Brian chats with Adam Koehler 9/4/2024

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Just shy at seven oh six here fifty five Caroseeed.
He talks station Brian Thomas, wishing you a very happy Wednesday,
inviting you to listen to lunch. Going to be a
Weedhaman Brewery in Saint Bernard and I'm looking forward to
seeing folks. Heard from Cribbage Mike earlier, heard from Christopher
Smithaman he's going to be showing up of course west Side,
Jim Kiefer and maybe Adam Caller in studio to talk
about his campaign running for Hamid County Commissioner. I hate

(00:37):
to put you on the spot and I'm gonna ask you,
can you make a listener to lunch today? You got plans?

Speaker 2 (00:41):
I actually am doing a legoddess. Uh. It's a Catholic
business owners group that I'm in. I'm doing a thing
with them today. So yeah, good for you. That's prior plans.
And of course you're on a campaign trail. I understand
do my thing.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
You've been at listener lunch many times, so you know
what you're missing. Good time. Anyhow, without further ado, let's
dive on into the situation. Of course, Sadam is running
for Hamiltonkenny Commissioner. Haven't seen really anything by way of
activity from the current incumbents. Kind of been maintaining a
really low profile, haven't they.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
I haven't seen anything outside of them, you know, crying
about the frank LeRose proposal yesterday, with the whole ballot
harvesting situation we got going on, That's the last time
I've heard of them at all. I just don't think
they have a whole bunch of energy or they maybe
they just have too much confidence, well.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
In a lot of people, you know, they we know
Hamilton County has gone blue. I mean, no one can
deny that we've got some critically important races here. And
you know, I am in favor of your campaign one,
I know you, and I know where you are on
the issues. I mean, for no other reason, jeez, we
could use somebody with a different opinion or attitude than
the lockstep leftist mentality we get from the commissioners or

(01:49):
really literally nothing at all, and that would cause me
to move over to local reporting, because I mean, let's
face it, do you ever read anything about what the
Hamilton Kenny commissioners are doing?

Speaker 2 (02:00):
You have no idea. Nobody even knows what commissioner's jobs are.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
They don't know.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
I mean, you're right in the checks. A lot of
money's coming in. We control the biggest budget in the area,
and a lot of that goes to the sheriffs. A
lot of that goes to public services, the parks, things
like that. But people don't understand how much power, essentially
the Himilt County Commissioners have. But you don't hear from them.
They're like invisible for some reason. Everybody focuses on city Council,

(02:27):
but the Hamil County Commissioners have a lot of power
to do a lot of things that could change the
way money is spent. Your tax dollars are spent in
this area.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Yeah, one of the areas that I have heard. I
don't know because I'm not a Hamilton County sheriff, but
I do talk to Sheriff Jim Neil quite our hopefully
sheriff again. Jim Neil, of course is running against our
current sheriff, Charmy McGuffey. But the whole kind of DEI
environment that's going on, and that they're promoting that and

(02:57):
that means promoting people based upon maybe the color of
their skin, or their gender or their sexuality as opposed
to a merit increase, and that is a morale killer.
I mean it's just in every company in America. Once
they've adopted these policies, you can see more and more
have of them are dropping them. The minute it's revealed
that they pursue these policies, someone points it out and

(03:19):
the next thing you know, look, oh more, Molson Coors
has scrapped it's woke DEI policies. There's a local article
in the newspaper this morning about oh who was it?

Speaker 2 (03:32):
Well, which school Texas did a Duke University? Just did
I believe? Northern Kentucky University, North the Kentucky Universe, that's
the one I read.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Their Office of Inclusive Excellence, which is the DII office,
has been dropped. So it's being rejected more and more
because it really profoundly impacts employee morale. I mean, if
if you're not working off merit, then it's Katie bar
the door.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
America is about meritocracy. It is greatness needs meritocracy. You
can't And this goes back to the schools, Brian. The
Cincinnati public school system is in complete shambles. If you
didn't have these problems, I mean, you've got a forty
one percent chronic truancy rate in the Sinsini public schools.

