Ron Verb - July 7th - The Full Show

L-B-T-E-N-B-T. Your night in just got legendary. Get ready to chase the rush, spin, win, and redeem instantly straight to your bank account at Legendswithazee.com. With free-to-play slots, Blackjack, Kino, roulette, and more. Experience all the thrills of Vegas without leaving your couch. Legends has it all. Legends is a free-to-play social casino void for prohibitive. It must be 18-plus play responsibly visit Legends.com for full details. Get in the game now and score a 100% match on your first purchase only at Legends withazee.com. Hey everybody, Lady Luck here, and we're celebrating America's 250th birthday. Now, all summer long, I'm going to be celebrating by playing on SpinQuest.com, which is an American-owned social casino. It obviously features over a thousand slot games and live blackjack, live craps, live bubble craps. Head on over to SpinQuest.com. Get yourself a $30 coin pack for just 10 bucks. SpenQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit SpenQuest.com for more details. Mom, can I have Lingo Kids? Sad, Lingo Kids, please! When did we become the Lingo Kids House? No idea. Last week it was dinosaurs. This week is... Lingo Kids! Why Lingo Kids? Because it's the best thing ever. We can play games. With astronauts. Wild animals. And superhero! With more than 4,000 interactive games, songs, and shows, Lingo Kids is the number one entertainment platform for young kids. So, no dinosaurs? And dinosaurs. Mingo Kids! Everything kids love. Download it for free. Trade screen time for race time at Virginia International Raceway. August 21 through 23rd, IMSA's Michelin GT Challenge brings some of the coolest cars to VIR for an unforgettable family weekend. Explore, meet drivers, see race cars up close, and experience the thrill of racing from every corner of the track. It's more than a race. It's a memory waiting to be made. Kids 12 and under get in free. Get your tickets at VIRFam.com. That's VIRFAM.com. WKBN. Hey, Heidi, ho. News Radio 570, WKBN, Ron Verb. Welcome to Tuesday, July 7th. We are underway here till 6 o'clock tonight at 3307307. I mentioned this yesterday, and I'd like to have your undivided attention. If you don't mind, I'd like to have your undivided attention. When I was off, I got to see if I first on my, hopefully all my equipment's functioning properly. If not, we've got a backup plan here. I want to play to you, and I want you to listen to this, because I want you to listen to Ron DeSantis, and he's talking, Ron DeSantis is a governor of Florida. And I want you to listen to Ron DeSantis as a governor of Florida, and he's talking about signing these property tax bills. But I want you to listen to, and this is going to take about 20 minutes a year time, but I want you to listen to an intelligent governor and his philosophy. on how he deals with your money and taxes. So what I'm going to ask you to do is something very strange here on talk radio. I'm going to ask you to simply pay attention. All of you to pay attention. And I mean pay attention. Wherever you are, just pause for a second, if this works properly for me. There's always the butt. And I want you to try to, I want you to listen to this.

Now, I realize this is about Florida, not our community, but it's the philosophy and the thought process that I want you to hear that so impresses me, all right? So I want you to listen to this. Let me see if we're going to function here. Let's try this. Oh, excellent. Well, hello, it's great to be back in Bradenton. We've got a number of folks with us here today, including our chief financial officer, Blaze Angolia. We have City of Mayor, City of Bradenton Mayor Jean Brown, Vice Mayor Jane Coker, uh, coacher of Representative Yvette Bena Roach, Senator Joe Gruders, Manatee Sheriff Rick Wells, County Commissioner Amanda Bowler. But listen to his thought process. And so I want to thank you all. Listen to what he talks about property taxes. We're going to sign two pieces of legislation which, uh, involve protecting taxpayers. particularly against local government taxes, property taxes and others, and also ensuring transparency in the spending process. Now, this has been an issue that I've discussed from time to time. I know Blaze Angolia does it more than just time to time as part of his duties and doing it, but I think any time... Look, we want to, we look at, how can we be helpful to the people that we represent? And when you have the kind of COVID era that's really continued inflation wave where things have gotten more expensive, particularly things like groceries, all these other things. Where can we, as at the state level, make the most impact? Where is government impinging on the American dream for people the most? The state of Florida, at the state level, we have the lowest or certainly among the lowest tax burdens anywhere in the country. That's just a fact. no income tax. We've eliminated some taxes since I've been here. It just is what it is. A lot of our burden is shared by non-Florida residents, people that snowbird here, tourists, all these other things. So that's good. But what I think people have been struggling with is the costs associated with homeownership, particularly with property taxes. Now, we've also done a lot of stuff to address the Florida's insurance market, and they just came out, citizens got reinsurance 30% lower than last year. Before the reforms, the reinsurance was going up tremendously. That's going to impact what consumers are charged. And citizens' insurance actually did the biggest reduction in rates in the history of the program for this year, likely we'll have to do more reduction going forward. And we have now like 20 companies in offering in USAA on auto insurance just now announced a billion dollar rebate. And so, look, it's a difficult issue, but the reforms have pushed in the direction that we're seeing. And it's been pretty consistent. Some people say, oh, they didn't reduce mine, and then they go shop, and then they find they can get better. So, yeah, they may try to renew you at the same, and that's why you shop, likely you're going to be able to save. Certainly on the auto, we've seen that very, very significant. So we've done a lot there. There's a lot of heavy lifting in the legislature. But at the end of the day, it is a private market.

It's not something, there's things that go into it that the government just can't control. Certainly when inflation goes up, it's going to be more expensive. There's a whole host of things. We couldn't help that we had six major hurricanes in seven years. That's just a fact. That makes things more challenging. Taxes, though, is just purely a government function. It's not driven by the private sector. It's not driven by circumstances. The people you elect, are they taxing you? Our state constitution, what does it allow? How much protection do you get? These are decisions we, the people, are able to make. And so we have looked to see as... From 2019 till the present, local government property tax revenue has basically doubled. It was a little over 30 billion in 2019, and now it's about 60 billion. Maybe not uniform throughout the state, but everywhere has gone up pretty dramatically. That's just a fact. And the question is, is, okay, has that been necessary? or should the taxpayers have been benefiting along the way? And so in the process, there's different things that are done with highlighting local spending. I mean, look, there's some instances that are really inexplicable. And that's really with everything. I mean, you know, for example, you know, the school district of Broward County down in southeast Florida, their budget was, I think, eight years ago, $2.5 billion. They've lost 50,000 students since then. and their budget is now $5 billion. Now, where is that money? That is funding the system for the system's sake. That is not doing things that benefit the students. And so you see that, you see different examples that Blaze has found over the year. And so all that being said, that's something that can be meaningful for people. to do, and I'll go into kind of my view on the whole property tax thing, and I think where we need to go from here and kind of the legislature, you know, what they did was good, but I think that we need to do more. But people say, well, what do you, you get up there, you guys in Tallahassee, you want to tell people, you know, what to do, a local government, all it says, well, listen, I think in some respects in a vacuum, you know, that's a valid concern. But I can tell you this, I have the budget. for next fiscal year, which starts July 1st on my desk, I'm going through, you know, proving, vetoing some stuff, whatever. That will be done within the next week. And that, when I finish all that, it will represent the fourth straight year where the state of Florida has reduced the amount of spending at the state level. Let me say that again. Now, think about that. They've reduced spending four years in row. Listen to this, folks. Stay in control. I just want you to listen to this as we go along. This is Ron DeSantis. I want you to hear the philosophy of what he's talking about, what is taking place in Florida. All right? Four years ago.

was more than the budget three years ago. The budget three years ago was more than the budget two years ago, and the budget in current year is less than the budget, or I guess last year's budget that we signed, is going to be, this year's budget is going to be less than that. And so it can be done, and that's with population growth, that's with inflation. And some of the things, we had to put in more money for some of these projects too. Don't act like that we were immune for that. So you've had all those and yet, and that's not even adjusting for inflation. When I say the budget's lower today, next fiscal year will be lower than current fiscal year, current less than last, less than the year before that. That's nominal dollars. That's not inflation adjusted dollars. Obviously, inflation adjusted would be dramatically less. Population address would be dramatically less. So we've done that. And it's had a very, very stable budget for the last four years. And some of that was, you know, the legislature, I think, making some thoughtful choices. Some, quite frankly, was me having to exercise the line item veto power. But that's just the way. And look at what's happened with the state's debt. If you take all the state's debt in the history of the state of Florida from statehood till the present, just since I've been governor, we've paid off 51% of the state's debt. Paid it down. It's done. And we now have the lowest per capita debt of any state in the country. Meanwhile... We've done some really big things. We've done the largest environmental restoration in the history of the United States of America with the Florida Everglades. And I now, because, you know, Biden was terrible on this, we now, under the Trump administration, have been delegated authority to do some of the federal share of the projects, and they're funding that, and we do it a lot quicker. That's just the way we roll. So we're doing that. And that's something that's been, but we've put billions and billions of dollars into that. You know, it's actually, it's gotten to the point. We've done the infrastructure. We've improved the water flow that, you know, next year, three years from now, you're going to spend less on that than what I've had to do because we had to really get where we were going. So that's been major. We've done infrastructure. We flushed another $7 to $8 billion into moving Florida forward. You've got these projects that were in the queue to start 10 years from now when traffic is bad now, and we've accelerated. You see, you know, some of you actually in Manatee may experience I4 going into Orlando. I know the people that live in like Polk and Hillsborough and some of those. Just the temporary lane we did very quickly there has been a huge cut in traffic time there. Once the whole thing is done, you're going to save. And that's actually meaningful for people's lives. So we've never had an investment so dramatic in the history of the state. We did that. Education.

We have the, we've continued to have, and look, I'm not one that says, you know, if you spend more, you're going to get better results, because some of the worst schools in the country have like $40,000 per student, like Washington, D.C. and some of these other ones. So it's not just about that. But even as we've done universal school choice, you know, the amount of money that's gone to school districts has increased, and we've created, and under my tenure, a special provision of the budget where money that's sent to school districts can only be used for teachers. salary increases. The budget I'm going to sign soon has I think it's like a 1.55 billion which is more than has ever been done but 200 million of that is is targeting people that have 10 years or more experience because we did a lot to try to get the minimum up because we you know people didn't want to be teachers they wanted to add other opportunities so we're trying to make that more attractive for college graduates. But regardless, that's a massive investment. So we're doing big things, but doing it within the context of a budget that's actually declining. And so when we're sitting here talking about standing up for taxpayers at the local level, making sure spending. is transparent, making sure spending's not runaway, make sure people aren't being taxed the way they have been. We have credibility in doing that because our budget has been very, very stable, very, very modest. You know, it's interesting. You see this stuff in New York City. you know, just electing people that even five years ago, I think, would have been thought that that would have been impossible to do, people that are celebrating terrorism, people that really reject the foundations of this country, which, you know, we're now celebrating 250. And, yeah, I think it's a really, really, you know, dangerous trend over there in that party. But the reality is... is, you know, look at how they're governed. The state of New York has four million fewer residents than the state of Florida. Our budgets about $117 billion. Their budgets $268 billion. Where is that money going? So these are choices that we have to make as citizens and who we elect and what we expect, but we've done it right at the state level and budget that I'll sign very soon will continue that trend, and that's something that we're very, very proud of. Now, we did launch... for not just the local government, but also state government, this FAFO audits, the Florida agency for fiscal oversight, identifying things, and there have been things that have been identified at the state level.

that have been flagged and reforms, sometimes that's easier to do because you can just change your processes if you have an agency or something, but also at the local level looking at different things. And I know they did Manatee County, Blaze did that, and our folks at the state level did that. And they found... that Manatee County in some ways, you know, had some good marks compared to the rest of the state. County held general fund spending growth below the increase in Advilorum revenues, cut the millage rate multiple times, and embrace the form of zero-based budgeting for operating budget. I think that's really important. Basically, that's legislative speak for you don't... guarantee last year's level of spending plus inflation as the starting point. What you do is you go in and say, okay, what do we need to spend on? You should assume zero for certain things, and there should be justification why that should be funded again. I mean, that just goes without saying. In Washington, what they do, they don't do zero-based budgeting. So if you have a failed program that gets hundreds of billions of dollars or millions of dollars, whatever, You go the next year, they assume that same amount plus like 8%. So if you even want to say, okay, we'll do it, but only increase 3%, they say that's a draconian cut. It's actually a 3% increase of the previous year, but they'll frame that as a so it's hardwired to... always increase spending in Washington and always grow government. When you do zero-based budgeting, you kind of take, you diffuse that hard wire, and the default should be zero, and then justify why you're using taxpayer money to do those different things. All right, just hang on. I want you to hear this philosophy. I want to play you some more of this when we get to property taxes and more. Stay tuned. This is important to follow. Now, Ron Verbe. On News Radio 570 WKBN. Hey, Heidi ho. News Radio 570 WKBN, Ron Verb. Welcome to Tuesday, July 7th. We are underway here till 6 o'clock tonight at 330-7-299-77. I mentioned this yesterday, and I'd like to have your undivided attention, if you don't mind. I'd like to have your undivided attention. When I was off, I got to see if I first on my, hopefully all my equipment's functioning properly. If not, we've got a backup plan here. I want to play to you, and I want you to listen to this, because I want you to listen to Ron DeSantis, and he's talking, Ron DeSantis is a governor of Florida. And I want you to listen to Ron DeSantis as a governor of Florida, and he's talking about signing these property tax bills. But I want you to listen to, and this is going to take about 20 minutes a year time, but I want you to listen to an intelligent governor and his philosophy. on how he deals with your money and taxes. So what I'm going to ask you to do is something very strange here on talk radio. I'm going to ask you to simply pay attention, all of you to pay attention. And I mean pay attention. Wherever you are, just pause for a second, if this works properly for me. There's always the butt. And I want you to try to, I want you to listen to this.

