, we want
11:56
to tweak it here, we want to tweak it there, or we need to get
11:58
back to the fundamentals of our Declaration and really, really dig in.
12:02
But short of that, leave. Yeah, yeah, leave.
12:05
Guess what? Like the utopian world that you think exists, go find it.
12:09
You know, when slavery in this country was
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at its apogee, at its highest
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point, Frederick Douglass, who
12:21
was famously right, an escapee of slavery,
12:25
and later on, befriended Abraham Lincoln
12:29
before the Emancipation Proclamation. He said
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everything that Antifa and Black Lives
12:37
Matter are saying today, he said all that stuff.
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And then one of his advisors
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said, you know, Frederick, you ought to sit down and study the
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Declaration of Independence. You ought to read the words
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and actually digest it rather than just
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focusing on the contradictions and the
13:00
flaws. Look at the founding
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documents and, and see in them what we can use
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to leverage that to free
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Americans, to free the rest of the Americans out of
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slavery and out of poverty. And he did that. And it was
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profoundly. It changed him forever. He did do that.
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And he. Thereafter, in all of his
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speeches and with Abraham Lincoln, when he would meet him at the White House,
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you know, guess who's coming to dinner? The first black guest that would
13:35
sit down with the President for dinner at the White House was
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Frederick Douglass. And
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he used the Declaration of Independence to
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point out to America that there was this inherent contradiction
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and that certainly the Founding Fathers were aware of it
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and laid the groundwork for the change that they
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wanted to happen. Yeah. And Douglas was upset.
14:02
You know, even
14:06
the critics now would say Lincoln was a racist. And
14:10
even though he, like, they were getting it. Right, Right, right. But think what was
14:14
hanging on the balance there? I mean, it wasn't just
14:18
like, it was the country. And Lincoln said, all right, we
14:22
gotta. We're. Lincoln found a way to navigate through both. And it
14:26
started with, we're just not going to add any new slave states. And then
14:30
once he got into it and the war was on, he's like, all right, so
14:32
we'll just issue this Emancipation Proclamation. And that was somewhat
14:35
of a strategic move to try to show.
14:39
To cause an insurgency. To cause an insurgency down south. Right.
14:44
But it was also high minded. It was high minded. He believed it. But
14:48
he was this careful dance because he's losing support up north for the war because
14:51
everybody's getting killed. Right. I mean, it's like there were draft riots in New York
14:55
City. Yeah. It just is. Like, people don't quite understand what
14:59
those guys went through to abolish slavery and what they went through
15:02
initially to found the country despite slavery, not based
15:06
on slavery, but despite it knowing that the problem was coming.
15:10
It was just around the corner at some point, and somehow
15:14
it ended up in Lincoln's lap. And he was the guy at the time, and
15:17
imperfect as he was an incredible leader who got that
15:21
done. And he was meeting with Frederick Douglass, and Douglass eventually sort of came around
15:24
and said, ah, I see what you're doing here. Yeah. And it.
15:28
Really neat history and people whitewashed. You know what it is? Nobody learns it anymore.
15:32
Nobody reads it like you're saying, douglas, go read the damn Declaration of
15:36
Independence and see what it says. Read the Constitution and see what
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it says. Before you say, Mr. Obama, we're gonna fundamentally change our
15:43
country. Read the founding documents to see that. You don't need to change it.
15:47
Right. In fact, the more you change it, the further away from the beginning it
15:50
gets. Right? Right. Or from the intent it gets.
15:54
And what a lot of people do,
15:58
like this piker guy is, okay, let's
16:02
a millionaire, by the way. Right? Yeah. I mean, if you did columns
16:06
like you would. Let's suppose you were comparing
16:09
corporations and doing a due diligence on should
16:13
I buy IBM or should I buy Wang Computers or
16:16
Nvidia, whatever. If you. If you were looking
16:20
at pros and cons, if you did that with America versus
16:24
any other country, we are the best country.
16:28
There's just no question about it. What we've done for
16:32
humanity in terms of saving lives
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and medical advancements and
16:39
just our contributions to the United nations and
16:42
to charities. It's anecdotal, but you never
16:46
hear. Every now and then you hear people threatening to leave, but they rarely do.
16:50
And it's almost the opposite. Everybody wants to come here. Exactly. You
16:54
know. Right. And when they leave, they want to come back. Like Rosie o'.
16:57
Donnell. Yeah, that's right. You know, because, look, I'm not saying it sucks
17:01
everywhere else, but they don't know what they're. They don't know what they don't have.
17:04
Right. They don't understand what they don't have. And Americans don't know the water we're
17:07
swimming in. Yeah. Like, we've done a dive into this. And some of these sort
17:10
of. Even the Pseudo, like the Scandinavian pseudo socialist countries. Yeah. Like, you have
17:14
your life laid out for you in advance there. You know, your careers aren't just
17:17
what you want to do. Yeah. The top Brit entertainers, like, their
17:20
taxes are like 90% income tax.
17:24
And other than Elton John, almost all the
17:28
Brits, you know, all the U2 guys and all these guys,
17:32
they all become, you know,
17:35
expats of Great Britain because, you know, in
17:39
spite of their, you know, anti American sentiment,
17:43
they know that they. That's unsustainable for them.
17:47
So they all bail in spite of like, oh,
17:51
this is the best system over here. That's right. And this is probably.
17:55
I was going to make it my bad of the week or whatever, but. Yeah.
17:58
Bernie Sanders, did you hear his speech out there? Unbelievable. Talking about
18:01
a government takeover of AI. Yeah. He's just
18:05
not going to be a tax, though. We're just going to take their stock, we're
18:08
going to take their stuff. We're going to take the company that you found,
18:12
Norm. Right. Bernie says I can run it better.
18:16
I'll nationalize it. I'll nationalize it. Yeah, just take it. The
18:19
people. Yeah, just take like Maduro did with oil companies in
18:23
Venezuela. Well, how did that turn out? I haven't heard Rogan talking about we should
18:26
just have the government take over oil company. Yeah. Just look at, like, what could
18:29
go wrong? Yeah. What's up? The government, like, when's the last time the government ran
18:33
an AI company? The government came and run the damn Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Right.
18:36
Efficiently. I mean, look at Italy. They took over Fiat and
18:40
ran that into the ground and Fiat
18:44
is bankrupt and has to be bailed out. And
18:48
isn't that, I mean, look, isn't that.