(04:20):
We spend twenty one thousand dollars a student, two to
three times more than what some of these public schools
are charging. Yet we get nineteen percent college readiness rates
those kids that are graduating. And I was one of them.
I went to Cincide Public right pretty much my whole
entire life. They're not coming out of school prepared for
these things. So why would you force a square peg

(04:42):
into a round hole? The problem is the schools you
wouldn't need DEI. If the schools were performing exactly, you
wouldn't need it. The kids would be prepared. And if
you're someone who's being forced into a job that you're
not prepared for, you shouldn't want that position anyway.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
Greed set yourself up for You're.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Setting yourself up for failure. Why would you want something
that wasn't earned?

Speaker 1 (05:05):
Right, which takes me back to the point I was
hoping would be reality. You mentioned and how much control
the commissioners have. They're in charge of the sheriff budget.
It's the biggest chance of money that the county pays out.
Could they not have limitations on how that money is spent.
In other words, none of this money can be ear
marker used or otherwise for diversity, equity inclusion programs and

(05:26):
things in doctrination programs and things of that nature.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
And you know what when I knew that Jim Neil
was the right guy for the job was when he
told me we don't need more money. I said, Jim,
if I become one of the HAMLK kind of commissioners,
you tell me what you need. Because crime and safety
is one of the biggest problems in the county. People
leave the county number one. I did a survey on
Twitter the other day. The number one reason, I said,
I've been in this city my entire life. If you left,

(05:52):
why did you leave? Crime and safety was number one.
Schools was number two. And I said to Jim, I said,
you you let us know what you need. He said,
we don't need more money, Adam. He said, we need
to be more efficient, we need to be more proactive,
We need to get into the community, we need to
work with the people. And I said, that's the first
time I've heard any right, any any police officer, fireman,

(06:13):
anyone tell me they didn't need more money, right, And
Jim's a Westsider. How we are where, you know, hiding
money under the mattress.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
Just have a lot of the money we first earned,
you know, the original the dollar that we first earned,
still in our pockets. And that's just the way west
Siders are typically very frugal with the money. But I
mean that that see his admission along those lines as
a reflection that it's not the amount of money, it's how.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
It's spent and look at the waste. Like one of
the things Brian and I would get so excited about
this being a cheap Westsider who was raised by a grandma,
little German, five foot tall grandma who grew up in
the depression. I would love to get a third party audit,
just to go look at the county's numbers, Go look

(06:59):
at all the money we see spend on. There's a
DEI department. There's a d I department called the DEI department.
They didn't even try to hide it in the county.
Why do we have a d I department? Are there
a bunch of wealthy white college PhDs looking to get
jobs at the county that we don't know about that
we need to keep out of those jobs. It's government work, right,

(07:22):
I mean everybody can work in those jobs. So I
mean you've got you've got just craziness going on. And
to me, it's it's kind of a grift by Democrats
to get people who went to college for BS degrees,
liberal arts degrees just to find them positions.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
That's exactly it. It is industry that was created whole cloth. Yeah,
it sounds like the green industry.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
It's what it creates jobs for people that have no
other skills.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
Right, Or you know, went to college and racked up
fifty to one hundred maybe two hundred thousand dollars worth
a student loan debt and came out with a degree
in humanities or you know, human studies or whatever.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Or just call it a degree in complaining.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
Well, there you go, that's what it is. So we
got to create a new department to hire those folks
because they don't have jobs or otherwise don't have anywhere
to turn for gainful employment because the degree was pointless.

Speaker 2 (08:13):
Well, the vast majority of jobs recently, I mean, if
you look at the employment numbers THO or government jobs
that are being added, I know that a huge swath
of those jobs and you know the Feds looking at
what job numbers. One of the reasons they haven't dropped
interest rates recently is because the job numbers look good.
What they've been told is that the job numbers are great,
and then later on they reassess those numbers and they realize, oh,

(08:37):
we had eight hundred thousand less jobs added last year, right.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
But hear that it's like jeez least.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
But when they first announced the numbers, they.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
Don't have one job and that was the figure out
where we are in terms of well.