Now, I realize this is about Florida, not our community, but it's the philosophy and the thought process that I want you to hear that so impresses me, all right? So I want you to listen to this. Let me see if we're going to function here. Let's try this. All right. Excellent. Oh, hello. It's great to be back in Bradenton. We've got a number of folks with us here today, including our chief financial officer, Blaze Angolia. We have City of Mayor, City of Bradenton Mayor Jean Brown, Vice Mayor Jane Coker, Coacher, Representative Yvette Ben Oroach, Senator Joe Gruders, Manity Sheriff Rick Wells, County Commissioner Amanda Ballard. But listen to his thought process, gang. And so I want to thank you all for being here. We're going to sign two pieces of legislation, which. involve protecting taxpayers, particularly against local government taxes, property taxes, and others, and also ensuring transparency in the spending process. Now, this has been an issue that I've discussed from time to time. I know Blaze Angolia does it more than just time to time as part of his duties and doing it. But I think any time, look, we want to, we look at... How can we be helpful to the people that we represent? And when you have the kind of COVID era that's really continued inflation wave where things have gotten more expensive, particularly things like groceries, all these other things. Where can we, at the state level, make the most impact? Where is government impinging on the American dream for people the most? And the state of Florida? At the state level, we have the lowest or certainly among the lowest tax burdens anywhere in the country. That's just a fact. No income tax. We've eliminated some taxes since I've been here. It just is what it is. A lot of our burden is shared by non-Florida residents, people that snowbird here, tourists, all these other things. So that's good. But what I think people have been struggling with is the costs associated with homeownership, particularly with... property taxes. Now, we've also done a lot of stuff to address the Florida's insurance market and they just came out. citizens got reinsurance 30% lower than last year. Before the reforms, the reinsurance was going up tremendously. That's going to impact what consumers are charged. And citizens' insurance actually did the biggest reduction in rates in the history of the program for this year, likely we'll have to do more reduction going forward. And we have now like 20 companies in offering and USAA on auto insurance just announced the billion dollar rebate. And so, look, it's a difficult issue, but the reforms have pushed in the direction that we're seeing. And it's been, been pretty consistent. Some people say, oh, they didn't reduce mine, and then they go shop, and then they find they can get better. So, yeah, they may try to renew you at the same, and that's why you shop, likely you're going to be able to save. Certainly on the auto, we've seen that very, very significant. So we've done a lot there. There's a lot of heavy lifting in the legislature, but at the end of the day, it is a private market. It's not

something we there's things that go into it that the government just can't control certainly when inflation goes up it's going to be more expensive there's a whole host of things we couldn't help that that we had six major hurricanes in seven years that's just a fact that makes things more challenging Taxes, though, is just purely a government function. It's not driven by the private sector. It's not driven by circumstances. The people you elect, are they taxing you? Our state constitution, what does it allow? How much protection do you get? These are decisions we, the people, are able to make. And so we have looked to see as... From 2019 till the present, local government property tax revenue has basically doubled. It was a little over $30 billion in 2019, and now it's about $60 billion. Maybe not uniform throughout the state, but everywhere has gone up pretty dramatically. That's just a fact. And the question is, is, okay, has that been necessary? Or should the taxpayers have been benefiting along the way? And so in the process, there's different things that are done with highlighting local spending. I mean, look, there's some instances that are really inexplicable. And that's really with everything. I mean, you know, for example, you know, the school district of Broward County down in southeast Florida, their budget was, I think, eight years ago, $2.5 billion. They've lost 50,000 students since then. and their budget is now $5 billion. Now, where is that money? That is funding the system for the system's sake. That is not doing things to benefit the students. And so you see that, you see different examples that Blaze has found over the year. And so all that being said, that's something that can be meaningful for people. to do, and I'll go into kind of my view on the whole property tax thing, and I think where we need to go from here and kind of the legislature, you know, what they did was good, but I think we need to do more. But Steve said, well, what do you, you get up there, you guys in Tallahassee, you want to tell people, you know, what to do, a local government, all this says, well, listen, I think in some respects in a vacuum, you know, that's a valid concern. But I can tell you this, I have the budget. for next fiscal year, which starts July 1st on my desk, I'm going through, you know, proving, vetoing some stuff, whatever. That will be done within the next week. And that, when I finish all that, it will represent the fourth straight year where the state of Florida has reduced the amount of spending at the state level. Let me say that again. Now, think about that. They've reduced spending four years in road. Listen to this, folks. Stay control. I just want you to listen to this as we go along. This is Ron DeSantis. I want you to hear the philosophy of what he's talking about, what is taking place in Florida. All right? Four years ago.

was more than the budget three years ago. The budget three years ago was more than the budget two years ago, and the budget in current year is less than the budget, or I guess last year's budget that we signed, is going to be, this year's budget is going to be less than that. And so it can be done, and that's with population growth, that's with inflation. And some of the things, we had to put in more money for some of these projects, too. Don't act like that we were immune for that. So you've had all those, and yet, and that's not even adjusting for inflation. When I say the budget's lower today, next fiscal year will be lower than current fiscal year, current, less than last, less than the year before that. That's nominal dollars. That's not inflation adjusted dollars. Obviously, inflation adjusted would be dramatically less. Population address would be dramatically less. So we've done that. And it's had a very, very stable budget for the last four years. And some of that was, you know, the legislature, I think, making some thoughtful choices. Some, quite frankly, was me having to exercise the line item veto power. But that's just so. And look at what's happened with the state's debt. If you take all the state's debt in the history of the state of Florida from statehood till the present, just since I've been governor, we've paid off 51% of the state's debt. Paid it down. It's done. And we now have the lowest per capita debt of any state in the country. Meanwhile... We've done some really big things. We've done the largest environmental restoration in the history of the United States of America with the Florida Everglades. And I now, because, you know, Biden was terrible on this, we now under the Trump administration have been delegated authority to do some of the federal share of the projects. And they're funding that. And we do it a lot quicker. That's just the way we roll. So we're doing that. And that's something that's been, but we've put billions and billions of dollars into that. You know, it's actually, it's gotten to the point. We've done the infrastructure. We've improved the water flow that, you know, next year, three years from now five, you're going to spend less on that than what I've had to do because we had to really get where we were going. So that's been major. We've done infrastructure. We flushed another $7 to $8 billion into moving Florida forward. You've got these projects that were in the queue to start 10 years from now when traffic is bad now, and we've accelerated. You know, you see, you know, some of you actually in Manatee may experience I4 going into Orlando. I know the people that live in like Polk and Hillsborough and some of those. Just the temporary lane we did very quickly there has been a huge cut in traffic time there. Once the whole thing is done, you're going to save. And that's actually meaningful for people's lives. So we've never had an investment so dramatic in the history of the state. We did that. Education.

We have the, we've continued to have, and look, I'm not one that says, you know, if you spend more, you're going to get better results because some of the worst schools in the country have like $40,000 per student, like Washington, D.C. and some of these other ones. So it's not just about that. But even as we've done universal school choice, you know, the amount of money that's gone to school districts has increased. And we've created, and under my tenure, a special provision of the budget where money that's sent to school districts can only be used for teachers. salary increases. The budget I'm going to sign soon has, I think it's like a $1.55 billion, which is more than has ever been done. But $200 million of that is targeting people that have 10 years and more experience because we did a lot to try to get the minimum up because people didn't want to be teachers. They wanted to have other opportunities. So we're trying to make that more attractive for college graduates. Regardless, that's a massive investment. So we're doing big things, but doing it within the context of a budget that's actually declining. And so when we're sitting here talking about standing up for taxpayers at the local level, making sure spending is transparent, making sure spending's not runaway, make sure people aren't being taxed the way they have been. we have credibility in doing that because our budget has been very, very stable, very, very modest. You know, it's interesting. You see this stuff in New York City. You know, just electing people that even five years ago, I think, would have been thought that that would have been impossible to do, people that are celebrating terrorism, people that really reject the foundations of this country, which, you know, we're now celebrating 250. And, yeah, I think it's a really, really, you know, dangerous trend over there in that party. But the reality is, is, you know, look at how they're governed. The state of New York has 4 million fewer residents than the state of Florida. Our budget's about $117 billion. Their budgets $268 billion. Where is that money going? So these are choices that we have to make as citizens and who we elect and what we expect. But we've done it right at the state level and budget that I'll sign very soon. We'll continue that trend. And that's something that we're very, very proud of. Now, we did launch for not just the local government, but also state government, this FAFO audits, the Florida agency for fiscal oversight. identifying things, and there have been things that have been identified at the state level that have been flagged and reforms. Sometimes that's easier to do because you can just change your processes if you have an agency or something, but also at the local level looking at different things. And I know they did Manatee County. Blaze did that, and our folks at the state level did that. And they found...

that Manatee County in some ways, you know, had some good marks compared to the rest of the state. County held general fund spending growth below the increase in Advilorum revenues, cut the millage rate multiple times, and embrace the form of zero-based budgeting for operating budget. I think that's really important. Basically, that's legislative speak for you don't. guarantee last year's level of spending plus inflation as the starting point. What you do is you go in and say, okay, what do we need to spend on? You should assume zero for certain things, and there should be justification why that should be funded again. I mean, that's just that just goes without saying. In Washington, what they do, they don't do zero-based budgeting. So if you have a failed program that gets hundreds of billions of dollars or millions of dollars, whatever, You go the next year, they assume that same amount plus like 8%. So if you even want to say, okay, we'll do it, but only increase 3%, they say that's a draconian cut. It's actually a 3% increase of the previous year, but they'll frame that as a – so it's hardwired to – always increase spending in Washington and always grow government. When you do zero-based budgeting, you kind of take, you diffuse that hard wire, and the default should be zero, and then justify why you're using taxpayer money to do those different things. All right, just hang on. I want you to hear this philosophy. I want to play you some more of this when we get to property taxes and more. Stay tuned. This is important to follow.

Your night in just got legendary. Get ready to chase the rush, spin, win, and redeem instantly straight to your bank account at Legendswithazee.com. With free-to-play slots, blackjack, quino, roulette, and more. Experience all the thrills of Vegas without leaving your couch. Legends has it all. Legends is a free-to-play social casino, void, but prohibited must be 18-plus play responsibly visit Legends.com for full details. Get in the game now and score a 100% match on your first purchase only at Legends withazee.com. What's up, everybody? It's Bretzky. And America is turning 250. And I can't think of a better way to celebrate that than playing on an American-owned social casino, SpinQuest.com. With all of your favorite games, live craps, bubble craps, live blackjack, there's no better place to play for free and win real cash prizes. SpinQuest.com. SpenQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Boy, where prohibited, visit SpenQuest.com for more details. Dad, Disney activities are on Lingo Kids. What? Moana and Elsa and Marvel Spider-Man, all of them. On Lingo Kids? Yes, Dad, on Lingo Kids. That's pretty cool. I know. You just lost them for the rest of the afternoon. Worth it. Full of fun activities inspired by Disney's Moana, Frozen, Zootopia, Marvel Spider-Man, and more. Lingo Kids is where little ones discover more about favorite characters. Lingo Kids! Everything Kids love. Download it for free. Got plans this summer? A brewery crawl? Another lake trip? The same festival you've been to three times already? Do something different. This August, Virginia International Raceway becomes the ultimate summer destination. Watch Inns's Michelin GT Challenge at VIR, August 21 through 23rd, bring some of the fastest sports cars to battle through VIR's legendary corners. Camp with friends, enjoy live music, and experience a weekend you'll actually be talking about afterward. Start planning now at govIR.net. Youngstown's News, Weather, and Talk Station, 570, WKBN. So why do I want you to hear this? And this is just a part of the beginning of it. So he will get to property taxes. Because you can tell Ron DeSantis is just a smart guy who reads. You can start with that because there's a couple of things that I want you to hear what he said. It's called zero-based budgeting, which is basically you come in every year into the government. And you start with zero. Now you have to justify why you should get whatever amount that you're getting that particular year. You don't start with this is what we got last year. So that's where we start. We are going to get an 8% raise on top of that. And as he said, you get a 3% raise. And we only in political speak do you say that's a cut. You got more money, but it's a cut because you didn't get the 8% raise. You got 3%. As Ron DeSantis says, no, you should start at zero. You start at zero and you have to justify the entire budgets of how much money you're going to get, zero-based budgeting each year. And you heard him talk about...

government's role of making life better for people, taxpaying people, as far as those of you, they're familiar with Florida and a traffic jam around Orlando, Disney, and I4, by adding additional lanes on that system to make travel easier on everybody as they continue to expand that so that you save time, money well spent on behalf of the taxpayers. This is what he's talking about. Now, he's going to get to property taxes, and I want you to hear that. So let's see here. Let's try. So there were signs, though, in terms of affordability for Manity taxpayers. Blaze found that Manatee County's overall budget had grown faster than the rate of inflation and population growth, even despite the millage cuts. Doge team found Manate County carried out capital projects with limited planning and based on questionable assumptions. The number of staff funded grew pretty dramatically, 25% increase. And then since then, Manatee staff have worked with the Doge teams to help identify opportunities to save money for taxpayers. And there was a number of things that were identified to be able to do that. So, you know, look. I think that's great that Manatee has done that. You know, there's some jurisdictions that they don't want to ever listen or do any of the stuff like that. You hear different things like City of St. Pete, 307,000 on consulting services, develop a sustainability action plan for a Green New Deal like priority. Counties across southeast Florida created a climate compact designed to force reductions of carbon emissions from residents even though we've reduced emissions through market forces in Florida pretty dramatically So you see like why are your taxes funding some of those things those are more ideological joy rides that these local governments are going on and I'm just saying if if affordability is something we want to address put the money back in the pocket of the property taxpayer, the homeowner. That's where you can really do a lot of difference. So we've been able to do a lot of these different things. And so, you know, I just looked at the numbers and I said, okay, for whatever reason, Florida Constitution has always treated the homestead residents preferable to other forms of property. So you have residential. that are not homestead, and then you have commercial properties. The homestead property, once you do that and establish that, it limits the amount they can increase your valuations. They cap that at most at 3%. And that does help for sure. Now, depending on where the market is, if you have to buy a new home, you could get a reset tax basis. Some of that carries over, but oftentimes not enough to make up for the whole difference of the home. But nevertheless, that's been something that's been good. And if you look at all the revenue that local governments take in across the state, there's more...

residential tax revenue that comes in from non-homestead properties than from homestead properties and obviously you have you have commercial that that contributes to it so our insight was basically you have this homestead exemption that goes up a certain amount you know why not exempt at all and let people actually own their home so that they're not constantly being taxed and having to pay the piper for all these other things. People say, oh, how are you going to get services? Like, you're paying a lot of other taxes just around. There's a lot of taxes that people pay. So it isn't like they're not going to be doing it, but I also think it would be better for the economy because people would have more money in their pocket, and it would definitely be a huge, huge reason for people to be homesteaded in Florida. So that was kind of, that was our, and we said, look, It may not happen immediately. It may have to phase it. Although I think if you did it immediately, it would still be... more revenue than local governments got adjusted for population and inflation than they had in 2019. And so we did have all these services in 2019. Let's just be very clear about that. So I thought even if you did that, it would be fine. But if you raise it and continue to raise it, limit local spending so that as revenue comes up, they're not able to just spend it, it goes back, and people get more of an exemption, and eventually you have that. It's interesting because, you know, they're talking about this bill in Washington on housing. Okay, now let me pause it there. I'll review a little bit of this, and I want you to hear the rest of it. All right, just stay tuned, because this is the mentality that we lack. Towns News, Weather, and Talk Station, 570, WKBN. So why do I want you to hear this? All right, and this is just a part of the beginning of it. He will get to property taxes. Because you can tell Ron DeSantis is just a smart guy who reads. You can start with that because there's a couple of things that I want you to hear what he said. It's called zero-based budgeting, which is basically you come in every year into the governments, and you start with zero. Now, you have to justify why you should get whatever amount that you're getting that particular year. You don't start with this is what we got last year. So that's where we start and we are going to get an 8% raise on top of that. And as he said, you get a 3% raise and we only in political speak to you say that's a cut. You got more money, but it's a cut because you didn't get the 8% raise. You got 3%. As Ron DeSantis says, no, you should start at zero. You start at zero and you have to justify the entire budgets of how much money you're going to get, zero-based budgeting each year. And you heard him talk about, you know, government's role of making life better for people, taxpaying people, as far as those of you, they're familiar with Florida and a traffic jam around Orlando, Disney and I-4, by adding additional lanes on that system to make travel easier on everybody as they continue to expand that so that you save time, money well spent for it on behalf of the taxpayers. This is what he's talking about.