18:52
Now I'm really curious what your thoughts are on this, because everybody thinks
18:56
that fascism is this far right movement. Yeah,
19:00
it's not. It's usually not. That's for sure. I
19:04
guess it's all about definitions, but historically, it's a
19:07
form of communism that just nationalizes private industry
19:12
and keeps the private oligarchs in charge. So what is Bernie's
19:15
plan? This sounds a lot like fascism to me. The government to take
19:20
half the stock shares and what are they going to say, you guys run it?
19:23
Which is really just to say we're a fascist government. Or am I missing
19:27
something? And Bernie and Mom Dahme are on the same
19:30
page when it comes to New York City apartment
19:34
properties. Mamdani said to landlords, hey,
19:38
if we think you're not running your apartment buildings right, we'll Just take it.
19:41
We're taking them even worse, though, and we're going to give them, like, to, you
19:45
know, nonprofits, or we're going to run them ourselves. But we're going to take
19:49
your property. But they're not just going to take it. They're going to make it
19:52
so you can't run it. And so here's what's going on. They put
19:56
rent controls in, so the government says you can only charge so much for rent.
19:59
Right. And look, you run a business, so you defer maintenance
20:03
because you don't have enough. You can't fix it. You can't make money and fix
20:06
the building. So I have a building here, I rent it out, and I have
20:10
to do one of two things. When I have a big improvement that has to
20:12
be made. Not, not improves, not even the right word. I would call it a
20:15
repair. Yeah. Got to do the parking lot this year, guys. Put a new roof.
20:18
Got to do the roof. Yeah. These are $50,000 proposition. Sure. Exactly. You know,
20:22
if you scale this up to 50 million, it's the same math. Yeah. And if
20:25
the government says I'm not allowed to raise the rent of my tenants, one
20:29
of two things is going to happen, right? I'm just, you know, I'm either going
20:31
to spend my own money and not get it back, or maybe I don't
20:35
have the money and I can't fix it because if I'm not allowed to raise
20:39
the rents to recoup some of that cost, if not all that cost, then the
20:42
things doesn't get fixed. And then the tenants say, well, look, my space is
20:45
wet. This is unhabitable. I'm calling city hall. I'm calling city hall because
20:49
Dami said, if you don't fix my place, then you have
20:53
to. So then the government says you have to fix it. And I'm saying, I
20:57
don't make money. Well, that's okay. We're going to take it. In other words, the
21:00
government is creating a scenario that sets it up
21:04
so they can and will take over this property.
21:08
This playbook is as old as Marx himself, right? And
21:11
then they criticize capitalism and they say, well, look, it doesn't
21:15
work. Private property ownership doesn't work. These are
21:18
slumlords. You're the ones that are causing it not to work. That's right. It's
21:22
lunacy. It's lunacy. Utter lunacy. And you know, and
21:26
here's the other part of this that nobody will ever get their head around. If
21:29
somebody came to me in my building and this has happened over the years. Look,
21:32
having some Covid years for sure. Having some tough times,
21:37
can I skip a month or can I do? And I say sure, yeah, right,
21:41
sure. I'm totally cool with that. Yeah. Now I'm not saying because we're all hurting,
21:45
but because I understand that this is a good tenant
21:48
who has otherwise paid the rent. Right. For five years. Right.
21:53
And the problem, the issue
21:56
of me saying no, you have to do it, blah, blah, blah, and I don't
21:59
collect anything and then I have to start over and get a different tenant and
22:01
that becomes. That's baked into my equation already. I don't need the
22:05
government to tell me how to do this. And because of that, and if
22:09
the government comes in and says, look, you just can't ever raise rents,
22:12
I don't have the margin. When somebody says they need help.
22:17
Steve, if I recall right, during COVID didn't they also,
22:22
I think the Biden administration, Housing and Urban Development,
22:26
they forbid evictions, didn't they? You couldn't evict. You
22:29
couldn't have these guys like, it's like now business wise, you probably could have but
22:33
a personal, like family evict. You
22:37
couldn't evict people. No. Even I think businesses. I don't think I was allowed, I
22:40
think the eviction actions and then maybe not in Ohio, but in lots of big,
22:43
in the, in the blue states for sure. Eviction actions, even businesses were state.
22:46
Wow. I couldn't have evicted people not paying my rent. Wow. And
22:50
that's incredible. I would have to go to the bank and say, look guys, I
22:53
need a reprieve on my mortgage because they won't let me evict these people who
22:56
aren't paying their rent. I mean, it was a disaster. Yeah, things roll downhill
22:59
then. It's like I said, anybody who's ever tried to build a perfect
23:03
picture frame in 45 degrees, if you start shaving off one to
23:07
fix the other, it just, it ends up a disaster. As soon as the government
23:10
puts its thumb on that scale, tries to fix a for
23:14
an ill fitting 45 degree angle, then everything
23:17
else gets thrown out of whack and it all blows up. Yeah, yeah,
23:23
we're seeing this happen. Like the returns were coming
23:26
in last night for the primaries out in
23:30
California. And we're seeing this very debate you're talking
23:34
about between private ownership and
23:38
what is the role of government when it comes to maintaining the
23:42
basic services. And you're seeing that whole debate with this mayor
23:46
oil race Los Angeles.
23:49
And so I'm very heartened. With
23:52
57% of the votes counted so far,
23:57
believe it or not, Spencer Pratt looks like he's
24:00
gonna make the runoffs and he'll face Karen Bass.
24:05
Cause right now, he's in second place. How much of
24:08
that is counted? 57%. Okay, so I'm seeing one that
24:12
says. With roughly 63% of the vote. So the little moreness now. Bass
24:16
led the field with 35ish percent. He's at 34.8.
24:20
Okay. And Pratt was running second at 30.4,
24:24
which is just awesome for a guy. He's not even really a Republican, I
24:27
guess, but he's got. He can't run as a Republican, so he's running
24:31
as an independent for a guy with his ideas. Yeah, but he's great. But
24:35
he's clearly, you know, hey, let's. The government
24:38
has a role. It's essential services.
24:43
Streets, homelessness, fire, you know,
24:46
police do the big basic things
24:50
that we all expect of government. But free
24:54
needle programs and it's lunacy. What are you doing?
24:58
Bill Maher interviewed Spencer Pratt, and Bill Maher's got his
25:02
moments of realizing that the truth. But
25:06
sometimes he's still on cloud nine. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, he was interviewing Pratt,
25:10
and he was asking Pratt about climate control or some.