Speaker 2 (08:54):
And here here we are kids can't afford houses. You've
got an entire generation of people that can't afford homes
because his interest rates have been so high for so long.
And then on top of that, the prices went up
because for so long the interest rates were so low,
you had people coming in buying if these houses, overbidding
for them, pricing up the properties, and those property values
have relatively stayed where they're at. So now you've got

(09:17):
the Fed talking about maybe a quarter point reduction here
in September, right in the wall streets looking for a half, right,
but they're only probably going to get a quarter. And
now you've got these high flying tech stocks that kept
Biden looking good for so long. Those are taking a
dump now, Like in Nvidia. People are looking at them
and saying, look at the valuation of Nvidia. It's gone,

(09:37):
it's out of control. You know. The AI hype is
kind of wearing off.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
Yeah, And to that point, I love the memes that
I see on you know, the typical question is comparing
Trump to Kamala Harris formerly. You know, Biden, are you
better off now or are you better off under Trump?
And most of the vast majority of us felt like
we were better off under Trump, and for no other reasons,
the price of gasoline, the price of groceries, and the
price of and then someone on the left side of

(10:02):
the ledger will post the stock market and they'll show
you where it was back when Trump was president, and
where the numbers are now, Like, what do you mean
you better off now? You better off before? And I'm
thinking to myself, well, you know, there's a whole lot
of folks that have the biggest problem out there with
the price of groceries, and they're on the life's lower
end of the margins. They're the folks who are struggling. Generally,

(10:23):
they aren't high paying high falutin kind of job. Folks.
They're not invested in the market, so you can show
them that figure all day long. They only wish they
had the extra money to be invested in the market.
In the meantime, they're struggling to figure out how they're
going to buy a pound of ground beef. Adam Kaylor
you can find them online at Adam Kaylor k o
E h l E R Adam Keyler dot com. Run

(10:44):
for County Commissioner. He's got some great ideas and I
like where you're on the Hamlin County Sheriff's Department. And
God bless Jim Neil. We got more with him. We're
gonna get an update on the Tom Brickman's idea and
signature drive to get six hundred million of the railroad
money into a separate fund to help people pay the
real estate taxes. I just laugh every time I think
about it. Fifty five krc DE Talk Station Brion Thomas

(11:06):
with Adam Kaylor in studio Adam Koehler dot com. Find
him online, help him out, get a yard sign and
help bring some diversity. If I may be so bold
and saying to the Hamilton County commissioners. I mean Adams
already pointed out, you know, in charge of budgeting, we
could limit how the sheriff budget is spent. We could

(11:26):
cut away some fat in that. But moving over, since
you are a city resident, and I know you've been
following this the whole railroad sale. Of course you were
against that. We led up to the sale of the
railroads one point six billion dollars in a fund earning money.
How that's doing, I don't know. But Tom Briankman come up,
comes up with the idea like, wow, everybody's property taxes

(11:47):
went through the roof, like a thirty percent across the
board increase, craziness, some seniors can't afford to even stay
in their home. Obviously caught us all off guard. But
he wants to take six hundred million dollars out of
that fund and put it in a separate invested fund
to help the residents of the city pay real estate taxes. Now,

(12:07):
normally I'm against government programs like this, because you know,
if you buy a property, then you should be in
a position to be able to pay your taxes. But
I did like the idea of taking that money away
from the government. I have to have purval and since
they city council, so they can't build another leg of
the street car or whatever. So where do you know
where we are in terms of how the signature gathering

(12:28):
is going, or how people are receiving this or they
in favor of it. What's the story on this out?

Speaker 2 (12:32):
Well, I'll tell you they You know, I've been dealing
with some people down in Salor Park and they love it.
Most people in Cincinnati really like the idea. The problem
with the city of Cincinnati is you got a lot
of renters, so they don't understand why this would benefit them.
And you know, as a landlord, if my property taxes
go up, I'm going to pass that on again. And

(12:53):
most landlords are going to pass that on and tack
on something because they see that as an opportunity. Oh well,
property tax went up, I'm gonna have to raise your rent,
but I'm gonna have to tack a little something extra side
of that. Right, So it does affect renters. But you're right,
what are they doing with this one point six down here?
What do we think they're gonna do with that? We
don't know. A lot of people are saying, hey, they're
gonna buld An Arena with it. They're gonna do this

(13:14):
with They're gonna do that with it. They've got some
plan for that money. Right, do we trust city Council?
Do we trust the Railroad Board? After they lied to
us in the whole campaign, They completely lied to us
about practically everything.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
Right, I want fred Street to get fixed and paved.
You know, we got forty years.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
Where Sunset Avenue. Can you fix that one?