Now, he's going to get to property taxes, and I want you to hear that. So let's see here. Let's try. So there were signs, though, in terms of affordability for Manatee taxpayers. Blaze found that Manatee County's overall budget had grown faster than the rate of inflation and population growth, even despite the millage. cuts. Doge team found many county carried out capital projects with limited planning and based on questionable assumptions. The number of staff funded, you know, grew pretty dramatically, 25% increase. And then since then, Manatee staff have worked with the Doge teams to help identify opportunities to save money for taxpayers. And there was a number of things that were identified to be able to do that. So, you know, look. I think that's great that Manatee has done that. There's some jurisdictions that they don't want to ever listen or do any of the stuff like that. You hear different things like City of St. Pete, 307,000 on consulting services, develop a sustainability action plan for a Green New Deal like priority. Counties across southeast Florida created a climate compact designed to force reductions of carbon emissions from residents, even though we've reduced emissions through market forces in Florida pretty dramatically. So you see like why are your taxes funding some of those things? Those are more ideological joy rides that these local governments are going on. And I'm just saying if affordability is something we want to address. Put the money back in the pocket of the property taxpayer, the homeowner. That's where he can really do a lot of difference. So we've been able to do a lot of these different things. And so, you know, I just looked at the numbers and I said, okay, for whatever reason, Florida Constitution has always treated the homestead residents preferable to other forms of property. So you have residential that are not homestead. and then you have commercial properties. The homestead property, once you do that and establish that, it limits the amount. They can increase your valuations. They cap that at most at 3%. And that does help for sure. Now, you know, depending on where the market is, if you have to buy a new home, you could get a reset tax basis. Some of that carries over, but oftentimes not enough to make up for the whole difference of the home. But nevertheless, that's been something that's been good. And if you look at all the revenue that local governments take in across the state, there's more. residential tax revenue that comes in from non-homestead properties than from homestead properties and obviously you have you have commercial that that contributes to it so our

Insight was basically you have this homestead exemption that goes up a certain amount. You know, why not exempt at all and let people actually own their home so that they're not constantly being taxed and having to pay the Piper for all these other things? People say, oh, how are you going to get services? Like you're paying a lot of other taxes just around. There's a lot of taxes that people pay. So it isn't like they're not going to be doing it. But I also think it would be better for the economy because people would have more money in their pocket. And it would definitely be a huge. huge, huge reason for people to be homesteaded in Florida. So that was kind of, that was our, and we said, look, it may not happen immediately. It may have to phase it, although I think if you did it immediately, it would still be. more revenue than local governments got adjusted for population and inflation than they had in 2019. And so we did have all these services in 2019. Let's just be very clear about that. So I thought even if you did that, it would be fine. But if you raise it and continue to raise it, limit local spending so that as revenue comes up, they're not able to just spend it. It goes back and people get more of an exemption, and eventually you have that. It's interesting because, you know, they're talking about this bill in Washington. on housing. Okay, now let me pause it there. I'll review a little bit of this, and I want you to hear the rest of it. All right, just stay tuned because this is the mentality that we lack around here. Let's start here. So good morning and welcome. We are now underway. We're following the events of the day. What we're just now hearing about. This is new information. Throughout the day. Good day. This is where it stands now. Pick up the conversation. We'll talk about what's happening. Anytime the deal we reached with Iran. Devils and the details. Bringing the price of gasoline down. Maintain the Fed funds rate. Tying FISA into this. day back. NATO has been a paper tiger for the very latest. We'll see how that all plays out. News Radio 5-7 WKBF. A Dayton Juvenile is recovering after walking themselves to the hospital after getting shot. A police spokesperson says it happened near East Seben Thaler Avenue and North Dixie Drive yesterday. Limited details were released while the investigation continues. To submit tips, call police. The Ohio State Highway Patrol has compiled the traffic fatality statistics for the 4th of July weekend. The Ohio State Highway Patrol says 18 people lost their lives and 18 traffic crashes from Thursday through Sunday night. Three of the people who died were not wearing seatbelts, and there were three motorcycle riders who died who were not wearing a helmet. Three of the fatal crashes involved alcohol. As for the 18 fatalities in Ohio this year during the 4th of July weekend, that's up from 14 last year. I'm Tom Moore. And I'm Andy Betts. Listen on the free iHeartRadio app for all your music, news, talk, and sports radio. Podcast to download the app. Free never sounded so good. A to Z dependable services. All right, back to it now. I talked about this yesterday because I was listening to this when I was on break, okay, for last week.

And you say, oh, this is a governor of Florida. We live in Ohio. I want you just to listen to the philosophy, though. It's the thought process that he's talking about. His thought process. So every year over the last four years, they spent less money than a year before. They didn't spend more money. They shrank government. So this year's budget is less than last year's budget. Last year's budget was less than a year before that. And the one before that was less than the one before that. And they're not adjusting dollars for inflation. They're just using dollars as they apply. So they're spending less money. Not adjusted for inflation, spending less money. So you start with that mentality. Then they're saying, okay, well, if we're going to spend money, we're going to spend money on projects that benefit the citizens, like adding extra lanes on the freeway so that you're not stuck in traffic so long. Not in some of this ridiculous spending, as he was pointing out with this school system that has substantially less kids, but a $5 billion budget. And yet they're educating less children. So you can see the money's just going to the system. So just let he's getting a property taxes and he's talking to, now think of what he said about property taxes. And in Florida with a homestead exemption, unlike and just compared to what you're hearing here in Mahoning County, in Florida, the homestead exemption is not age-based and it's not income-based. If you are a Florida resident and live in your home, you get the homestead exemption, period. So he's talking about totally eliminating property taxes. totally eliminating them and saying that you pay enough in other taxes we can cover in all these other taxes you're paying we should be able to figure out a way to cover all these expenses. So just pay attention here as we continue on, okay? And then President Trump, I think, just threw cold water on it. I don't know what that means going forward. But one of the issues they were supposedly addressing are these large companies like private equity, buying up neighborhoods and then renting them out. And so they were talking about banning it. The bill doesn't actually ban it. It just has those institutional people go through a couple extra steps. So I'm not sure. Anyone's really going to be happy with that on either side. But we looked at it from the tax perspective in Florida. Well, guess what? If you have homestead tax-free and some of these companies want to buy 20 homes and they're going to pay tax on that. You are not as the primary homeowner. So if we want to make homes more affordable for individual homeowners and not just make them end up being this, well, having that real strong homestead, that would help get you there because it would be much better to do that than to do the other. Be that as it may.

That was what we were really working for. And we also proposed, so yes, you do that. Yes, you have to have a process where people can't just move here and claim this immediately, that they would have to have some skin in the game for a period of time, just like you have to establish residency for in-state tuition. can be the same thing. And so we thought that was important. And then I also thought, look, I think that a lot of these folks, these local governments have adequate resources. But we've got this massive surplus. We now have quadrupled the rainy day funds since I took office in 2019. We're going to end up, I'm going to veto some more stuff. So we're going to end up with really, really strong reserves. I mean, historically, the last. last six or seven years in Florida has been without really peer in the modern history of the state, why not take some of that, establish a fund, and then give local governments who really need money for services grants. You know, I'm not giving you a grant to increase bloat. I'm not giving you a grant to do your ideology. But if there was a city that said, you know, look, we're going to have to lay off these two police officers because of this, how the property tax work, I would give a grant for that. You have others. You give a grant. That's fine. And that wouldn't be forever, but it would be in this transition period. And that would really be historic, and I think it would be something to do. So we worked on that. We proposed. We had worked with primarily the Senate. It's just the reality of kind of how we had to deal with the legislature the last couple years, you know, didn't have support in the House leadership to do very much that we wanted to do. So we had to figure out ways to get it done and stopped a lot of the stuff they wanted to do, which would have been really bad. But we did. Ultimately, you know, the House was not going to pass the Homestead elimination proposal, put it on the ballot. I think it would have passed. I think it would have been huge. Biggest victory for taxpayers in the history of the state probably since they banned the income tax in the state constitution. So be that as it may, they ended up passing a big property tax cut. I'm in favor of it. I think it'll be very good for taxpayers. Honestly, it's a modest. reduction in kind of the revenue. I mean, there's still way, way more than they were in 2019 local governments relative to inflation and population growth. Don't let anyone tell you differently on that. If you couldn't function in 2019 levels of spending, if you could function in 2019, you're going to be able to function if this passes going forward. There is no question about it. And so I applaud that the legislature was willing to put something on the ballot. You know, I haven't run all the numbers on that. We had all the numbers for our proposal. We were going to roll out everything. But I think it's going to be good. It'll be meaningful, particularly for people that are, you know, more working class and middle class.

homeowners, and they're going to see a pretty big cut in what they're doing on property tax. And I know Blaze can tell you how some of those numbers work in terms of what he's seen with the overspending. So if you literally just put the budgets back at like 2024 level and just froze them there and not let them grow more than population or inflation, you'd have huge amounts of money to be able to return. to our homeowners, there's no question about it. So it can be done. So they're doing that, and that's going to be on the ballot in November. And I know there's a lot of discussion about it. All I'll tell you is, when I hear these people, it's like, do you care about affordability or not? If you care about it, then what better tool in the toolbox do we have than to do this for our homesteaded property owners? I mean, that's the best thing we can do. It obviously overwhelmingly benefits middle class people. And not that, I mean, I want everyone to get it, but this is definitely something that's targeted there and that it's going to be a meaningful thing. And it's like some people just believe that government has first dibs on your property and your income. And it's like, okay, you exist to satisfy government, and then you get the crumbs that are left over. I think it's the other way around. I think you work hard, you save, you invest. you acquire property because you're doing what our founding fathers established this country to do. You're pursuing happiness. you're realizing your ambitions. And in part of that, if there's taxes to support government that will help you do that, then that's one thing, even though we don't like paying, we understand there's a small need for it. But ultimately, government is supposed to exist to be able to ensure that that dream is alive, that you're able to do what you want. And I just think some people just have it totally backwards. It should be, What do our citizens need? Then you can talk about government's needs. And instead, it's all about what government needs or wants, not even needs, what they want, and that you're just supposed to be happy with crumbs on the table. Now, tell me that isn't the mentality around here. Tell me, just based on what you've heard on these debates lately. So you've heard locally how important it is that government gets your money and you get the crumbs. And this is what I want you to hear from Ron DeSantis in Florida. It's the other way around. And this is what they're doing in Florida. As he said, the more money that you can get back into the homeowners' pockets, the more they have to spend, the better off the economy is, the better off their life is. But the mentality around here is, oh, we can't, we can't cut anything. We always got increased spending. We can't give the person their money back. We give them the crumbs. So a very important statement philosophy you just made. That's not the way the country was founded, and that's not consistent, I think, with the ethos here in the free state of Florida. So we have a chance to do something about it. I view the initiative as kind of an opening salvo.

I don't think that this is the end of property tax. I think that we have an opportunity as a state that attracts a lot of visitors, a lot of people that pay taxes here, or not residents here in a variety of ways. We can leverage that for the benefit of our own citizens and the primary homeowners that homes of their property. And so that debate will continue. But the people are ahead. of the elites on this, right? You know, some elites, they're just so used to, well, of course your home is, government can take your home, if you stop paying, auction the house, all this stuff. Well, of course, of course. Like, no, not of course. Why? Why would we want to allow that to happen in a free society? And so I think that you're going to continue to see a lot of the politicians are going to have to catch up to where the people are going because the people want and they need relief and they want to be able to own their own home. So the bills were signed today kind of plays into that whole debate about proper levels of spending, support for taxpayers, and so there's two bills that were signing. The first one was passed in the property tax special session at Senate Bill 4F. It makes it harder for local governments to raise property tax burdens without greater accountability. So under current law, Local governments can benefit from complicated formulas that allow them to take in more money from taxpayers even when they are claim even when they are not technically raising tax rates. This bill cuts through that concern by strengthening safeguards against local property tax increases. It changes how local governments calculate the maximum property tax rate they can adopt with a simple majority vote. Under the current system, local governments can increase rates based on growth in Florida's per capita personal income. This bill removes that adjustment and generally limits the maximum possible millage rate increase year over year to the standard rollback rate. The rollback rate is designed to bring in roughly the same amount of property tax revenue as the year before, meaning local governments won't necessarily be able to increase revenue as quickly as home values rise. And let's just be clear, these home values are totally subjective. You know, they say you bought a house for $350,000 six years ago, and then they tell you two years ago, by the way, it's worth $800,000. You never sold the house for $800,000. And so until there's actually a market transaction, and this stuff goes up and down. So this is something that will be protecting taxpayers. Under the bill, if a local government wants to go above the rollback level, it would have to meet a higher threshold within the local governing body. And so having supermajority requirements, two-thirds vote. is something that's really, really positive for taxpayers. The change is expected to lower the base millage rate for many local governments because the new calculation no longer factors in personal income growth. Many jurisdictions will have less ability to increase property tax collections through the normal budgeting process. And, you know, that's part of the thing with property tax when they say, oh, you know, this, this property tax.

A lot of it is kind of silent stealth tax increases because you're not actually raising your rate just all of a sudden you have to pay more, right? And there's not even like really a public vote on it. The inside knowledge. To the extent that you would expect. So this is good. This supports the ballot initiative that's on the ballot. and provides the ability to have that clearly explained. So I look forward to signing that momentarily. Second bill I'm signing today is Blaze's bill, HB 1329, Local Government Financial Transparency and Accountability Act. It requires local governments to put more of their financial information online in a format that taxpayers can more readily access for review. This includes budget summaries, revenues, expenditures, spending by department and function, staffing summaries, reserves, fund balances, and other important financial information. The bill also requires counties and municipalities to publish quarterly reports concerning employee compensation in an annual budget development calendar promoting year-round accountability for local governments. More importantly, this bill requires local governments to conduct a budget cutting exercise before final adoption. I know We'll talk a little bit about that. So I want to thank the folks in the legislature for passing these two bills. These bills are taxpayer-friendly. And we've got to be taxpayer-friendly. as office holders, but particularly as Republicans, and these bills meet that mark. So we're going to hear from Blaze and then the mayor, and then I'll make it official. So Blaze, you want to come up? All right, there you go. That's the part I wanted you to hear. I wanted you to hear. Why is that important? Because I wanted to hear the philosophy. And this is not a philosophy that you hear from your local officials around here. So every year, In Florida, they've lowered spending. This year is lower than a year before. And the year before that was lower than every year, they're spending less money. Not adjusted for inflation, the same dollars. They don't adjust it. They don't play the game well adjusted for inflation. They're spending less money each year. So Ron DeSantis wants to totally do away. with property taxes because he says, think of what that would do for people's incomes and they'll spend the money. And that's a good thing. Totally do away with it. Now, that wouldn't do away with people, these big conglomerates that buy rental properties, as we have them here, companies. This would not apply to businesses that have rental properties. It wouldn't apply to Home Depot or commercial business. It would only apply to people who live in their homes, who own and live in their homes. It would apply to them.

Zero property taxes. Total homestead exemption. That's what he wants as governor. Hasn't got there yet, but his champion getting there and told you about the bill that he's going to sign. But it's a philosophy. He says governments, and what do you have here when they were talking about doubling the owner occupancy from 2.5% to 5? What did you see? Superintendent's up bitching how it's going to affect them. Bruce Shepis up there bitching about what's going to do to the townships. They were all there at governments talking about, oh, no, no, you can't cut government spending. Even though we got more money from the re-evaluations, and even though you're just giving a small portion of it back to the people that are paying it, it'll be devastating to governments. They didn't care about what it does to the homeowner. That is the most dangerous philosophy of these knuckleheads that have that philosophy. So in Florida, they're spending less each year. Not the same. Less. Do you see that in Mahoning County? Do you see that around here? Do you see that in the state of Ohio? I'll be right back. Your night in just got legendary. Get ready to chase the rush, spin, win, and redeem instantly straight to your bank account at Legendswithazee.com. With free-to-play slots, blackjack, quino, roulette, and more. Experience all the thrills of Vegas without leaving your couch. Legends has it all. Legends is a free-to-play social casino void. It must be 18 plus play responsibly visit Legends.com for full details. Get in the game now and score a 100% match on your first purchase only at Legends withazee.com. Happy birthday, America. It's time to celebrate and play your favorite Las Vegas casino games by American-owned SpinQuest.com. What's better than fireworks than American Pie? Hitting a black check in the palm of your hand, and you won't lose your fingers. Over a thousand games including slots and live dealers. And $30 point packs are on sale for 10. SpinQuest.com. Buy American players for American players. SpenQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit SpenQuest.com for more to tell. Dad, Disney activities are on Lingo Kids. What? Moana and Elsa and Marvel Spider-Man, all of them. On Lingo Kids? Yes, Dad, on Lingo Kids. That's pretty cool. I know. You just lost them for the rest of the afternoon. Worth it. Full of fun activities inspired by Disney's Moana, Frozen, Zootopia, Marvel Spider-Man, and more. Lingo Kids is where little ones discover more about favorite characters. Lingo Kids! Everything Kids love. Download it for free. Trade screen time for race time at Virginia International Raceway. August 21st through 23rd, IMSA's Michelin GT Challenge brings some of the coolest cars to VIR for an unforgettable family weekend. Explore, meet drivers, see race cars up close, and experience the thrill of racing from every corner of the track. It's more than a race. It's a memory waiting to be made. Kids 12 and under get in free. Get your tickets at VIRFam.com. That's VIRFAM.com.