25:13
Some environmental stuff or. What was he saying? Something about the environment.
25:18
And I wish I could remember what it was, but I can't. And Pratt's like,
25:21
I don't know anything about that. Yeah. And Mars like, well, you're going to be
25:24
garbage. And, you know, or you're going to be a mayor. Pratt just looks at
25:27
me, goes, look, we can't even do the basics right. We
25:31
have. I can't walk out without getting stabbed with a needle. My house is
25:35
burned down, and I can't rebuild it. Like, he just says, look, I
25:38
always say, this is my saying, like, Germany first. We're gonna take care of these
25:41
problems first. Yeah. And then maybe on my second term, I'll deal with that stuff.
25:44
But for now, let's get the trains running at least close to on time.
25:48
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, and Maher just sat there and was like, all right,
25:52
good point. You know, it's like, of course, because these people are worrying about, like,
25:55
global warming while the houses are burning down.
25:59
It's so Cincinnati. A good
26:03
example. This one always blows me away. And, of course, countries are doing
26:06
this to our own Navy. But Cincinnati, Ohio, the city
26:10
council, when it got, you know, dominated by
26:14
crazy lefties, passed this ordinance. I mean,
26:18
so the city's falling apart. Downtown Cincinnati is not a place where
26:22
you want to go and casually walk around at night because
26:26
you're going to get assaulted. It's become really bad.
26:29
And, you know, so people after a Reds game, for example, would
26:33
collect on Fountain Square, you know, celebrate, eat a hot
26:37
dog, watch fireworks, you know, kind of hang out. There's usually some outdoor entertainment going
26:40
on. Yeah, outdoor. And you just can't do that anymore.
26:44
And so. But. But city council had the time to pass an
26:48
ordinance that said no defense
26:52
ordinance of a nuclear nature can pass
26:56
through the city of Cincinnati on our highways. And you're like, well,
26:59
not only does that violate all kinds of interstate commerce, but.
27:03
But how do you have time to address the
27:07
nuclear arsenal of the United States of America?
27:10
Defense Department. When you're running the city of Cincinnati,
27:14
you're not even taking care of the basics. Yeah, they're addressing the laws. This is
27:17
what Spencer Pratt is talking about. Yeah. He's like, listen, guys, let's do the main
27:21
thing. We don't have water. Yes. Right. We don't have water to fight fires. And
27:24
you want me to worry about some existential threat that might. It's like, listen, let's
27:28
do the easy stuff. We got people defecating all over the streets, and
27:32
kids can't play in the municipal playgrounds in LA.
27:35
MacArthur park is trashed. You can't walk around
27:39
or throw Frisbee. You're gonna step on needles and die
27:43
of fentanyl poisoning. And then I see these people interviewed, and they're gonna vote for
27:46
Karen Bass. Why? Because she's black. And look, I could care less what
27:50
color her skin color. I don't care about her melatonin one way or another. Because
27:54
there's plenty of white folks who screw up just
27:58
as bad as her and black folks who do better than anybody else.
28:01
It doesn't make any difference to me. No, it just. Who is gonna fix the
28:05
problems? Actually, you don't have to fix the problems. Just stop trying to
28:09
manipulate the rest of the crap that you're manipulating. And these problems
28:13
tend to iron themselves out on their own. Right now,
28:16
there's a Democrat mayor of San Francisco, and he has
28:20
really started to turn that city around. And. And it's
28:24
because, you know, the previous mayor was
28:28
a nut. And just whether it's a Democrat
28:32
or Republican, if you get somebody in office
28:35
that wants to take care of the basic responsibilities
28:39
of running that city, they can do a pretty good job
28:43
if they focus on that. And so here you've
28:47
got a Democrat mayor in San Francisco doing a halfway
28:50
decent job, and that's fine with me. It
28:54
doesn't have to be a Republican. No, it doesn't. Look, Trump
28:58
is a perfect example. I mean, he was a Democrat, basically.
29:02
He didn't ride this crazy bus these people are going off on. Yeah.
29:06
Ed Koch, who was Democrat mayor in New York City, did a pretty good
29:10
job. Did a decent job. Right. I mean, anyway.
29:15
But the other big story in California on these returns is, is
29:19
Steve Hilton is number one in the governor
29:22
returns. Now, it's only 28%, but the
29:26
second place guy, this Xavier Becerra, has
29:29
25%. Tom Steyer, the multi billionaire
29:33
that spent like 200 million on this primary so far of his own
29:37
money, only has. He's in third at 20%, which
29:41
means he will not be a finalist if he stays third.
29:44
So it'll come down to Hilton and Becerra if these returns
29:49
stay at the same percentages that they are now, which is.
29:54
You got Steve Hilton, a Republican. Like, it's been.
29:58
Who was it? Pete? I'm trying to think of Pete Wilson, I think
30:02
was the last Republican, or no, Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he
30:05
was a rhino. Backlash coming. Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, it
30:09
has to. This can't last. No, Anybody who opens their eyes and looks down, they
30:13
see the mess. Yeah. So anyway. Well, anyway,
30:16
it heartens me. California could be a paradise
30:20
again. It could be what the Beach Boys always sang about.
30:24
It could be instead of a net
30:28
population loss, which has
30:31
happened for the first time in California history under Gavin Newsom,
30:36
where more people. I mean, you couldn't get a rental
30:39
truck in California because they had all left, you know,
30:43
so it would be nice to see it revert back.
30:47
But so much industry has left California now. I
30:51
don't think it'll ever quite be the same, but they can fix that
30:54
state. But now is the
30:58
time is nigh to do it because I think any more
31:02
slippage and it might really just turn into,
31:06
well, New Jersey or something, you know, where,
31:09
by the way, the ICE protests in New Jersey
31:13
are just out of control. Yeah. Where did this come from? I mean, you've got
31:17
this governor, this Mikey Sherrill, who's
31:21
supposedly, you know, a veteran. Like, she ought
31:24
to know better. And she's running New Jersey
31:28
now for six months she's been in office and she's saying all these
31:31
contradictory things that, well, ICE is the Gestapo and they're
31:35
Nazis and everywhere ICE goes, there's violence, and it's violence
31:39
because of ice. And ICE is just like. No,
31:42
actually, come in. Look at this facility. Delaney
31:46
hall in New Jersey. Yeah, they denied all this. We're feeding them
31:50
three squares. You can come spend the night, we'll put you up, you know,
31:53
like we have nothing to hide. And like you're creating
31:57
this fiction, like, where's all this? And these people
32:01
are mainly from out of New Jersey that have been bussed and flown
32:04
in. And clearly they are
32:08
professional communist agitators. That's what's going
32:11
on. That's what's going on. And people are
32:15
increasingly aware of this and they're starting to call
32:19
it out and people are just, they're sick of this.