Speaker 1 (13:33):
Lord almighty, it's been a wreck for how many years?

Speaker 2 (13:36):
You take a left from Queen City on there in
your right lane?

Speaker 1 (13:38):
You need an alignment boomah.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
I mean your shocks and everything are screwed.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
Everything, you know. And and I was obviously the absurdity
of the American rescue plan. I was pointing out that
you and I, as American tax players, under a rescue
plan that was supposed to be dealing with COVID related problems,
we ended up building water parks and paid for advertising

(14:02):
campaigns for horse racing. And you know, that's the kind
of thing that money isolates to be limited to existing infrastructure.
It means Fred Street might get fixed because we got
a billion six in the bank generating revenue. But do
you trust them? To keep it limited to something that
already exists, like the streets, the buildings that are crumbling,

(14:23):
the bridges that are crumbling, the things that they have
left and neglected for decades and decades.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
Well, and Brinckman is really smart about this, and people
are like, oh, Brickman data, he's shaking it up. You
know what they did at city council They got rid
of a property tax cap that had property taxes at
twenty nine million dollars for twenty years. In twenty twenty two,
six to nine, they voted to get rid of that
property tax cap. Now it's creeping back up. I think

(14:49):
it's at thirty two maybe thirty six million now. So
at the same time they got rid of the property
tax cap, when people were complaining about their property taxes
going up, what do they do? They pointed finger at
Republicans in state of Ohio. They say, it's the state
House's problem, it's the law. There's nothing we can do.
They said that, Brian, there's nothing we can do. So

(15:11):
what does Brinkman do? He does something about it. He says,
we got one point six sitting here. He's like, let's
say we take six hundred million dollars out of that
one point six You told us UBS who's managing the money,
told us that they're making six and a half percent
on that money. Right, if you make six and a
half percent on six hundred million, that's thirty nine million
that pays property taxes, and then you have some leftover

(15:33):
to roll back into that six hundred million dollar trust.
It's amazing, which pays property taxes potentially indefinitely. You have
good years and bad years. Right, this is one of
the arguments we had to gain with the railroad. The
same problem with the railroad. You're gonna have the exact
same problem in the railroad. So put it into a
property tax trust. And then what does that do for
the pr the city of Cincinnati. You've got people fleeing

(15:53):
the City of Cincinnati, fleeing Hamilton County. Now you can say,
why would you move to Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Co. Lumbus. You
don't have property taxes to pay in city Cincinnati because
there's this trust. Did Pittsburgh have a railroad to sell?
Did Indianapolis have a railroad to sell? No, if you
want affordable housing, you can come to the city Cincinnati.
I don't understand why city council wouldn't be behind this,

(16:15):
don't they want more people to move back to Cincinnati. Well,
we're handing this to you want to a silver platter,
This pr opportunity and whether or not it pays it forever.
It's the idea that they are trying that somebody like
Tom Brakman is out here saying, you know what, quit
pointing fingers and actually do something for a change. And

(16:36):
that's what this is about.

Speaker 1 (16:38):
Adam Kalk. Will we have a chance to vote on that?
If not by November, if they don't collect the next signatures,
the signature campaign will continue. They'll collect enough at some point,
so maybe on a special election, maybe in.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
The spring, maybe December, January.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
Ye, yes, well it's coming at some point and we'll
all get a chance to chime in at Adam Kaylor
dot com. So you find Adam helps campaign out, get
a campaign sign He is running for Hamilton Kenny commission
and we could use a guy like Adam on the
Hamilton County Commissioner board so we get some better ideas
and some exchange of different concepts. Adam, You're always welcome
to the studio, my brother. We'll have a good have

(17:09):
a great week. We'll talk again obviously between now and November,
so stay well.