Now, Ron Verb. On News Radio 570, WKBN. All right, back to it. Now, I talked about this yesterday because I was listening to this when I was on break, okay, for last week. And you say, oh, this is a governor of Florida. We live in Ohio. I want you just to listen to the philosophy, though. It's the thought process that he's talking about. His thought process. So every year over the last four years, They spent less money than a year before. They didn't spend more money. They shrank government. So this year's budget is less than last year's budget. Last year's budget was less than a year before that. And the one before that was less than the one before that. So they're not adjusting dollars for inflation or just using dollars as they apply. So they're spending less money. Not adjusted for inflation, spending less money. So you start with that mentality. Then they're saying, okay, well, if we're going to spend money, we're going to spend money on projects that benefit the citizens, like adding extra lanes on a freeway so that you're not stuck in traffic so long. Not in some of this ridiculous spending, as he was pointing out with this school system that has substantially less kids. but a $5 billion budget, and yet they're educating less children. So you can see the money's just going to the system. So he's getting a property taxes, and he's talking to, now think of what he said about property taxes. And in Florida with the homestead exemption, unlike and just compared to what you're hearing here in Mahoning County, in Florida, the homestead exemption is not age-based and it's not income-based. If you are a Florida resident and live in your home, you get the homestead exemption, period. So he's talking about totally eliminating property taxes, totally eliminating them, and saying that you pay enough in other taxes, we can cover, in all these other taxes you're paying, we should be able to figure out a way to. cover all these expenses. So just pay attention here as we continue on, okay? And then President Trump, I think, just threw cold water on it. I don't know what that means going forward. But one of the issues they were supposedly addressing are these large companies like private equity, buying up neighborhoods and then renting them out. And so they were talking about banning it. The bill doesn't actually ban it. It just has those institutional people go through a couple extra steps. So I'm not sure. Anyone's really going to be happy with that on either side. But we looked at it from the tax perspective in Florida. Well, guess what? If you have homestead tax-free and some of these companies want to buy 20 homes and they're going to pay tax on that. You are not as the primary homeowner. So if we want to make homes more affordable for individual homeowners and not just make them end up being this, well, having that real strong homestead, that would help get you there because it would be much better to do that than to do the other. Be that as it may, that was what we were really working for. And we also proposed, so yes, you do that. Yes.

You have to have a process where people can't just move here and claim this immediately, that they would have to have some skin in the game for a period of time. Just like you have to establish residency for in-state tuition can be the same thing. And so we thought that was important. And then I also thought, look, I think that a lot of these folks, these local governments have adequate resources. But we've got this massive surplus. We now have quadrupled the rainy day funds since I took office in 2019. We're going to end up, I'm going to veto some more stuff, so we're going to end up with really, really strong reserves. I mean, historically, the last six or seven years in Florida has been without really peer in the modern history of the state. Why not take some of that? establish a fund, and then give local governments who really need money for services grants. You know, I'm not giving you a grant to increase bloat. I'm not giving you a grant to do your ideology. But if there was a city that said, you know, look, we're going to have to lay off these two police officers because of this, how the property tax work, I would give a grant for that. You have others. You give a grant. That's fine. And that wouldn't be forever, but it would be in this transition period. And that would really be historic, and I think it would be something to do. So we worked on that, and we proposed. We had worked with primarily the Senate. It's just the reality of kind of how we had to deal with the legislature the last couple years, you know, didn't have support in the House leadership to do very much that we wanted to do. So we had to figure out ways to get it done and stopped a lot of the stuff they wanted to do, which would have been really bad. But we did. Ultimately, you know, the House was not going to pass the Homestead elimination proposal, put it on the ballot. I think it would have passed. I think it would have been huge. Biggest victory for taxpayers in the history of the state probably since they banned the income tax in the state constitution. So be that as it may, they ended up passing a big property tax cut. I'm in favor of it. I think it'll be very good for taxpayers. Honestly, it's a modest. reduction in kind of the revenue. I mean, there's still way, way more than they were in 2019 local governments relative to inflation and population growth. Don't let anyone tell you differently on that. If you couldn't function in 2019 levels of spending, if you could function in 2019, you're going to be able to function if this passes going forward. There is no question about it. And so I applaud that the legislature was willing to put something on the ballot. You know, I haven't run all the numbers on that. We had all the numbers for our proposal. We were going to roll out everything. But I think it's going to be good. It'll be meaningful, particularly for people that are, you know, more working class and middle class homeowners. And they're going to see a pretty big cut in what they're doing on property tax. And I know Blaze can tell you how some of those numbers work in terms of what he's seen with the overspending. So if you just, if you literally just.

put the budgets back at like 2024 level and just froze them there and not let them grow more than population or inflation, you'd have huge amounts of money to be able to return to our homeowners. There's no question about it. So it can be done. So they're doing that, and that's going to be on the ballot in November. And I know there's a lot of discussion about it. All I'll tell you is when I hear these people, it's like, do you care about affordability or not? If you care about it. Then what better tool in the toolbox do we have than to do this for our homesteaded property owners? I mean, that's the best thing we can do. It obviously overwhelmingly benefits middle class people. And not that, I mean, I want everyone to get it, but this is definitely something that's targeted there and that it's going to be a meaningful thing. And it's like some people just believe that government has first dibs on your property and your income. And it's like, okay, you exist to satisfy government, and then you get the crumbs that are left over. I think it's the other way around. I think you work hard, you save, you invest, you acquire property because you're doing what our founding fathers established this country to do. You're pursuing happiness. You're realizing your ambitions. And in part of that... If there's taxes to support government that will help help you do that. then that's one thing, even though we don't like paying, we understand there's a small need for it. But ultimately, government is supposed to exist to be able to ensure that that dream is alive, that you're able to do what you want. And I just think some people just have it totally backwards. It should be, what do our citizens need? Then you can talk about government's needs, and instead it's all about what government needs or... wants, not even needs, what they want, and that you're just supposed to be happy with crumbs on the table. Now, tell me that isn't the mentality around here. Tell me, just based on what you've heard on these debates lately. So you've heard locally how important it is that government gets your money and you get the crumbs. And this is what I want you to hear from Ron DeSantis in Florida. It's the other way around. And this is what they're doing in Florida. As he said, the more money that you can get back into the homeowners' pockets, the more they have to spend, the better off the economy is, the better off their life is. But the mentality around here is, oh, we can't, we can't cut anything. We always got increased spending. We can't give the person their money back. We give them the crumbs. So a very important statement philosophy you just made. That's not the way the country was founded, and that's not consistent, I think, with the ethos here in the free state of Florida. So we have a chance to do something about it. I view the initiative as kind of an opening salvo.

I don't think that this is the end of property tax. I think that we have an opportunity as a state that attracts a lot of visitors, a lot of people that pay taxes here or not residents here in a variety of ways. We can leverage that for the benefit of our own citizens and the primary homeowners that homes sell their property. And so that debate will continue. But the people are ahead. of the elites on this, right? You know, some elites, they're just so used to, well, of course your home is subject. Government can take your home. If you stop paying, auction now, all this stuff. Of course, of course. Like, no, not of course. Why? Why would we want to allow that to happen in a free society? And so I think that you're going to continue to see a lot of the politicians are going to have to catch up. to where the people are going because the people want and they need relief and they want to be able to own their own home. So the bills were signed today kind of plays into that whole debate about... proper levels of spending, support for taxpayers, and so there's two bills that were signing. The first one was passed in the Property Tax Special Session at Senate Bill 4F. It makes it harder for local governments to raise property tax burdens without greater accountability. So under current law... Local governments can benefit from complicated formulas that allow them to take in more money from taxpayers, even when they are not technically raising tax rates. This bill cuts through that concern by strengthening safeguards against local property tax increases. It changes how local governments calculate the maximum property tax rate they can adopt with a simple majority vote. Under the current system, local governments can increase rates based on growth in Florida's per capita personal income. This bill removes that adjustment and generally limits the maximum possible millage rate increase year over year to the standard rollback rate. The rollback rate is designed to bring in roughly the same amount of property tax revenue as the year before, meaning local governments won't necessarily be able to increase revenue as quickly as home values rise. And let's just be clear, these home values are totally subjective. You know, they say you bought a house for $350,000 six years ago, and then they tell you two years ago, by the way, it's worth $800,000. You never sold the house for $800,000. And so until there's actually a market transaction, and this stuff goes up and down. So this is something that will be protecting taxpayers. Under the bill for local government wants to go above the rollback level, it would have to meet a higher threshold within the local governing body. And so having supermajority requirements, two-thirds vote.

is something that's really, really positive for taxpayers. The change is expected to lower the base millage rate for many local governments because the new calculation no longer factors in personal income growth. Many jurisdictions will have less ability to increase property tax collections through the normal budgeting process. And, you know, that's part of the thing with property tax when they say, oh, you know, this, this property tax. A lot of it is kind of silent stealth tax increases because they're not actually raising your rate just all of a sudden you have to pay more, right? And there's not even like really a public vote on it. The insight knowledge. To the extent that you would expect. So this is good. This supports the ballot initiative that's on the ballot. and provides the ability to have that clearly explained. So I look forward to signing that momentarily. Second bill I'm signed today is Blaze's bill, HB 1329, Local Government Financial Transparency and Accountability Act. It requires local governments to put more of their financial information online in a format that taxpayers can more readily access for review. This includes budget summaries, revenues, expenditures, spending by department and function, staffing summaries, reserves, fund balances, and other important financial information. The bill also requires counties and municipalities to publish quarterly reports concerning employee compensation in an annual budget development calendar promoting year-round accountability for local governments. More importantly, this bill requires local governments to conduct a budget-cutting exercise before final adoption. We'll talk a little bit about that. So I want to thank the folks in the legislature for passing these two bills. These bills are taxpayer-friendly. And we've got to be taxpayer-friendly. as office holders, but particularly as Republicans, and these bills meet that mark. So we're going to hear from Blaze and then the mayor, and then I'll make it official. So, Blaze, you want to come up? All right, there you go. That's the part I wanted to hear. I wanted you to hear. Why is that important? Because I wanted to hear the philosophy. And this is not a philosophy that you hear from your local officials around here. So every year, In Florida, they've lowered spending. This year is lower than a year before. And the year before that was lower than every year, they're spending less money. Not adjusted for inflation, the same dollars. They don't adjust it. They don't play the game well adjusted for inflation. They're spending less money each year. So Ron DeSantis wants to totally do away. with property taxes because he says, think of what that would do for people's incomes and they'll spend the money. And that's a good thing.

Totally do away with it. Now, that wouldn't do away with people, these big conglomerates that buy rental properties, as we have them here, companies. This would not apply to businesses that have rental properties. It wouldn't apply to Home Depot or commercial business. It would only apply to people who live in their homes, who own and live in their homes. It would apply to them. Zero property taxes, total homestead exemption. That's what he wants as governor. Hasn't got there yet, but his champion getting there and told you about the bill that he's going to sign. But it's the philosophy. He says government, and what do you have here when they were talking about doubling the owner occupancy from two and a half percent to five? What did you see? Superintendent's up bitching how it's going to affect them. Bruce Shep is up there bitching about what's going to do to the townships. They were all there at governments talking about, oh, no, no, you can't cut government spending. Even though we got more money from the re-evaluations, and even though you're just giving a small portion of it back to the people that are paying it, it'd be devastating to governments. They didn't care about what it does to the homeowner. That is the most dangerous philosophy of these knuckleheads that have that philosophy. So in Florida, they're spending less each year. Not the same. Less. Do you see that in Mahoning County? Do you see that around here? Do you see that in the state of Ohio? I'll be right back.

You're one-stop for at a TV. We're back at it. 4-06 in the afternoon. News Radio 570 W.E.N. and Ron Verb, it's 85 degrees humid out there on this Tuesday, July 7th. By the way, here's an update. As I said, we over at Verb Banner took the brunt of this, the tornado. I survived the tornado. This was on Sunday as it came into Austin Town. I mean, I was looking right out the front window. And incidentally, kudos, the sirens are fantastic. I don't understand why some people, I would look out and see some people kind of like, what? What's that all about? I mean, they only test them Saturday at noon. When you hear that siren go off, pay attention to it. So you would hear the tornado siren go off. Then you hear her to go off again. And hey, it's telling you, look what's coming. Look what's coming. It isn't here right now, but it's coming. And you could see this dark cloud, this dark wall coming my way. And then it went from calm to just unbelievable buckets of rain that were coming down. Just buckets of rain that were coming down. Just incredible. The amount of rain, and then the winds. So you had the rain, like a hose, like a fire hose was shooting at your house. Then the winds. And then the power goes out. But as I said, you know, we have a generator that kind of pull start, one of those. So once it passed, we made sure we plug that inside the house. There's a plug for it. And so that your sump pump would run, so your basement wouldn't flood. That's why you have a generator. As I said, when I got married to my wife, my father-in-law was an electrician. God rest of soul, who told me, if you got a sump pump, you better own a generator. And I share that advice with each and every one of you as we review all this weather situation we've had and those of you that have flooded basements. So that's what he said, my father-in-law, the electrician. If you have a sump pump, you better own a generator. Because when does your power usually go off during a thunderstorm during a rain event? So when Verbenner was established in 1996, when we built it and there was a sump pump. One of the first purchases I made was a generator. And I wanted to make sure that, and sure enough, it has paid off time and time again. I don't care if it sits in it. And it's one of those things that you put it in your garage, but you better get it out every few months and start it. Like in ours, I'd just tell you, we put in what they call recreational fuel. It doesn't have any of the ethanol in it. It's just pure gas, if you will. You pay more for it per gallon. You see it they sell up Myers and country fairness kind of stuff. You don't have any of the...