32:23
What happened in Minnesota, what happened in la,
32:27
the same contingent of people causing these problems,
32:31
Soros backed. You know,
32:35
basically, it's just chaos. It's like they want to tear down our
32:39
society, they want to ruin the country. And it's been going on now for years.
32:42
Yeah, we're finally sort of seeing it. I think you
32:46
always say you're on the brink of this huge. Something's got to give.
32:49
Something's got to give. We are on the brink of like it's either going to
32:52
tip over the edge and we just go full on socialist, communist
32:56
or there's a fight back. I mean, and part of that is,
33:00
Steve, part of that is also
33:05
we have to secure honest
33:09
voting. And in Ohio, you may have heard of this,
33:13
because nationally the Save America
33:17
act seems to be stuck. And it's been passed three times by the
33:20
House and three times the Senate has not moved the ball.
33:24
And all it is is basically a requirement for voter ID
33:28
and proof of citizenship. Those two things. Anything
33:32
by any other name with any other president at any other time would be taken
33:35
as a matter of course. Yeah, so what's happened in Ohio is Matt
33:39
Huffman, speaker of the House, is
33:43
drafting a constitutional amendment
33:46
which will emanate from the House to be voted on by the public
33:50
on, on the ballot in November to
33:54
emplace in the Ohio Constitution voter ID
33:58
and proof of citizenship. So, okay,
34:02
if we're not gonna do this nationally, you know, even
34:06
better. I mean, I'm totally in favor of this. I'd love all 50 states
34:10
to do this at the state level, because then it would.
34:13
Rather than just the Save America act can really only
34:17
do this for 50. Federal election. In theory, it's only federal elections.
34:21
And if you do it at the state level, well, man, now that's,
34:25
it's locked in. And anybody who disagrees with this, I've not heard a
34:29
rational argument against this. I've not. Yeah, but I mean,
34:33
if we're Going to turn the country around.
34:37
Let's do it. Honestly. Let's have only American
34:41
citizens voting for these candidates.
34:45
We can. You know, Mamdani, people say, well, how do you get
34:48
elected? New York City permits non US
34:52
citizens to vote in local elections. So you have,
34:56
I don't know, roughly. I think they're saying roughly
34:59
15% of New York City's population are
35:02
non Americans. They get to vote on who the mayor
35:06
is instead of just American citizens.
35:10
New York law allows non citizens to vote in
35:14
local elections. That's outrageous.
35:17
It makes zero sense. You can't go on vacation
35:21
in France and vote in their election. It's just giving away. But
35:25
French people can come here and vote. You're giving the keys of the kingdom away?
35:28
Just giving it away. I think we
35:32
should talk about this. This is right up your alley, Steve. And
35:36
you're so busy practicing law. I don't know if you've heard about this
35:40
House Bill 667, right. This is in the state of Ohio.
35:45
They're talking about watering
35:48
down. Actually, it's a reversal of something they call tcap,
35:52
which I'm sure you could just lecture us
35:56
here for hours about this. But that's called Targeted Community
36:00
Alternatives to Prison, where fourth and fifth
36:04
nonviolent felony violators. You
36:08
know, things like defrauding the government
36:12
on an application, say for
36:15
edchoice. Like you get online and
36:19
pretend that you're your relative
36:23
and really you're the mother of somebody who's trying to get an
36:26
ED Choice benefit for a school district.
36:30
So you fake that you get busted, okay, that's a
36:33
felony. But what they've done
36:37
is in this bill, if it
36:41
passes, it would say that if you have
36:44
two priors or if you
36:48
have a felony during the pendency of a trial,
36:52
a second felony. So if you have two fourth or fifth
36:56
degree felonies that you have to go to state prison, and
37:00
instead of going to a municipal county or a workhouse
37:03
facility, a local, less expensive, less
37:07
onerous, perhaps kind of incarceration
37:10
or some other kind of program. So I'm
37:14
not sure why they're doing this, but it's like they're harshing on
37:18
people in this TCAP program that I'm sure many of your clients
37:22
have been able to go to, that instead of the big house,
37:26
has worked successfully for like the last 10 years since they brought
37:30
it in. Yeah, I mean, and it seems stupid to me that if they would
37:34
pass this. I think. Here's
37:38
my take on this. Anything that
37:42
typically what happens is the general Assembly Gets involved,
37:46
meaning the legislative branch. And they get involved because
37:51
they don't like the sentences that trial courts are
37:54
dishing out. Yeah. And at times that has been because the sentences
37:58
are too harsh. At times it's because they have not been harsh enough. It just
38:01
depends on which way the tide is flowing. Yeah. And I
38:05
have sort of found that the more the General assembly tries to tweak that
38:08
and reign in judges, we being lawyers.
38:13
Human lawyers. Judges. Human judges.
38:17
We immediately find the workarounds. Yeah. We start doing other things. So, for
38:20
instance, and even prosecutors. Prosecutors will do this. Right.
38:24
Because you and I have a case. You're a prosecutor, I'm a defense lawyer. We
38:27
have a case and say we'll take it out of TCAP for a second. We'll
38:30
make it like a sex abuse case. Okay. But it's a case where maybe a
38:33
17 year old had sex with a six something. Yeah.
38:37
Not a case where you would think that person should be on the sexual predator
38:41
list. Okay. And I know there's people out there thinking, well, they all should
38:44
be, but I'm telling you, they all not. The predator list is a special
38:48
list that was designed for special people, meaning not so special people. Yeah.
38:52
And a lot of times the dragnet catches people just because the General
38:56
assembly says everybody convicted of these crimes has to be on a sex offender registry.
39:00
And they make it less and less discretionary and more and more mandatory
39:04
for judges. But you and I know this as prosecutors and we know that what's
39:07
really going on. Or maybe there's a proof problem. Maybe you have an issue proving
39:10
your case. And I come to you and I say, look, Norm,
39:14
I'm going to trial and you're going to have to put your victim on the
39:17
witness stand. We're going to have this brutal drag out fight and you could lose
39:22
because my client doesn't want to eat. A sex offense
39:26
that is non expungeable can never be off his record and
39:30
he's going to be on a sex offender registry for say, 25 years. Yeah.