The, what is it, ethanol in it's 10% ethanol, none of that kind of stuff. So that gas lasts longer, and it doesn't have all that other crap in it. So it costs more, but we always fill our generator with that. And you can put stable in it as well, in addition to that. So that way the gas doesn't turn bad. So you have gas in it. And if you own a generator, you bring it out every month or two, and you start it, make sure it runs, so that when you need it, the carburetor isn't gummed up, or it doesn't start, or you need a new spark plug. Well, it's a little late then when you need it. So you've got to kind of give it some attention every month or two. Let's even say every two months you give it some attention. Make sure the thing runs. So when you do need it, it functions. So needless to say, you know, I listened to my father-in-law, we had a generator. So consequently, when a storm passed and the power was out, boom, we didn't have to worry about a flooded basement because our sun pump was functioning because of the generator. And incidentally, another thing, always have a spare sum pump. Because if yours goes at night and the store is closed, you're screwed. Always have a spare one. Invest in having a spare one standing by so that they're pretty easy to swap out if you got a lot of rain coming in or getting somebody to do it for you if you're unable to do it. But you better have a sum pump there to put in. And if you have the same kind that's in there, it's really easy to do. So consequently, so we were, let's see, that would be 4 o'clock. So we were running our generator from 4 o'clock Sunday till last night at 1230. They finally restored our power. At 1230 last night. So what's that? Not quite 48 hours. About 36, 37, 38 hours. You know, the thing runs continuously. And during that time, also what this generator does, and it's stuff for you to think about. In our house, it's wired. So it takes care of the freezers, the refrigerator. You know, a refrigerator in a garage refrigerator in a house. We've got a couple of freezers. And it takes care of that. It takes care of making sure there's power to your garage, so your garage door, if my wife hits the garage door, open it open and close. and lights in your house. There's just to come to that kind of stuff. So you've got to think it through. I think if you get a whole house one like Mike Craig sells, even better. I mean, if you get one of those deals that runs on natural gas. But even if you get one like Mike talks about a generator specialist, they have a program that come out every year in service. It change you on. Make sure the battery's okay. And you better subscribe to that. So when you need it, it's there to function. Because if you don't maintain it, when you need it, it's not going to turn on. What's the point? But I don't have one of those. But like I say, you've got a gas one. But the outside, the house was wired so that there's a plug on the outside house. You plug it in. You can pick eight circuits that you can fire up. And there's a transfer switch inside. And, you know, you can run your refrigerator. You're not worried about your food spoiling or your freezer.

or your garage door being able to open or lights in your house. And it also goes to the furnace. Now, in the wintertime, it can provide heat, but it doesn't provide air conditioning, which I might work on that. There's a thing called a microair. My brother has down in Florida, you add it to your air conditioning units, and it doesn't get that initial big power surge to turn on, and your generator can cover that. because it was miserable without air conditioning. But needless to say, I mean, it's something to think about. It's like insurance. You buy it, you never want to use it. I have car insurance. I never bitch if I never use it because it means I haven't gotten an accident. I have health insurance. I don't bitch if I never use it. It means I haven't been sick. So insurance is one of those things you have that you don't want to use that you pay for. Well, a generator is one of those things that you have and you hope you never need, but you're damn glad it's there and you maintain it. And like I say, get a spare sump pump too. So if yours goes, you have one that you can throw in there. It has saved my hides numerous times, both having a spare sum pump and having a generator. I will tell you that right now. I feel sorry for these people who didn't do that. They get a foot of water or more in their basement. Next thing you know, your furnace is shot. because of the electronics, your washer, dryer, all the stuff, your hot water tank, whatever is all shot in your basement because you didn't prepare for these storms. And I don't mean just the tornado that we've all been through this time, depending where you live, but also you can have any type of major thunderstorm and thunder and lightning to take out your electricity. So let's, what do they say? Let's learn from these experiences. So I pass along just the wisdom that I got over the years, as I say, from my father-in-law. If you've got a sump pump in your basement, you damn well better have a generator. And if you have a generator, you better make sure it runs every couple months. Don't put it in a garage and forget about it because when you need it, it's not going to start. You better put the right gas in it and stabilizer in it and keep running it every month or two to make sure it works when you need it. But those people who didn't do that and watch your basement fill with water, at the very least you could always have a battery backup, some pump tube. Now, that might not keep up for a while, but you've got to be able to recharge your battery after a period of time. Just some thoughts that we should learn from all of this kind of stuff, that we should absolutely learn from it. I'm not a fan of having trees anywhere close to my house. whether that's in the front or anywhere close to it. I'm just not a fan of it. So they might look beautiful, but I don't want them around where they can fall to your property. So that's my words of wisdom with the big storm. So anyway, last night at 1230, we finally got her power back, which was great because when they turned it back on, my wife said the power's back, which means we could run the air conditioning because it was like 78 or 80 degrees. and it's in the must of bedroom at Verbe Manor, which is a little warm. So there you go. A little tidbit of advice for all of you. Now you can say, I'm not going to do that and write it all off, and that's goofy. Don't do that. Don't do that because you'll get caught again.

There will be more thunderstorms where you'll lose power and your sun pump won't be working, and there could always be another tornado or another situation. Well, I know my daughter and brothers have them all down in Florida because of hurricanes. And so they're always prepared. Be prepared, is what I'm saying. All right, and how about Ron DeSantis? I played that the first hour because I just wanted you to hear this guy's mentality. And how refreshing that mentality is versus what you're hearing from your local politicians around here. Every single one of them. Comments? We'll take some calls. You're on here. Hello? Yes. Big boy steam-driven train. What kind of fuel does it run on? What kind of fuel does what run on? The big boy steam engine train is supposed to be... running through starters today? I don't know. How the hell would I know? I'm not a train engineer. You have a year and that? You're on the air. Hey, Ronnie, you mentioned all that insurance. You got life insurance? Yes, I do. Okay. Well, your wife's pretty happy about that. Yeah, we don't have sirens around here. I live out in the country, so... Well, you should be... Are you in Mahoning County? Yeah, yeah. Well, you should be able to, you should be able to hear them there. I mean, they got them throughout the county. I know, but I could hear the roar of the tornado coming before the siren. But my wife does have a shock caller for me, so. Well, I'm going to tell you something. And kudos to the people who fire up those sirens. I mean, those sirens went off well beyond this tornado was coming towards our property or the effects of it were coming towards us. They were going off when the very dark clouds were there, and it hadn't started yet. So kudos to them by firing them off. You can hear them. But I look at some people in a neighborhood that would just be like kind of ignoring it. And I'm thinking, that's a foolish thing to do. And you can hear them if you're out in a country, whether you're in Jackson Township or wherever you might be. Well, yeah, I called you yesterday, and I did say kudos to WKBN with their weather app. I got it on my phone, you know, so they alerted me. But don't, but don't rely on that. Don't rely on that because cell towers fail. The siren is the best way as opposed to just your phone. But your phone is there for you. Right. Hey, Ron DeSantis, though, what a great guy, huh? I mean, just common sense working for the people. Yes. I mean, what a great philosophy, isn't it? I mean, what a great philosophy. You don't hear that from Mike DeWine. You don't hear that from your county commissioners. You don't hear that from anybody, any of these superintendents, all you hear from him is, we need more of your money. You get the crumbs.

Like he mentioned the one guy that, you know, he bought a house for 360,000 now it's worth 800,000. Yeah. You know, I told you yesterday, in 2020, my house was worth $219,000. Now it's $380,000. If I was looking to buy a house and it was $419,000 or whatever. I would say, you know what, I'm not going to buy that. That's going to affect my purchasing. You know, I wouldn't buy that house because I'm like, I'm not going to be able to pay the taxes on that. So I buy a lesser house. And next, you know, six years later, I'm paying taxes on a $400,000 house. So, yeah, Ron DeSantis, I like the way he's thinking. And keep in mind right now in Florida, as I say, the homestead exemption goes to everyone. It is an age-based. It is an income-based. If you live there, you get the homestead exemption. which is significance. But he wants to totally eliminate property taxes for residents of Florida, totally eliminate, eliminate them altogether. And he's doing it by saying zero-based budgeting, lowering spending, putting money back in your pocket, putting the taxpayer first, and doing these initiatives. What you see there is skilled leadership. You don't see that by any of these people around here. You don't see a lick of that with the exception of Dave Thomas. Right. And thank God at least you got some reprieve from that. But I saw a lot of comments online where, you know, they say don't get mad at your local people. But then I think it was a boss lady mentioned Erie County, where even though the state reevaluate your home. You know, Erie County said, oh, we're not going to tax you on that. Right. So why does Honing County do that? Why don't they just keep the taxes the same? Stand by for me. Hang in there for a minute. I'll get back to him. Excellent points. More to come. Glad you tuned in. Ron Verb News Radio 570-W-K-V-E-N. Your night in just got legendary. Get ready to chase the rush, spin, win, and redeem instantly straight to your bank account at Legendswithazee.com. With free-to-play slots, blackjack, quino, roulette, and more. Experience all the thrills of Vegas without leaving your couch. Legends has it all. Legends is a free-to-play social casino void for prohibited. Must be 18-plus play responsibly visit Legends.com for full details. Get in the game now and score a 100% match on your first purchase only at Legends withazee.com. What's going on, everyone? It's Bluff here, and you know what's more American than America's 250th birthday? Supporting American-owned companies like SpinQuest, America's number one social casino with over 1,000 games like Live Dealer Blackjack and Craps. They're offering new users a $30 coin package for just $10. Go to SpinQuest.com and sign up today. SpinQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Boydware prohibited, visit SpendQuest.com for more details.

Mom, can I have Lingo Kids? Dad, Lingo Kids, please! When did we become the Lingo Kids house? No idea. Last week it was dinosaurs. This week is... Lingo Kids! Why Lingo Kids? Because it's the best thing ever. We can play games. With astronauts. Wild animals. And so... Superheroes. With more than 4,000 interactive games, songs, and shows, Lingo Kids is the number one entertainment platform for young kids. So, no dinosaurs? And dinosaurs. Dinosaur Kids! Everything kids love. Download it for free. Entertain clients, reward employees, or enjoy a first-class race weekend with VIR's premium MSA hospitality experiences. August 21st through 23rd, enjoy exclusive viewing areas, premium amenities, food and beverage options, and access that puts you close to the action. Whether for business or pleasure, elevate your weekend at Virginia International Raceway. Explore and upgrade your tickets at VIRVIP.net. On Verb. On News Radio 570, WKBN. We're back at it. 406 in the afternoon, News Radio 570, WKBN, and Ron Verb. It's 85 degrees, humid out there on this Tuesday, July 7th. By the way, here's an update. As I said, we offered for Banner took the brunt of the tornado. I survived the tornado. This was on Sunday as it came into Austin Town. I mean, I was looking right out the front window. And incidentally, kudos, the sirens are fantastic. I don't understand why some people, I would look out and see some people kind of like, what? What's that all about? I mean, they only test them Saturday at noon. When you hear that siren go off, pay attention to it. So you would hear the tornado siren go off, then you hear her to go off again. And hey, it's telling you, look what's coming. Look what's coming. It isn't here right now, but it's coming. And you could see this dark cloud, this dark wall coming my way. And then it went from calm to just unbelievable buckets of rain that were coming down, just buckets of rain that were coming down. Just incredible. The amount of rain, and then the winds. So you had the rain, like a hose, like a fire hose was shooting at your house. Then the winds. And then the power goes out. But as I said, you know, we have a generator, kind of a pull start, one of those. So once it passed, we made sure we plug that in outside the house. There's a plug for it. And so that your sump pump would run, so your basement wouldn't flood. That's why you have a generator. As I said, when I got married to my wife, my father-in-law was an electrician. God rest his soul, who told me, if you got a sump pump, you better own a generator.

And I share that advice with each and every one of you as we review all this weather situation that we've had and those of you that have flooded basements. So that's what he said, my father-in-law, the electrician. If you have a sump pump, you better own a generator. Because when does your power usually go off during a thunderstorm during a rain events. So when Verbenner was established in 1996, when we built it and there was a sump pump. One of the first purchases I made was a generator. And I wanted to make sure that, and sure enough, it has paid off time and time again. I don't care if it sits in a, and it's one of those things that you put it in your garage, but you better get it out every few months and start it. Make sure you put in, like in ours, I'd just tell you, we put in what they call recreational fuel. It doesn't have any of the, what, ethanol in it. It's just pure gas, if you will. You pay more for it per gallon. You see it they sell up Myers and country fairness kind of stuff. You don't have any of the... The, what is it, ethanol in it's 10% ethanol, none of that kind of stuff. So that gas lasts longer, and it doesn't have all that other crap in it. So it costs more, but we always fill our generator with that. And you can put stable in it as well, in addition to that. So that way the gas doesn't turn bad. So you have gas in it. And if you own a generator, you bring it out every month or two and you start it. Make sure it runs. So that when you need it, the carburetor isn't gummed up or it doesn't start or you need a new spark plug. Well, it's a little late then when you need it. So you've got to kind of give it some attention every month or two. Let's even say every two months you give it some attention. Make sure the thing runs. So when you do need it, it functions. So needless to say, you know, I listened to my father-in-law, we had a generator. So consequently, when a storm passed and the power was out, boom, we didn't have to worry about a flooded basement because our sum pump was functioning because of the generator. And incidentally, another thing, always have a spare sum pump. Because if yours goes at night and the store is closed, you're screwed. Always have a spare one. Invest in having a spare one standing by so that they're pretty easy to swap out if you got a lot of rain coming in or getting somebody to do it for you if you're unable to do it. But you better have a sum pump there to put in. And if you have the same kind that's in there, it's really easy to do. So consequently, so we were, let's see, that would be 4 o'clock. So we were running our generator from 4 o'clock Sunday till last night at 1230. They finally restored our power at 1230 last night. So what's that? Not quite 48 hours. About 36, 37, 38 hours.

You know, the thing runs continuously. And during that time, also what this generator does, and it's stuff for you to think about. In our house, it's wired, so it takes care of the freezers, the refrigerator. You know, a refrigerator in a garage refrigerator in a house. We've got a couple of freezers, and it takes care of that. It takes care of making sure there's power to your garage, so your garage door, if my wife hits the garage door, open it open and close. and lights in your house. There's just to come to that kind of stuff. So you've got to think it through. I think if you get a whole house one like Mike Craig sells, even better. I mean, if you get one of those deals that runs on natural gas. But even if you get one like Mike talks about a generator specialist, they have a program that come out every year in service. It change you on. Make sure the battery's okay. And you better subscribe to that. So when you need it, it's there to function. Because if you don't maintain it, when you need it, it's not going to turn on. What's the point? But I don't have one of those. But like I say, I got a gas one. But the outside, the house was wired so that there's a plug on the outside house. You plug it in. You can pick eight circuits that you can fire up. And there's a transfer switch inside. And, you know, you can run your refrigerator. You're not worried about your food spoiling or your freezer. where your garage door being able to open or lights in your house. And it also goes to the furnace. Now, in the wintertime, it can provide heat, but it doesn't provide air conditioning, which I might work on that. There's a thing called a microair. My brother has down in Florida, you add it to your air conditioning units, and it doesn't get that initial big power surge to turn on, and your generator can cover that. because it was miserable without air conditioning. But needless to say, I mean, it's something to think about. It's like insurance. You buy it, you never want to use it. I have car insurance. I never bitch if I never use it because it means I haven't gotten an accident. I have health insurance. I don't bitch if I never use it. It means I haven't been sick. So insurance is one of those things you have that you don't want to use that you pay for. Well, a generator is one of those things that you have and you hope you never need, but you're damn glad it's there and you maintain it. And like I say, get a spare sump pump too. So if yours goes, you have one that you can throw in there. It has saved my hides numerous times, both having a spare sum pump and having a generator. I will tell you that right now. I feel sorry for these people who didn't do that. They get a foot of water or more in their basement. Next thing you know, your furnace is shot. because of the electronics, your washer, dryer, all the stuff, your hot water tank, whatever is all shot in your basement because you didn't prepare for these storms. And I don't mean just the tornado that we've all been through this time, depending where you live, but also you can have any type of major thunderstorm and thunder and lightning to take out your electricity. So let's, what do they say? Let's learn from these experiences. So I pass along just the wisdom that I got over the years, as I say, from my father-in-law. If you've got a sump pump in your basement, you damn well better have a generator. And if you have a generator, you better make sure it runs every couple months. Don't put it in the garage and forget about it because when you need it, it's not going to start.