39:34
And maybe his girlfriend won't testify. The minor girl. So you
39:38
say, well, look, all right, we'll make it a misdemeanor or we'll make it a
39:41
non sex offense felony, whatever. So you can avoid the registry, clean up your guy's
39:45
record later. But it's also a case that but for that registry, my guy
39:49
might have pled to a sex offense that wouldn't be expungeable. Yeah. In
39:52
other words, you're losing more than you're gaining with a Lot of these things. Yeah.
39:56
And these are like the real life things that we horse trade
40:00
in the trenches. Yeah. And a lot of cases go to trial. They
40:04
probably wouldn't have to because of things like this. I'm not saying TCAP is like
40:07
that. Yeah. But generally speaking, if a trial judge wants
40:11
to impose some sort of community or local sanction, let them.
40:15
Yeah, let them. Yeah. Don't think that, you know,
40:18
up on Capitol Square, what it's going to be like in Jackson County, Ohio. The
40:22
individual facts really matter. Right. Because you're dealing with
40:26
human beings and, you know, we're not all the same.
40:29
And somebody's background, they may have some merit,
40:34
where a little mercy is perhaps entitled to
40:37
this person. Or it's a good idea. And it's not always,
40:41
as I always say, and you said it earlier, our system isn't
40:45
perfect. It's only the best. Yeah, right, right, right,
40:49
right. That's my motto on this stuff. It's not gonna be perfect.
40:52
It's never gonna be perfect. Tweak it here and that. You're never gonna make it
40:55
perfect. And that's how I look at our candidates, too. Like, okay,
40:58
Spencer Pratt, Steve Hilton, Donald Trump. None of these
41:02
guys are perfect. But the
41:06
alternative is what? Kamala Harris, Hillary Kelp. That's right.
41:09
So you hear these guys? You hear these? I'll call them the Nouveau.
41:13
Right. The Tuckers, the Candace Owens. Yeah. They want perfection.
41:17
And even Megyn Kelly. What do they want? Would they go back
41:21
and vote for Kamala Harris? Are you kidding me? Right? Where would we be
41:26
in the world? Exactly. It might have been unrecoverable.
41:30
Yeah. So, I mean, I put up with, you know, I
41:33
mean, gosh, it would be an
41:37
imperfect description of me to call myself a Trump supporter.
41:42
I'm a supporter of most of his policies, but, yeah,
41:45
of course I hold my nose when he insults people at
41:49
a personal level. I find that distasteful. Or
41:53
he makes fun of somebody and I cringe. But
41:57
again, if Hillary or Kamala were
42:01
in office, or Joe Biden, God forbid. It's like
42:05
I'm reading the Old Testament right now, this Bible in a Year podcast with Father
42:08
Mike Schmitz. Okay, cool. I never really have. When I was a
42:12
kid, maybe in college, I took Old Testament, but not like I'm studying it now.
42:16
That's very cool. I hear he's great. I have.
42:19
Not really good you've done any of his podcasts. But I've heard it.
42:23
It's really good. I mean, look, it's good and bad it's good in the sense
42:26
that you can get bite sized chunks of complicated
42:31
reading done and I do it on the way into work every day.
42:35
And that's good. It's bad in that I like
42:39
to dig deeper and deeper and deeper. And Sometimes in the 20 minute
42:43
segment we have, he doesn't do that. Not that he can't do it, but that's
42:46
a different. Well. And you know, the Catholic philosophy about the
42:50
Bible is that it's allegorical, it's illustrative.
42:55
So I'm Catholic. The Catholics, for example, don't get all
42:58
bollocks up that like
43:03
in the four Gospels, we don't look for the
43:07
contradictions and then get. We're like,
43:11
okay, yeah, it's not a perfect rendition. And this
43:14
book is different than that book in certain details.
43:19
So Father Mike might be skimming over some of those things
43:22
and it may intrigue you to try to be because you're
43:26
very fact based and you might want
43:29
further explanation and he's probably not going to. I like the more
43:33
metaphorical. I like to really dive in to see how it fits. See
43:37
how it fits in today's world. How does that inform how I live my life?
43:40
That's more the Catholic attitude. And I was a
43:44
Presbyterian. It's like I always look into that. But anyway. Whereas the
43:48
Baptists are very literal. Very literal. And you can't always be literal. And the Bible's
43:51
at times literal. The Bible at times is not on the third day and then.
43:55
And I'm not making fun of particularly when you get to like these, you know,
43:59
all the Old Testament covenant stuff. All the rules and all the stuff.
44:03
Yeah. Shellfish and can't eat. How big the temple is going to
44:07
be, how big the ark, like all that stuff. But what's interesting to me is
44:11
we're going as he goes through the kings. Okay. I mean even
44:14
going way back, like David did phenomenal stuff.
44:18
Screwed up his personal life in certain ways. I mean, you talk about a
44:22
trump, right? Yeah. I mean an egotistical Solomon,
44:26
multiple cheating on wisest man ever. But like
44:30
these flaws, it's like you can be good and bad and everybody
44:33
is right. We're all human. Nobody's perfect. Right. And so. But
44:37
you don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. And
44:42
that's what people are doing. They were great kings. Yeah. But
44:46
flawed people. They were flawed. Yep. And didn't
44:50
always follow what God told him to do and was punished greatly for it in
44:53
certain things. That's exactly right. And those lessons I've Never really
44:57
pondered and how relevant that is today with what
45:00
we're witnessing. And it makes me wonder, you know, the
45:04
modern abandonment of any religion, Christianity or
45:07
whatever, people can
45:11
judge without any context based on what?
45:15
Whatever they want, whatever their compass is pointing them at that day. They can judge
45:19
without any context, and it gives them this
45:22
sort of redemption without all the hard stuff
45:26
of living within the bumpers.
45:31
And I think that's where we are. People say, well, Trump said this. Like
45:34
you're just saying, you hold your nose. They're not willing to do that. Trump said
45:37
this. So I hate him for everything else he does. But really what they're doing
45:39
is they're pushing their own agenda, whether they know it or not, and they're just
45:42
saying, I hate Trump. It's sort of fascinating to me.
45:46
Isn't the best part of Christianity, Steve? I mean, the best
45:49
part. So as a sinner, I say this. The best part
45:53
about Christianity is the redemptive quality
45:57
of the religion, that you're not permanently
46:00
damned. If you still have some life left in your
46:04
breast, you can ask for forgiveness.