You better put the right gas in it, the stabilizer in it, and keep running it every month or two to make sure it works when you need it. But those people who didn't do that, watch your basement fill with water, at the very least, you could always have a battery backup, some pump tube. Now, that might not to keep up for a while, but you've got to be able to recharge your battery after a period of time. Just some thoughts that we should learn from all of this kind of stuff. that we should absolutely learn from it. I'm not a fan of having trees anywhere close to my house, whether that's in the front or anywhere close to it. I'm just not a fan of it. So they might look beautiful, but I don't want them around where they can fall onto your property. So that's my words of wisdom with the big storm. So anyway, last night at 1230, we finally got a power back, which was great because when they turned it back on, I always said the power's back, which means we could run the air conditioning because it was like 78 or 80 degrees. And it's in the must of bedroom at Verbe Manor, which is a little warm. So there you go. A little tidbit of advice for all of you. Now you can say, I'm not going to do that and write it all off, and that's goofy. Don't do that. Don't do that because you'll get caught again. There will be more thunderstorms where you'll lose power and your sun pump won't be working, and there could always be another tornado or another situation. Well, I know my daughter and brothers have them all down in Florida because of hurricanes. And so they're always prepared. Be prepared, is what I'm saying. All right. And how about Ron DeSantis? I played that the first hour because I just wanted you to hear this guy's mentality. And how refreshing that mentality is versus what you're hearing from your local politicians around here. Every single one of them. Comments? We'll take some calls. You're on here. Hello? Yes. Big boy steam driven train. What kind of fuel does it run on? What kind of fuel does what run on? The big boy steam engine train is supposed to be running through starters today? I don't know. How the hell would I know? I'm not a train engineer. You have a year and that? You're on the air. Hey, Ronnie, you mentioned all that insurance. You got life insurance? Yes, I do. Okay. Well, your wife's pretty happy about that. Yeah, we don't have sirens around here. I live out in the country, so... Well, you should be... Are you in Mahoning County? Yeah, yeah. Well, you should be able to... You should be able to hear them there. I mean, they got them throughout the county. I know, but I could hear the roar of the tornado coming before the siren. But my wife does have a shock caller for me. Well, I'm going to tell you something. And kudos to the people who fire up those sirens. I mean, those sirens went off well beyond this tornado was coming towards our property or the effects of what were coming towards us.

They were going off when the very dark clouds were there, and it hadn't started yet. So kudos to them by firing them off. You can hear them. But I look at some people in a neighborhood that would just be like kind of ignoring it. I'm thinking that's a foolish thing to do. And you can hear them if you're out in a country, whether you're in Jackson Township or wherever you might be. Well, yeah, I called you yesterday, and I did say kudos to WKBN with their weather app. I got it on my phone, you know, so they alerted me. But don't rely on that. Don't rely on that because cell towers fail. The siren is the best way as opposed to just your phone. But your phone is there for you. Right. Hey, Ron DeSantis, though. What a great guy, huh? I mean, just common sense working for the people. Yes. I mean, what a great philosophy, isn't it? I mean, what a great philosophy. You don't hear that from Mike DeWine. You don't hear that from your county commissioners. You don't hear that from anybody, any of these superintendents, all you hear from him is, we need more of your money. You get the crumbs. Like he mentioned the one guy that, you know, he bought a house for 360,000. Now it's worth 800,000. Yeah. You know, I told you yesterday, in 2020, my house was worth $219,000. Now it's $380,000. If I was looking to buy a house and it was $419,000 or whatever. I would say, you know what, I'm not going to buy that. That's going to affect my purchasing. You know, I wouldn't buy that house because I'm like, I'm not going to be able to pay the taxes on that. So I buy a lesser house. And next, you know, six years later, I'm paying taxes on a $400,000 house. So, yeah, Ron DeSantis, I like the way he's thinking. And keep in mind right now in Florida, as I say, the homestead exemption goes to everyone. It is an age-based. It is an income-based. If you live there, you get the homestead exemption. which is significance. But he wants to totally eliminate property taxes for residents of Florida, totally eliminate, eliminate them all together. And he's doing it by saying zero-based budgeting, lowering spending, putting money back in your pocket, putting the taxpayer first, and doing these initiatives. What you see there is skill leadership. You don't see that by any of these people around here. You don't see a lick of that with the exception of Dave Thomas. Right. And thank God at least you got some reprieve from that. Right. But I saw a lot of comments online where, you know, they say don't get mad at your local people. But then I think it was the boss lady mentioned Erie County, where even though the state reevaluate your home.

You know, Erie County said, oh, we're not going to tax you on that. Right. So why does Honing County do that? Why don't they just keep the taxes the same? Stand by for me. Hang in there for a minute. I'll get back to him. Excellent points. More to come. Glad you tuned in. Ron Verb, News Radio 570, WKVN. Oh, yes. Thank you, Brad Marshall. 435, News Radio 570. My therapy session is now done. 435 here in the afternoon with you till 6 tonight. You're on the air. Ron, how you done? I'm doing well. Thank you for calling. Go ahead. Yes, sir. Hey, I wanted to talk, or I got a comment about the... Oh, what's that guy's name up in Maine? I don't know, just Graham Platner. Yeah. Graham Platner. I don't know if you, I assume you've been following it. I haven't been listening to your show, but... The guy with the Nazi tattoo and the nipple that I've seen more than my first year of, yeah. You think he's going to drop out or not? Oh, I do. Yeah, I do. Yeah. I mean, rape's a pretty serious allegation, yeah. Yeah. I thought I was reading here where... We shall see. I mean, it's, uh, I thought he said he wasn't going to, but who knows? I mean, I don't know. I haven't been, I've been to work all day, so I haven't really followed it throughout today. What kind of a candidate is he to begin with? I mean, is that the best, uh, candidates you can have? I mean, some of these candidates they're coming up with are just, they're just God awful. Mm-hmm. Like, uh, like who else? Some of the ones that have been winning in the Democrat primary that are what they call Democrat Socialists that talk about how we deserved September 11th. I mean, just some of this craziness that you hear from some of these. I don't even know how to describe them. Democrats, socialists that seem like they hate the United States of America. So here's what you're saying. Those would be like just FDR liberals is what those are. It's strange. A bombshell rape allegation has thrown. Maine Senate candidates Graham Platner's campaign into turmoil with some of his most progressive supporters in Congress, jumping ship as his bid for the Senate unravels. Senator Bernie Sanders, who championed Graham Platner's campaign amid a bunch of scandals, called on the Senate hopeful to exit the race on Tuesday after Maine residents Jenny Rackaco, 41 accused him of rape in an interview with political and CNN. Bernie Sanders said in a written statement that he had spoken with Graham Platner about the rape allegation and recommended that he step aside. The leading progressive decision to effectively disavow Graham Platner marks the latest blow to the once-ascending Democrat floundering campaign, leaving him with virtually no remaining support for the movement that fueled his populist bid against Senator Susan Collins. Uh, let's see, what else does it say? I do think that likely he, if he didn't drop out, he'd likely still win. I think he would get over that scandal. You know, just like Trump's gotten over all those scandals, like, that's the one thing you've got to learn is you can't, like, give in to the other side.

No, well, I don't know. I don't know about that. Trump was never accused of rape, though. Other leading leftists, including Elizabeth. What do you mean? He was never accused of rape. He was never accused of sexual assault by a woman that said that he sexually assaulted her. That is not rape in a dressing room in a department store. Yet she didn't scream and she didn't call the police and any of that stuff. But let me go on here. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Ro Khanna. quickly rescinded their endorsement of Graham Platner and called on him to exit the race. Another one-time supporter, Chris Van Hollen, let's see, urging Graham Platner to suspend his campaign. These allegations are serious and cannot be ignored. Graham Platner should step aside. But here's one other thing. And I'm somewhat curious about this. What if they're not true? What if the allegations are false? Well, hey, that's the conservative playbook there, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's... Don't believe the allegation. This guy is not a conservative, but I'm saying you can see people say things that might not be true for the purposes of politics. We've seen it time and time again. So how... Yeah, like they did with Trump, I guess. No, not, yeah, with Trump. Or we can go with the Supreme Court guy or any number of cases that we have. How do I know that this is true? I mean, these are allegations. Where's the proof? You know, my opinion is I agree with the Democrats telling him to rescind his, you know, he should drop out because it's obvious that he's got a problem with it. I mean, he's a former, you know, what, a military guy, Marine, I don't remember if he's a Marine, he's a former Blackwater. you know, security officer. Like, I mean, that's what those guys do. Like, it's pretty crazy to, you know, put the card, you know, tie, you know, any Democratic success to somebody like that guy. Well, I think he should have probably dropped out once he had the Nazi tattoo on his chest and some of the stuff that he had said. I thought that's when it was amazing to me that he was even considered to be one of their candidates. I think the issue should have eliminated him, but it did not. He won the primary. Well, he is way better on the issues than Susan Collins. I mean, if anybody in Maine's voting for Susan Collins, like, that's absolutely insane. She's so old, she can't even, she's got like a tremor in her voice, or she can't even talk. Like, it's absolutely insane that people would vote for her. But I wanted to go back and say, like, actually Trump is credibly accused of rape. You know, he's credibly accused of sexual abuse against minors. You know, I don't know if you know that. There's this girl called Maria Farmer. She's in the Epstein files. She filed three, did three interviews with the FBI describing her experience with Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump. They decided not to prosecute her, but those would seem to be much more credible evidence than basically anything you hear about Graham Platner or, you know, any of these other sexual assault allegations. Not Maria Farmergirl, she was 14. When it happened to her, she told her mom, they called the authorities, they open a case right away, but basically went away. You know, she was threatened. She ended up having to drop her lawsuit.

during, you know, around the time of Epstein's death because she was getting death threats and things like that. I just think you guys could, you guys should kind of look into what the allegations are against Trump and just kind of take a little more seriously. Okay, well, we'll get right on that. I mean, I'm glad you gave us advice on what we should do when it comes to Trump. I'm really, we'll get on it right away. Thanks. Okay, so Heed his advice. What was that? Is that not a weird or what? You're on the air. Hi, Ron. Hi. I heard it a little late. Wait a second. Wait a second. It's the one and only Bob Dieter, Dieter Heating, and Culling. Hey, let me ask you a question before you talk about generation and what you were going to talk about. So what about these people that get a significant amount of water in their basements? And the water, if it gets up so high, doesn't that destroy the furnace because of the circuit boards and that kind of stuff in there? Yeah. So in general, manufacturers across the board, be it water tanks or furnaces, if they say it was submerged. So that would be on your water tank.

you replace it. The new water heaters have volatile vapor sensors in the bottom of them, and if you flood them out, typically you're going to lose that. It's a little capsule like you see in a sprinkler head, a red glass capsule. If those blow, it will not relight. I had one call yesterday, had a power venter, and the power vent tanks have a little white sensor right underneath the main burner tube, and if that gets wet, it will not allow it to come back, and you have to dry it out thoroughly, and then you can probably reinsert it, and it will probably reset and take off again. Furnaces, if it gets up to the level of the motherboard in the bottom of the furnace, which probably six, eight inches up on the furnace, the board's going to be shot. If it hits the motor, the motor's shot. warranty because they're not manufactured defect. And, you know, nowadays we're looking at $1,1,200 for an ECM blower motor, $500 to $1,000 on the control boards. Anything that got wet, even though it may work after it dries out, they recommend you throw it out because there is, you may have affected the circuits long term.

of the furnace. If the gas valve gets wet, it's junk. Don't even try. And then if you've got water up burner heights, you're going to have water in the manifold. You're going to have water in the is a problem. Yeah, but for the most part, I'm thinking, you know, if you, let's say you get six inches to a foot of water in your basement, some people would have, that's going to, your motor shot at $1,200, the board shot. Basically, at that point, it's garbage. Would you not say by the time you would try to fix it and it's iffy with those parts, you might as well replace the whole thing? Does you, do you know, do you can afford it? Yeah, well, yeah, do you know if people that have homeowners insurance? Is that usually an argument or do the homeowners say, okay, well? Well, they're going to have their deductibles. Right. So, I mean, if I could fix it for a thow and you have a thousand deductible, it's probably not worth raising your insurance rates.

it was not four weeks old and the water level and it was grayish black water with loadies um it was four and a half feet deep well then it's totally shot so it was it was junk it was tossed um here's what i here's my next question on it i wonder like like for example people that have water in their basements And you have, let's say, your washers down there for a lot of people, washer and dryer, your furnace, and you might even have a refrigerator. And that stuff is plugged in. And when they put the power back on, it's not a good idea to go stepping down into that water. I mean, most of that stuff is going to throw the circuit breaker or arc out once the power comes back on. Would you? Not. because most of those are not on GFIs or arc faults. You know, if it was a GFI circuit, absolutely. It would go down instantly. You don't think the circuit breaker would blow? Sometimes, yes, sometimes no. I've seen it. You know, I, there's, you know, if you remember the Federal Pacific or what we call Stablock breaker panels, I've heard those sizzle where you could hear the breaker sizzle. In other words, you should be very cautious of stepping once your power comes back on of going down and stepping into the wet basement. Would you not agree? Absolutely. I mean, I can tell you, I've touched duckwork and gotten nailed because they had a bad ground or something like that, and it was using the duckwork as a ground. Yeah, but I mean, just for the sake of this particular situation that so many people are in, a little news you can use. I mean, if your basement has six inches or a foot of water in it and it still has it in there and your power gets restored, don't go walking into your basement, stepping into that water because you could, theoretically, there's a possibility of getting electrocuted. I mean, if you have a washer there that's plugged in or a refrigerator or even your furnace, which is obviously using electricity. Yeah, and if you have someone with the skill, I personally, a lot of times if you can't get to the main panel, I would unplug the meter. So you're absolutely assured there's no inbound power to the house. Now you're going to need someone with some skill to do.