46:08
Maybe even beyond. We don't know. We don't know. But isn't
46:11
it great to know that
46:15
at any time, up until possibly
46:19
death, and like you say, maybe beyond, but at any time,
46:23
you can say to God, please forgive
46:27
me. What's going on? Helping. Yeah, I'm out of control.
46:31
I'm sorry for hurting these people or those people,
46:35
you know, please forgive me. I want to change. And yes, you're going to
46:38
fall down again and again, even after that. But you know what? That does. I
46:42
mean, I didn't mean to, but that's the best part of Christianity,
46:45
Christianity rally. But
46:49
it in almost. Well, that's the basis of our country. That's right.
46:53
It imperceptibly, yes, motivates me
46:57
to abandon the things. It doesn't happen overnight,
47:01
but this slow path towards not where we start, but where we
47:04
end. So if I find myself going down rabbit
47:08
holes on the Internet that aren't good, a light bulb will come on and say,
47:11
what am I doing? And is this something that Christ would approve of? Or is
47:14
this something that. And that doesn't mean I always stop, but it means I start
47:17
thinking about it. If you start thinking about it, then all of a sudden the
47:20
algorithms change because you're not looking at the same stuff on the Internet because you're
47:23
trying to be conscious of not to. And then all of a sudden you're not
47:26
fed the same crap. It's really remarkable how just that
47:30
belief can steer your life in a positive direction.
47:34
Not straight line, but in sort of this positive direction, hopefully
47:37
towards what God would want. Yeah.
47:41
And I love talking about the founding of the country
47:45
and the Declaration of Independence, mentioning God and
47:49
the Creator, you know, several times in the
47:53
document. And then you look at things like, as our
47:56
society has evolved, you look at things like the parole system.
48:01
And it is about redemption, it is about forgiveness. In a
48:04
way. There is Christianity, the
48:08
ethics, the mores of
48:11
Christianity are imbued in how our
48:15
country and how our government was set up and
48:19
continues to evolve. And when you lose
48:22
the religious foundations in our society,
48:26
then you kind of lose the rationale for why we have
48:29
parole. And you start rolling out
48:33
mandatory sentences like,
48:37
oh, if this person commits that crime, we cut their hand off
48:41
or we tie their tubes so they can't have
48:44
any babies anymore. Or we do something that's almost
48:48
like irreversible. But
48:52
that's when we lose ourselves as a people. We lose our
48:56
humanity. Yeah. Become unmoored from any moral
48:59
foundation. Any moral foundation. And that is the problem.
49:03
That is the problem. And really
49:07
laws, at the end of the day, when you say, well, what
49:11
is the philosophy behind a law? Like
49:15
we have laws against, you know, you can't
49:18
slaughter other people, you can't kill other people.
49:22
Well, unless you have a Ten Commandments or unless you
49:26
have some kind of moral code that says you can't kill people, why
49:29
would you have a law that says you can't kill people? That's right. And this
49:32
is like anytime you, I mean, where do people think that came from?
49:36
It came from morality. Anytime you debate with people on this, they always,
49:40
they always get tongue tied because there is like, where are the laws coming from?
49:43
Where is it? Yes. And we had this discussion, I think last week,
49:48
we had somebody who was the congressman
49:52
arguing, making fun of somebody who said our
49:55
constitutional rights came from God. Yeah. Right. If they
49:58
don't. Yeah. It was Mike Johnson giving a speech. Yeah. If
50:02
they don't come from God, then we can take them away. Way
50:06
exactly right. The purpose of our founding was to say these come
50:10
from God, don't touch it. We hold these truths to be self evident. Yes.
50:14
Don't touch it. It's beyond our human control. And the only thing we're
50:18
doing here with this document is protecting those things that otherwise come from God. Yeah.
50:21
And if we somehow
50:25
conflate those two things into one, that we create the rights
50:29
because we are moral do gooders that know better,
50:33
then I get to decide on an ad hoc, on a Case by case basis,
50:37
when somebody doesn't get those right. Look, Norm, the environment's too important, so
50:40
you have to go to jail or this is too much. I think that this
50:43
is the bigger. Bernie Sanders thinks that AI is not
50:47
good. So guess what? We're just going to take your property, even though you have
50:50
an inalienable right to property. So it's like, where is that?
50:56
How do they address that? Yeah, it's always another
51:00
existential threat or inequality or
51:03
some other huge undefinable problem that they throw in front of you that would
51:07
justify them taking rights away. You know the most
51:11
exciting thing. Jump off my soapbox. No, no, but no. I love
51:14
this thread. The most exciting thing to me about studying
51:19
the founding of the country is Thomas Jefferson
51:22
and these other writers,
51:26
they were coming off the movement in Europe called the
51:30
Enlightenment. And that's where the
51:33
fusion of science with Christianity,
51:37
where it came together. And rather
51:41
than it being like a Martin Luther rejection
51:46
of the old time religion, the Enlightenment,
51:50
people like Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Francis Bacon,
51:54
John Locke, the people in Europe that
51:58
were really the founders of the Enlightenment movement,
52:02
and people like Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin that were
52:05
fusing the idea of the people
52:09
having these rights bestowed by God, but yet
52:12
having a rational system where we wouldn't tell you what kind
52:16
of religion you had to have.
52:20
That's where it came together and that's where all of these contradictions
52:24
about slavery were built into the Declaration.
52:28
And they weren't saying no religion.
52:32
Absolutely. They were just saying, we're not going to dictate to you. Yes. And
52:35
we're not going to adopt a religion as a national
52:39
matter like England had done. And we're not going to give
52:43
the quote, call it Catholic, whatever
52:47
religion the government adopts, Calvinism, whatever you want to talk about, whatever
52:51
the government adopts, we're not going to give them like, like it was in medieval
52:53
times, like carte blanc over libraries and books. And whether you could
52:57
go, if you're Copernicus and whether you could study the heavens or
53:01
Galileo, Galileo,
53:04
we're not going to do that. But we're going to grab from that all
53:08
the ideals that it has. That's right. And we're going to
53:12
bake that into our cake. Really genius, you know, and
53:16
you take somebody like Sir Isaac Newton. So
53:20
here's the guy that gave us the basic laws of physics.
53:23
Right. And nothing could be more rational, nothing could be
53:27
more scientifically based. But what a lot of people don't know about Sir
53:31
Isaac Newton is the other side
53:35
of his great Intellect was devoted to dissecting the
53:39
Bible and looking for patterns, scientific patterns even
53:43
for, for the Bible. Like he was
53:47
trying to do AI on the Bible before there was
53:51
AI and looking for
53:55
what kind of patterns do we see in
53:58
Christianity that I can then apply
54:01
scientifically to the rest of reality.