Well, right. But for the sake of, there's so many people out there that just do so many stupid things that's going on right now. I just don't want them to, hey, the power's back on. I'm going to go down and see where I don't step in that water, man. Most of that stuff is shot. Don't go down there and call, I mean, I don't know, call Dieter call someone to figure out what to do next. Someone with some level of expertise, because, you know, I don't want to see anyone hurt at the bottom line. Anyway, the reason for the call, not to change gears on you. Yes. You were talking about generators. Yes. Anything that you connect to a generator that has high-quality circuits, microprocessors, my furnaces, your furnace at home. Yes. refrigerators all this garbage anymore it's got a motherboard it's got a digital readout yourself not your cell phones but say if you have wireless phones in the house computers oh my god computers TVs all those things you do not want to connect any of those two

to run his saws and things like that. And that's why, hey, Bob, are you ready for this? Are you sitting down? I am. All right, Dieter, because this is where I'm going to shine. That's why, that's why over at Vermont, we have an inverter generator, which means it's clean power. We don't use, we don't use the standard generator that you're talking about. It's called an inverter. It's a gas generator, but it's clean power, clean sine wave. It has to have a clean sign wave to it. But you're giving great advice there. You should get, they're more expensive. I mean, I'll just tell you, I got mine at Harbor Freight. The predator generators are really good generator, and you can get a decent one. Serious power for $1,800, $2,000 or whatever. Well, if all you're worried about is, say, your freezer and your fridge in the basement and maybe the thump pump, a predator, you can get it for in a 5. especially when they're on sale. Yeah, the 3,500 watt one that is very quiet, too. You get the more expensive when it's quiet. And then some of those, like the Hondas, because I've dealt with the Hondas on a job up in Montana, you can plug two of them together and get 220 and double the amperage. Right. And they'll run all day on one tank of fuel. The inverter, yeah, the new ones. It's amazing how energy efficient because they kind of idle down when there isn't a draw. Right. But the big deal is, you know, in my own house, I was stupid 20 years ago, and I have a subpanel that is for a generator, so I have the manual switch on it. Me too. And anyways, fired up my contractor generator. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

And shouldn't you know better? Well, I didn't at the time. I didn't know those circuits were tied in. Hey, Bob, let me ask you this. Did they even have, standby, Bob, did they even have inverter generators back then, old timer? Hang on a second, Dieter. Back with Dieter in a minute. Hi, Heart Radio. Here's an opportunity for you. Flinch tires currently. Your night in just got legendary. Get ready to chase the rush, spin, win, and redeem instantly straight to your bank account at Legendswithazee.com. With free-to-play slots, blackjack, quino, roulette, and more. Experience all the thrills of Vegas without leaving your couch. Legends has it all. Legends is a free-to-play social casino void for prohibited. Must be 18 plus play responsibly visit Legends.com for full details. Get in the game now and score a 100% match on your first purchase only at Legends withazee.com. Hey everybody, Lady Luck here, and we're celebrating America's 250th birthday. Now, all summer long, I'm going to be celebrating by playing on SpinQuest.com, which is an American-owned social casino. It obviously features over a thousand slot games and live blackjack, live craps, live bubble craps. Head on over to SpinQuest.com. Get yourself a $30 coin pack for just 10 bucks. SpenQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit SpenQuest.com for more details. Dad, Disney activities are on Lingo Kids. What? Moana and Elsa and Marvel Spider-Man, all of them. On Lingo Kids? Yes, Dad, on Lingo Kids. That's pretty cool. I know. You just lost them for the rest of the afternoon. Worth it. Full of fun activities inspired by Disney's Moana, Frozen, Zootopia, Marvel Spider-Man, and more. Lingo Kids is where little ones discover more about favorite characters. Lingo Kids! Everything Kids love. Download it for free. Trade screen time for race time at Virginia International Raceway. August 21 through 23rd, IMSA's Michelin GT Challenge brings some of the coolest cars to VIR for an unforgettable family weekend. Explore, meet drivers, see race cars up close, and experience the thrill of racing from every corner of the track. It's more than a race. It's a memory waiting to be made. Kids 12 and under get in free. Get your tickets at VIRFam.com. That's VIRFAM.com. Oh, yes. Thank you, Brad Marshall. 435, News Radio 570.2. My therapy session is now done. 435 here in the afternoon with you till 6 tonight. You're on the air. Ron, how you done? I'm doing well. Thank you for calling. Go ahead. Yes, sir. Hey, I wanted to talk, or I got a comment about the... Oh, what's that guy's name up in Maine? I don't know, just Graham Platner. Yeah. Graham Platner. I don't know if you, I assume you've been following it. I haven't been listening to your show, but... The guy with the Nazi tattoo and the nipple that I've seen more than my first year. You think he's going to drop out or not? Oh, I do. Yeah, I do. Yeah. I mean, rape's pretty serious allegation, yeah. Yeah. I thought I was reading here where... We shall see.

I mean, it's, uh, I thought he said he wasn't going to, but who knows? I mean, I don't know. I haven't been, I've been to work all this. I don't really follow it. I mean, what kind of a candidate is he to begin with? I mean, is that the best, uh, candidates you can have? I mean, some of these candidates they're coming up with are just, they're just God awful. Mm-hmm. Like, uh, like who else? Some of the ones that have been winning in the Democrat primary that are what they call Democrat Socialists that talk about how we deserve September 11th. I mean, just some of this craziness that you hear from some of these. I don't even know how to describe them. Democrats, socialists that seem like they hate the United States of America. So here's what you're taking. I mean, those would be like just at the R liberals is what those are. It's strange. A bombshell rape allegation has thrown. Maine Senate candidates Graham Platner's campaign in a turmoil with some of his most progressive supporters in Congress, jumping ship as his bid for the Senate unravels. Senator Bernie Sanders, who championed Graham Platner's campaign amid a bunch of scandals, called on the Senate hopeful to exit the race on Tuesday after Maine residents Jenny Rackaco, 41 accused him of rape in an interview with political and CNN. Bernie Sanders said in a written statement that he had spoken with Graham Platner about the rape allegation and recommended that he step aside. The leading progressive decision to effectively disavow Graham Platner marks the latest blow to the once-ascending Democrat floundering campaign, leaving him with virtually no remaining support for the movement that fueled his populist bid against Senator Susan Collins. Let's see, what else does it say? I do think that likely if he didn't drop out, he'd likely still win. I think he would get over that scandal. You know, just like Trump's gotten over all those scandals, like, that's the one thing you've got to learn is you can't, like, give in to the other side. Well, I don't know. I don't know about that. Trump was never accused of rape, though. What do you mean? What do you mean he wasn't accused of rape? He was never accused of rape. He was never accused of sexual assault by a woman that said that he sexually assaulted her. That is not rape in a dressing room in a department store. Yet she didn't scream and she didn't call the police and any of that stuff. But let me go on here. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Ro Khanna. quickly rescinded their endorsement of Graham Platner and called on him to exit the race. Another one-time supporter, Chris Van Hollen, let's see, urging Graham Platner to suspend his campaign. These allegations are serious and cannot be ignored. Graham Platner should step aside. But here's one other thing. And I'm somewhat curious about this. What if they're not true? What if the allegations are false? Oh, hey, that's the conservative playbook there, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's... Don't believe the allegation. This guy is not a conservative, but I'm saying you can see people say things that might not be true for the purposes of politics. We've seen it time and time again. So how... Yeah, like they did with Trump, I guess. No, not, yeah, with Trump. Or we can go with the Supreme Court guy or any number of cases that we have.

How do I know that this is true? I mean, these are allegations. Where's the proof? You know, my opinion is I agree with the Democrats telling him to rescind his, you know, he should drop out because it's obvious that he's got a problem with it. I mean, he's a former, you know, what, a military guy, Marine, I don't remember if he's a Marine, he's a former Blackwater. you know, security officer. Like, I mean, that's what those guys do. Like, it's pretty crazy to, you know, put the card, you know, tie, you know, any Democratic success to somebody like that guy. Well, I think he should have probably dropped out once he had the Nazi tattoo on his chest. And... Some of the stuff that he had said, I thought that's when it was amazing to me that he was even considered to be one of their candidates. I think the issues should have eliminated him, but it did not. He won the primary. I mean, he is way better on the issues than Susan Collins. I mean, if anybody in Maine's voting for Susan Collins, like, that's absolutely insane. She's so old, she can't even, she's got like a tremor in her voice or she can't even talk. Like, it's absolutely insane that people would vote for her. But I wanted to go back and say, like, actually Trump is credibly accused of rape. You know, he's credibly accused of sexual abuse against minors. You know, I don't know if you know that. There's this girl called Maria Farmer. She's in the Epstein files. She filed three, did three interviews with the FBI describing her experience with Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump. They decided not to prosecute her, but those would seem to be much more credible evidence than basically anything you hear about Graham Platner or, you know, any of these other sexual assault allegations. Not Maria Farmer Girl, she was 14. When it happened to her, she told her mom they called the authorities. They opened a case right away, but basically went away. She was threatened. She ended up having to drop her lawsuit during, you know, around the time of that seems death because she was getting death threats and things like that. I just think you guys could, you guys should kind of look into what the allegations are against Trump and just kind of take a little more seriously. Okay, well, we'll get right on that. I mean, I'm glad you gave us advice on what we should do when it comes to Trump. I'm really, we'll get on it right away. Thanks. Okay, so heed his advice. What was that? It's not a weird or what? You're on the air. Hi, Ron. Hi. Hi. Hi, Bob. Wait a second. Wait a second. It's the one and only Bob Dieter, Dieter, heating, and cooling. Hey, let me ask you a question before you talk about generating what you were going to talk about. So what about these people, like, get a significant amount of water in their basement, and the water, if it gets up so high, doesn't that destroy the furnace because of the circuit boards and that kind of stuff in there? Yeah.

manufacturers across the board be it water tanks or furnaces if they say it was submerged so that would be on your water tank so if it's up above the gas valve and or even the pilot and burner area they recommend you replace it the new water heat have volatile vapor sensors in the bottom of them. And if you flood them out, typically you're going to lose that. It's a little capsule like you see in a sprinkler head, a red glass capsule. If those blow, it will not relight. I had one call yesterday, had a power vinner, and the power vent tanks have a little white sensor right underneath the main burner tube. And if that gets wet, It will not allow it to come back, and you have to dry it out thoroughly, and then you can probably reinsert it, and it will probably reset and take off again. Furnaces, if it gets up to the level of the motherboard in the bottom of the furnace, which probably six, eight inches up on the furnace, the board's going to be shot. If it hits the motor, the motor's shot. If it gets up, The manufacturer is going to tell you to replace the furnace. And ideally, although we've slipped them through in the past, the parts are not warranty because they're not manufactured defect. And, you know, nowadays we're looking at $1,200 for ECM blower motor, $500 to $1,000 on the control boards. Anything that got wet, even though it may work after it dries out, they recommend you throw it out because you may have affected the circuits long term, and it may affect the safety operation of the furnace. If the gas valve gets wet, it's junk. Don't even try. And then if you've got water up burner height, you're going to have water in the manifold. You're going to have water in the burners. You can have all kinds of problems. Yeah, but for the most part, I'm thinking, you know, if let's say you get six inches to a foot of water in your basement, some people would have, that's going to, your motor shot at $1,200, the board shot. Basically, at that point, it's garbage. Would you not say by the time you would try to fix it, and it's iffy with those parts, you might as well replace the whole thing. Does, do you know, do you can afford it? Yeah, well, yeah, do you know if people that have homeowners insurance? Is that usually an argument or do the homeowners say, okay, well, well, they're going to have their deductibles. Right. So, I mean, if I could fix it for a thousand and you have a thousand deductible, it's probably not worth raising your insurance rates. But I can tell you some years back here in Canfield. We had a furnace that was not four weeks old, and the water level, and it was grayish black water with loadies, it was four and a half feet deep. Well, then it's totally shot. So it was junk. It was tossed. Here's my next question on it. I wonder, like, for example, people that have water in their basements.

And you have, let's say, your washers down there for a lot of people, washer and dryer, your furnace, and you might even have a refrigerator. And that stuff is plugged in. And when they put the power back on, it's not a good idea to go stepping down into that water. I mean, most of that stuff is going to throw the circuit breaker or arc out once the power comes back on. Would you? Not necessarily. Because most of those are not on GFIs or arc faults. You know, if it was a GFI circuit, absolutely. It would go down instantly. You don't think the circuit breaker would blow? Sometimes, yes, sometimes no. I've seen it. You know, I, there's, you know, if you remember the Federal Pacific or what we call Stablock breaker panels, I've heard those sizzle where you could hear the breaker sizzle and it wouldn't trip. In other words, you should be very cautious of stepping once your power comes back on of going down and stepping into the wet basement. Would you not agree? Absolutely. I mean, I can tell you, I've touched duckwork and gotten nailed because they had a bad ground or something like that. It was using the duckwork as a ground. Yeah, but I mean, just for the sake of this particular situation that so many people are in, a little news you can use. I mean, if your basement has six inches or a foot of water in it and it still has it in there and your power gets restored. Don't go walking into your basement stepping into that water because you could, theoretically, there's a possibility of getting electrocuted. I mean, if you have a washer there that's plugged in or a refrigerator or even your furnace, which is obviously using electricity. Yeah. And if you have someone with the skill, I personally, a lot of times if you can't get to the main panel, I would unplug the meter. So you're absolutely assured there's no. inbound power to the house. Now you're going to need someone with some skill to do that, but that sure beats being electrocuted. Well, right. But for the sake of, there's so many people out there that just do so many stupid things that's going on right now. I just don't want them to, hey, the power's back on. I'm going to go down and see where I don't step in that water, man. Most of that stuff is shot. Don't go down there and call, I mean, I don't know, call deed or call someone to figure out what to do next. Someone with some level of expertise, because, you know, I don't want to see anyone hurt at the bottom line. Anyway, the reason for the call, not to change gears on you. Yes. You were talking about generators. Yes. Anything that you connect to a generator that has high-quality circuits, microprocessors, my furnaces, your furnace at home. Yes.

microwaves stoves refrigerators all this garbage anymore it's got a motherboard it's got a digital readout uh your cell not your cell phones but say if you have wireless phones in the house computers oh my god computers TVs all those things you do not want to connect any of those to the standard generator, you know, that the home contractor uses to run his saws and things like that. And that's why, hey, Bob, are you ready for this? Are you sitting down? I am. All right, Dieter, because this is where I'm going to shine. That's why over at Verbe Manor, we have an inverter generator, which means it's clean power. We don't use the standard generator that you're talking about. It's called an inverter. It's a gas generator, but it's clean power, clean sine wave. Right. It has to have a clean sign wave to it. But you're giving great advice there. You should get... They're more expensive. I mean, I'll just tell you, I got mine at Harbor Freight. They make the predator generator is a really good generator, and you can get a decent one. Serious power for $1,800, $2,000 or whatever. Well, if all you're worried about is, say, your freezer and your fridge in the basement and maybe the thump pump. A predator, you can get it for in a $500 to $700 price point, especially when they're on sale. Yeah, the $3,500 watt one that is very quiet, too. You get the more expensive when it's quiet. And then some of those, like the Hondas, because I've dealt with the Hondas on a job up in Montana, you can plug two of them together and get $220 and double the amperage. Right. And they'll run all day on one tank of fuel. The inverter, yeah, the new ones. It's amazing how energy efficient, because they kind of idle down when there isn't a draw. Right. But the big deal is, you know, in my own house, I was stupid 20 years ago, and I have a subpanel that is for a generator, so I have the manual switch on it. Me too. And anyways, fired up my contractor generator. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. And blew up my computers. And shouldn't you know better? Well, I didn't at the time. I didn't know those circuits were tied in. Hey, Bob, let me ask you this. Did they even have, standby, Bob, did they even have inverter generators back then, old timer? Hang on a second, Dieter. Back with Dieter in a minute. Now, Ron Verb. On News Radio 570, WKBN.

News Radio 570 WKVN and Ron Verb. All right. We started a conversation with Bob Dieter prior to the break at 5 o'clock. And just to reiterate a couple of things as we learn, I guess, from this tornado activity that's going on. Bob was listening when I was talking about. My father-in-law taught me that, Bob, early on. When I got married, he's an electrician. He said, if you have a sun pump, you've got to have a generator. I mean, I remember it. He said, Because thunderstorms will always knock the power out, and then your sum pump is going to, you need to have a generator. And when they came out with inverter generators, not your standard generator, but it's an inverter generator. You can get them at, like I say, Harbor Freight. That has a clean energy. It's a clean sine wave. And when they started putting these panels in your... the boards in your furnace and your refrigerator, you really need an inverter generator, clean power, so it doesn't blow those boards and that kind of stuff. If they cost a little bit more money, you can get them quiet, but it's an insurance policy to a large extent. Bob and I talked about that. Bob and I asked Bob about... And I really want a lot of you people to think this because, Bob, there's people just now. We got our electricity over at Verbe Manor back at 1230 last night, but there are people that I've talked to. They've got a foot of water in their basements. But if Edison puts the power back onto their house. I just want to reiterate, don't go stepping down in that water. Don't go walking down in your basement because if you have a washer plugged in, if you have a furnace that's obviously getting electricity or a refrigerator, that could be, you could die by stepping into water, correct? Absolutely. It's a death sentence, especially if, say, you step in the water. you're hanging on to, say, maybe the duck work or something else, because that charge then is going to go through your heart. Yeah. So, you know, when I'm working real high voltage, you know, you try to work with one hand in your pocket and one hand working so you're not grounding yourself out. And if you have to ground yourself, then I would like... seems like I'm right-handed, so maybe I might touch my right elbow or my right shoulder to something to steady me. Again, I don't want it going through my heart. Right. But what was I going to say when you were... It's just, like you said, if you step into those, go into those type of situations, because often the breaker or the circuit breaker boxes in the basement, which you can't get to, you'll have somebody pull a meter on the outside of the house so that you can step in there, cut the power off to the house so you can safely walk in there. Right. And then kill all the circuits that may be underwater, you know, before you start. And, you know, you might have to get, you know, another sump pump and power.