54:05
And yeah, okay, he didn't
54:09
come up with those kinds of, if you will, formulas
54:14
for the Bible, but he looked for them. And this is a rational
54:17
person like Thomas Jefferson who, you know, sent
54:21
Lewis and Clark out west because he wanted to know every critter,
54:25
every plant, every Indian tribe where all the
54:28
rivers flowed. He was interested in reality
54:32
and he was interested in data. He wanted information
54:36
for those who have rejected that. Who rejected what you're
54:39
calling that fusion of Christianity and science and learning and everything else. Yeah, that's where
54:43
it's at, man. Even Einstein famously said that was his
54:47
greatest regret. It's like he tweaked his formula because he didn't want it to lead
54:51
to some creation moment. I don't know. You signed. I'm not looking at the.
54:54
You scientists out there will know this better than I. But he regretted that he
54:58
tweaked his formula and he changed things because he didn't want the conclusion that maybe
55:01
there's God and it. I'm not saying there, I'm
55:05
not, I'm not saying he believed, I'm not saying he didn't believe. But the
55:09
idea is this open minded exploration and those who would reject
55:12
God automatically come with a closed mind. I would much rather have them
55:16
say I don't know. Oh yeah, agnosticism is at least
55:20
an honest. Because that is norm what led me to Christ.
55:23
Yeah, because I didn't know. I didn't know. And at the end of the day,
55:27
there's a leap of faith at the end either way. And I didn't know for
55:30
sure until I got to the end, but if you block it out
55:34
the entire time, you'll never get there.
55:38
Switching topics. Yep, this is a good time. Last
55:41
week I was talking about that I thought
55:45
Vivek Ramaswamys running for governor of Ohio needed
55:49
to come up with a data center
55:53
position that would resolve this anger. And
55:56
in red hot, red maga country, the
56:00
rural part of Ohio where, let's face
56:04
it, that's where they're putting these 225 and
56:07
growing number of data centers. And
56:11
just this week Governor DeWine, whom I've had a
56:14
lot of disagreements with, of all people, may be
56:18
pulling the coals out of the fire
56:22
for Vivek. So what he has done. DeWine, just this
56:26
past week, after the first meeting of the Data
56:29
Center Task Force committee
56:32
investigating that, there came testimony that
56:36
Ohio's sales tax exemption for
56:40
data centers, meaning all the steel roofing,
56:44
air conditioning, piping, excavating,
56:47
all of the stuff and the labor that they're
56:51
buying to build these data centers, they got sales tax
56:55
exemptions for that, haven't paid a penny in
56:58
sales tax for all this stuff to build these data
57:02
centers. And Ohio has missed out. The
57:06
Department of Tax reported to this committee that that
57:09
sales tax exemption, instead of
57:13
being $160 million, if you will,
57:17
assistance to data center industry, it's cost
57:21
$1.5 billion
57:25
worth of losses to the state of Ohio.
57:29
So by a factor of what would that be? 10.
57:33
They are off so far in their estimate.
57:37
And so Governor DeWine has suspended any future
57:41
sales tax exemptions for data centers.
57:45
For new program for new data centers being
57:49
built right now, they will not get a sales tax
57:53
exemption. And it's the first time
57:56
I've seen Ohio's command
58:00
structure, meaning the governor or the legislature
58:04
put any kind of brakes on just this runaway
58:07
train. And I'm heartened by that. And what it does
58:11
for Vivek Ramaswamy. Is he. It's
58:14
not now. Well, he can say, well, we're
58:18
doing something. And DeWine kind of gave him a gift there
58:22
in a way. Yeah. I mean, he could say, well, we're doing
58:26
something. Whereas before it's like, yeah, we're getting
58:29
sold out by the rhinos running the state of Ohio.
58:33
The data center, it's such a. Don't you feel.
58:37
I feel like there's more to it that we don't know for
58:41
sure. Like what is moving the needle on this stuff, like, what's really going on.
58:44
So, Steve, this is what retail
58:48
citizens like me, I'm just a regular Hammond Egger,
58:51
really am. I'm just a regular person. Right. I may have gone to
58:55
college, so maybe I seem smarter, but I'm really not. I'm just a
58:59
regular person looking at this data center thing
59:03
and I keep hearing from everybody like Vivek Ramaswamy
59:07
that we must win the AI war. We can't let China
59:11
win that. And I'll be honest, I don't understand it. I really
59:14
don't. I don't know what the war is all about. I don't
59:18
know why China can't maximize their use of
59:22
AI and we do the same. And I don't understand
59:25
why data centers, maybe strategically they need
59:29
to be spread out. Maybe they can't be co located all in one
59:33
concentrated area because, you know, you fire a weapon at, you
59:36
know, like if, if they're all in the middle of Nevada somewhere.
59:41
Well, yeah, you could take out our entire computing
59:44
capability by shooting, you know, at one target. So maybe
59:48
there's some sense in spreading it around. But I don't understand
59:52
why AI is that urgent, number one. And I don't understand
59:56
why data centers can't be put in areas where there
1:00:00
isn't a lot of people. Why is it, for
1:00:03
example, next immediately adjacent
1:00:07
to the house of some friends of mine
1:00:11
that I care about? And I really, you know, I
1:00:15
feel passionately that their quality of life will never be
1:00:19
the same because they have this gigantic data
1:00:22
center that is right next to their house. And,
1:00:26
and so all the zoning and everything was
1:00:29
perverted in order to install this
1:00:33
factory, this data factory right next to somebody's
1:00:36
house. And that's just, to me, it's out of order. People in Upper
1:00:40
Arlington or people in the nice
1:00:44
community in Cleveland or Cincinnati, they wouldn't want a
1:00:48
data center in the middle of Indian Hill
1:00:51
or someplace in Cleveland.
1:00:55
So why in the country is it okay to put a data center next to
1:00:59
somebody's house if you wouldn't do that in a
1:01:02
municipality?
1:01:06
This whole thing, it could cost Ramaswamy the
1:01:10
election. And this is why I say I think DeWine
1:01:14
has possibly
1:01:18
started the ball roll. A little bit of pushback, you know, on,
1:01:22
on the giveaway. And when you think about so people, you know,
1:01:26
numbers sound insane. So $1.5 billion,
1:01:29
what does that really mean? The capital budget for the state
1:01:33
of Ohio for the two years. It's a two year budget.
1:01:37
The capital budget, which means highways, buildings, airports,
1:01:41
harbors. Everything that the state of Ohio would build for
1:01:45
bricks and mortar is $3.7 billion
1:01:49
over two years. We gave away 1.5 billion,
1:01:53
almost half of what the state would have
1:01:57
spent to build stuff for two years. It's not
1:02:00
an insignificant number. I mean, it's a complete blunder. The whole thing,
1:02:04
it's mind boggling. Yeah. All right. You wanna do some good? Yeah, man. Yeah.
1:02:08
So
1:02:11
winners for me are California voters. We've already
1:02:15
explained why. We have gone into pretty good
1:02:19
depth. If that holds the largest city
1:02:23
in the state of California and the state itself, there's hope that
1:02:26
it'll get turned around losers. These
1:02:30
protesters for me in New Jersey are just,
1:02:34
I mean, there's just no excuse
1:02:38
ever for violence
1:02:41
against somebody who's non violent. And
1:02:45
you've got the law enforcement all they want to do
1:02:49
is arrest people that have broken the law
1:02:53
and put them through the justice system where they will get
1:02:57
a trial or they will get through the
1:03:00
immigration court system or processed in some way
1:03:04
under the laws that have been passed by Congress. And,
1:03:09
you know, if you attack an ICE officer and
1:03:12
they shoot tear gas back at you,
1:03:17
to me, that's not violence by ice. You're doing something.
1:03:21
You're the predicate for the violence that then happens to you.
1:03:25
Yeah, there's an escalation. Yeah. All right. So my good and bad is both
1:03:28
good and bad. I watched this series called you'd
1:03:32
Friends and Neighbors. It's on Apple tv. It stars Jon
1:03:36
Hamm from. Oh, he's great. From Mad Men days. He's
1:03:40
got. It's sort of a similar character, actually. But this has got me
1:03:43
really thinking, this series, and I've tried to sort it all out. I'm gonna sort
1:03:47
it out in real time. So the good about it is it's sort of. It's
1:03:51
these wealthy people who have these insane lives.
1:03:55
Probably, like a lot of stuff Hollywood does. I mean, it's just like a
1:03:58
carrot, like an overblown caricature of these. Of these wealthy lives.
1:04:02
Like, people with a lot of money and how they live and
1:04:07
they have stuff that's. Ridiculous amounts of stuff. Ridiculous that's.
1:04:10
Of money. They're screwing each other's wives. I mean, all that stuff is going on.
1:04:13
And Jon Hamm has gone through a divorce because his wife was
1:04:17
screwing his best friend. But they've all sort of remained in the
1:04:21
same community. And he's sort of sorting it out as a man figuring it out.
1:04:24
And one of the. He loses his job and, like, this parade of horribles is
1:04:28
bestowed upon him. So he starts going into houses and ripping off stuff. So, like,
1:04:31
he goes into your house and he'll steal. Like, not even for the money as
1:04:34
much as just, like, you can just tell he's lost, okay? And so he'll
1:04:38
go in and steal your watch. And he's got this really expensive watch, maybe worth,
1:04:41
say, a million dollars or $500,000. And the point is, like,
1:04:45
these people don't even know they're missing it. It's just. They have. It's just.
1:04:49
And it got me thinking. As you know, we just talked about it. I'm reading
1:04:52
the Old Testament, and in Ecclesiastes, there's this
1:04:56
saying, all vanity is vanity. Like, everything is vanity in, you know,
1:05:00
life. So the. The saying, I think, is vanity of vanity, says the preacher.
1:05:04
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Ecclesiastes chapter
1:05:07
one or one, Chapter two. But it sort of means that
1:05:11
everything we do is fleeting until you put God into it and gives us
1:05:15
a direction to do the things we're doing. So it's not. I don't think it's
1:05:17
against God to have money, even though Christ would say it makes it harder. I
1:05:20
don't think having money is not itself bad, but it can draw you away from
1:05:24
it. So you have to have some mooring of. What did he say about the
1:05:26
rich man and the elephant going to. Going through the needle of an eye? Yeah,
1:05:30
it was some parody or something. It's harder for him to get into heaven, but
1:05:33
he can do it than an elephant to go through the eye of a needle.
1:05:37
Still doable, but you gotta be careful is what he's saying. He's gotta say be
1:05:40
careful. But what I like about this show is that
1:05:44
it makes this point. These people's lives are ridiculously
1:05:48
absurd and it leads him to do this
1:05:51
ridiculous stuff. What I don't like about it is at the end of the season,
1:05:55
I'm giving it away. So spoiler alert. At the end of the season, everything sort
1:05:58
of works out for him. Him. I'll just say it that way. Okay. And he's
1:06:01
got his family back, or at least he could. He's got his job back, or
1:06:04
at least he could. But he doesn't choose it. He goes right back
1:06:08
to the same stuff. So it's like it makes the point but then
1:06:12
keeps it going like there's no lesson to be learned. At the end of it,
1:06:15
it just. We're just going to keep going with this insanity. And he's saying
1:06:19
he's making this choice to keep going with the insanity because he didn't
1:06:23
want to relive all the same as go back to what he had. Instead, he
1:06:26
could have said, I'm going to go back to what I had and not eff
1:06:29
it up this time. So anyway, that's the bad. So that's my take on it.
1:06:33
You heard it here first hot take. And then I know there's Reddit
1:06:36
people who are going to disagree with me, but that's what's good and bad
1:06:40
about that. Also, if you haven't seen Top
1:06:44
Gun Maverick. Oh, I've seen it, yeah. Yeah. Jon Hamm, like, he plays
1:06:48
the heavy. He plays the guy that's going to basically take away
1:06:51
Tom Cruise's career, you know, as a
1:06:55
fighter pilot. And it's. He does a great job. He's a great
1:06:59
actor. Yeah, he does a great job, his face. He does a good job. Yeah.
1:07:03
Good stuff, Steve. All right, common sense Ohio, June 3, wrapping it
1:07:06
up. We are coming at you right from the middle each and every week, typically
1:07:10
on video, but this day only audio, at least until
1:07:14
next week. All right. Well, hopefully we'll
1:07:17
figure that out. Came a little more.
1:07:24
Well, the big themes are interesting to me and
1:07:28
I think a lot of pe. I think it resonates with a lot of people.