To get the water out. Yeah, get it pumped out. Yeah, run an extension cord and then get the basement pumped out in that sense. Just for people to join us at five, Bob said, let's be realistic. I mean, if you get water that's six inches up or a foot up, as many people have had in the affected tornado area, that shorts out the circuit board in your furnace. It can short out the... Well, basically, in general, your hot water tank and your furnace become garbage, for the most part, right? If it gets up high enough, yes, absolutely. All right. If the gas valve submerged on the water tank, you know, they're not going to give you a new one under warranty typically. So it's new water tank time. The other problem being is... gray water, dirty water, whatever it is, is going to get up into all the cracks and crevices and the insulation. Right. The insulation in my furnace and all that. You may have bacteria and mold forever. So it's not healthy, you know, to the occupants to be breathing that product. Right. You know, you could say, well, it didn't get that wet.

I don't know what was in that water. You know, some of it's gray water and some of it's black water and some of it just run off. Right. I don't know. You know, I don't want to see anyone, you know, get ill due to mold, black mold, fungus, other things that are growing in there. Right. For the most part, I mean, we've seen this happen before, obviously not, you know. I mean, this was a hell of an event with this tornado that affected certain portions of our community. Many of you were not affected by it, but those people that were affected by it where they're still, you know, clearing trees and on homes and clearing trees and trying to get power restored. And kudos to these guys that any of the Ohio Edison guys in the... contractors that came in that Edison hires to help meet this demand. Kudos to them and a great job that they're working in this type of situation. But, Bob, in general, I mean, if you have homeowners insurance, should your homeowners insurance, for the most part, cover less deductible, your hot water tank and your furnace replacement? In general, it depends on how the water came in. got to specifically look at your policy. Did it come up through the drains? Did it come in through the windows? Did it come in through the wall? Different policies. Some of them you have to have specific coverage. Like, for example, let's just deal with sump pumps. And I'm glad you brought that up because thinking about my policy, sometimes there's a cap on those policies. Like, you know, if your sump pump fails, you get 5,000. There can be a cap on that, and that's not nearly enough to replace the furnace. Well, here's one. I got a gal over Ron Joy, Ron Park area. Tree came down for two trees, and I punched the roof. They got water coming all.

because it was unsafe. So that's okay. Her mom's like 93-94 had to move out to a hotel. The concern here is you'll get this call from, or you will call a fire restoration company. Hold on to your wallet. Yeah, well, that's where I'm going. Because they'll go, oh, no problem, we'll be right out. Oh, you have. I have coverage. I have $5,000 cap. I've already seen these companies, ding you $30,000. And that's not counting my furnace and the water tank. That's while we've got to come in. Oh, you had a finished basement. We've got to cut all the drywall off five feet down. We've got to put fans in. We've got to put dehumidifiers in. And, you know, you go, oh, they're doing a great job. keep aware, they charge you for every fan that they set. They charge you for every dehumidifier they set. I was in a commercial building down in East Palestine, back when we had that 20 below weather, I don't know, six, seven years ago, something like, their sprinkler system froze. So it wiped out the offices. It wiped out a couple hundred thousand dollars in computer. It sprinkled all the marks on this big, huge, thick, giant chunks of steel. I got down there, I'm kind of nosing around the building, trying to figure out, you know, where my equipment is, what got damaged, what didn't. I go up on the second floor in four offices. They have every dehumidifier and fan that they could muster.

to any power because there was no power to connect them to. And they're charging for every single one of them. They unloaded a full semi of dehumidifiers and fans. And they put them in the second floor and they were never powered. And, you know, I contacted the building owner. I showed him all this. He says, you're kidding me. And, you know, he called that company and says, you get your butt down here. Every piece of equipment you have, I want it out of my building, and I want it done right this second. And they got a different restoration company. So be wary. You know, they want to get in. They want to help you. Some of them are great. Some of them not so much. charge exorbitant rates to sort through your stuff, which has been turned into junk because it's all soaked, and haul it away. So just, you know, it's nice, it, hey, it's going to go away and it's going to happen fast, but I can tell you, I got one customer over in the tree streets over there in Girard area off of Salt Springs.

You know, it was never truly restored back to how it was. And, you know, they just drug their feet. But once they get in and nail it down, you can't really get someone else. You know, they're in the process. Oh, we'll be there tomorrow. And then tomorrow doesn't come. And the day after doesn't come. And, you know, they're hounding them to get them in to, you know, get this addressed. Is what on average just by a ballpark would somebody expect to have to pay for a new furnace? Oh, okay. So that's easy. I thought you were throwing a hard question. Standard 80% furnace today from me, $3,500 installed. One of my competitors, they're 106 because I bid against them and they lost it. 96% furnace, you know, one step down from what you have at your house. Average, $5,500. Two pipe, 96%, two-stage burner. 98% equivalent of what you have at home. But in a ream, about $7,500. And, you know, the air conditioner is outside. It's unless you got wind damage to it or something fell on it.

off the furnace is the blower. And the coil. You won't. But the coil is independent. Yeah. You got the coil is independent. So all we need is a fan to move air through it. You can take the old coil or the coil and put it on the new furnace. Right. Absolutely. Right. Okay. So I'm just trying to give people an idea of price. So at 80%, 3,500 installed. A two-stage one. 96% about 55. 98% 13-stage burner, 75. say like a three-ton air conditioner. A average job. Before we get to the three-ton air conditioner, I'm at the point where I think you're probably best off with the middle one, with the two-stage one than you are with. I mean, it seems that's the better value than the one I have. It is. You know, I mean, it's just sometimes. Well, I don't sell 98% for energy efficiency. I sell 98% and the only reason to buy it is for 13-stage burner, you don't wait to get hot, to get cold, to get hot. And so my older clients, you know, north of you and me. All right, Dieter. Those be fight wars. They're more sensitive to drafts and chill. Yeah, I hear you. And the potential is they're on more drugs, you know, which is going to affect maybe their mobility.

I sell them only for comfort. It's not about saving 2%. Right. It's about cum laude. All right. So the bulk of what I sell is 96 to say. And what should people think on a three-ton air conditioner? Average, seven grand. You know, 60, depending on brand, I have another brand I can offer. I would say $68,000 to $8,000. Boy, I remember when they were $4,000. Well, it wasn't, I'll tell you right now, compared to where we were at COVID, the systems I'm selling for 13 and 14,000 used to be 8 to 9. Because of all the increases. Yeah, I've had 22% increase on major equipment this year. From the supplier. Yeah. Yeah. It's ridiculous. Just as a side note here, so I just cover some stuff because of the tornado and all the stuff that's going on. A furnace should last roughly at least 20 years. Would you agree? That would be my gut average. I'll tell you like my old reams, old reams. So 30-year-old reams. nominal nomenclature in RGRA. It was an all stainless steel heat exchanger. All right. You're going to a lifetime warranty to the original owner. You're over everybody's head at this point. Yeah. But I'm saying the side-bended furnace is now like 30 years old. Yeah. Had a lifetime warranty to the original owner. Yeah. Well, any more, Bob, when I buy a product now that has a lifetime warranty, doesn't mean how much to me at my age. That could be like six months, right? I say, you better put it in my son's name. Hang on, Dieter, hang on. All right, we'll find out about air conditioners and just, I don't want you getting scam, folks, all right, that have been affected by this tornado. I'm Dr. Cheryl Figleyon. Your night in just got legendary. Get ready to chase the rush, spin, win, and redeem instantly straight to your bank account at Legendswithazee.com. With free-to-play slots, blackjack, quino, roulette, and more. Experience all the thrills of Vegas without leaving your couch. Legends has it all. Legends is a free-to-play social casino void for prohibitive. It must be 18-plus play responsibly visit Legends.com for full details. Get in the game now and score a 100% match on your first purchase only at Legends withazee.com. Hey everybody, Lady Luck here, and we're celebrating America's 250th birthday. Now, all summer long, I'm going to be celebrating by playing on SpinQuest.com, which is an American-owned social casino. It obviously features over a thousand slot games and live blackjack, live craps, live bubble craps. Head on over to SpinQuest.com. Get yourself a $30 coin pack for just $10.00. SpenQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit SpenQuest.com for more details. Mom, can I have Lingo Kids? Stop, Lingo Kids, please! When did we become the Lingo Kids House? No idea. Last week it was dinosaurs. This week is... Lingo Kids! Why Lingo Kids? Because it's the best thing ever. We can play games. With astronauts! Wild animals!

Superheroes. With more than 4,000 interactive games, songs, and shows, Lingo Kids is the number one entertainment platform for young kids. So, no dinosaurs? And dinosaurs. Gingo Kids! Everything kids love. Download it for free. Trade screen time for race time at Virginia International Raceway. August 21st through 23rd, Insa's Michelin GT Challenge brings some of the coolest cars to VIR for an unforgettable family weekend. Explore, meet drivers, see race cars up close, and experience the thrill of racing from every corner of the track. It's more than a race. It's a memory waiting to be made. Kids 12 and under get in free. Get your tickets at VIRFam.com. That's VIRFAM.com. Radio 570 WKVN and Ron Verb. All right. We started a conversation with Bob Dieter prior to the break at 5 o'clock. And just to reiterate a couple of things as we learned, I guess, from this tornado activity that's going on. Bob was listening when I was talking about. My father-in-law taught me that, Bob, early on. When I got married, he's an electrician. He said, if you have a sun pump, you've got to have a generator. I mean, I remember it. He said, Because thunderstorms will always knock the power out, and then your sum pump is going to, you need to have a generator. And when they came out with inverter generators, not your standard generator, but it's an inverter generator. You can get them at, like I say, Harbor Freight, that has a clean energy. It's a clean sine wave. And when they started putting these panels in your... the boards in your furnace and your refrigerator, you really need an inverter generator, clean power, so it doesn't blow those boards and that kind of stuff. If they cost a little bit more money, you can get them quiet, but it's an insurance policy to a large extent. Bob and I talked about that. Bob and I asked Bob about... And I really want a lot of you people to think this because, Bob, there's people just now. We got our electricity over at Verbe Manor back at 1230 last night, but there are people that I've talked to, they've got a foot of water in their basements. But if Edison puts the power back onto their house. I just want to reiterate, don't go stepping down in that water. Don't go walking down in your basement, because if you have a washer plugged in, if you have a furnace that's obviously getting electricity or a refrigerator, that could be, you could die by stepping in the water, correct? Absolutely. It's a death sentence, especially if, say, you step in the water and it happens. and you're hanging on to, say, maybe the duck work or something else, because that charge then is going to go through your heart. Yeah. So, you know, when I'm working real high voltage, you know, you try to work with one hand in your pocket and one hand working so you're not grounding yourself out. And if you have to ground yourself, then I would, like,

As crazy as it seems, like, I'm right-handed, so maybe I might touch my right elbow or my right shoulder to something to steady me. Again, I don't want it going through my heart. Right, but there were, what was I going to say when you were? It's just, like you said, if you step into those, go into those type of situations, because often the breaker or the circuit breaker boxes in the basement, which you can't get to, you'll have somebody pull a meter on the outside of the house so that you can step in there, cut the power off to the house so you can safely walk in there. Right, and then kill all the circuits that may be underwater, you know, before you start. And, you know, you might have to get, you know, another sump pump and power it from outside, from the neighbors, something else to get the water out. Yeah. You know, run an extension cord and then get the basement pumped out in that sense. Just for people to join us at five, Bob said, let's be realistic. I mean, if you get water that's six inches up or a foot up, as many people have had in the affected tornado area, that shorts out the circuit board in your furnace. It can short out the... Well, basically, in general, your hot water tank and your furnace become garbage, for the most part, right? If it gets up high enough, yes, absolutely. All right. If the gas valve submerged on the water tank, you know, they're not going to give you a new one under warranty typically, though it's new water tank time. The other problem being is you don't know the quality of the water that came up.

You're going to have that gray water, dirty water, whatever it is, is going to get up into all the cracks and crevices and the insulation. Right. The insulation in my furnace and all that. You may have bacteria and mold forever. So it's not healthy, you know, to the occupants to be breathing that product. Right. You know, you could say, well, it didn't get that wet. Well, you know, I don't know what was in that water. You know, some of it's gray water and some of it's black water and some of it just run off. Right. I don't know. You know, I don't want to see anyone, you know, get ill due to mold, black mold, fungus, other things that are growing in there. Right. For the most part, I mean, we've seen this happen before, obviously not, you know, I mean, this was a hell of an event with this tornado that affected certain portions of our community. Many of you were not affected by it, but those people that were affected by it where they're still, you know, clearing trees and on homes and clearing trees and trying to get power restored. And kudos to these guys that any of the Ohio Edison guys and the contractors that came in. that Edison hires to help meet this demand. Kudos to them and a great job that they're doing, working in this type of situation. But, Bob, in general, I mean, if you have homeowners insurance, should your homeowners insurance, for the most part, cover less deductible, your hot water tank and your furnace replacement? In general, it depends on how the water came in. So you've got to specifically look at your policy. Did it come up through the drains? Did it come in through the windows? Did it come in through the wall? Different policies. Some of them you have to have specific coverage. Like, for example, let's just deal with sump pumps. And I'm glad you brought that up. Because thinking about my policy, sometimes there's a cap on those policies. Like, you know, if your sump pump fails, you get $5,000. There can be a cap on that, and that's not nearly enough to replace the furnace. Well, here's one. I got a gal over Ron Joy, Ron Park area. Tree came down for two trees, and I punched the roof. They got water coming all over the place.

put them without power because it was unsafe. So that's okay. Her mom's like 93-94, had to move out to a hotel. The concern here is you'll get this call from, or you will call a fire restoration company. Hold on to your wallet. Yeah, well, that's where I'm going, because they'll go, oh, no problem, we'll be right out. coverage. Okay, I have coverage. I have $5,000 cap. I've already seen these companies, ding you $30,000. And that's not counting my furnace and the water tank. That's why we've got to come in. Oh, you had a finished basement. We've got to cut all the drywall off five feet down. We've got to put fans in. We've got to put dehumidifiers in. And, you know, you go, oh, they're doing a great job. Please keep aware, they charge you for every fan that they set. They charge you for every dehumidifier they set. I was in a commercial building down in East Palestine, back when we had that 20 below weather, I don't know, six, seven years ago, something like, their sprinkler system froze. So it wiped out the offices. It wiped out a couple hundred thousand dollars in computer. It sprinkled all the steel in the plant, which ruined it. You know, you got watermarks on this big, huge, thick, giant chunks of steel. I got down there. I'm kind of nosing around the building trying to figure out, you know, where my equipment is, what got damaged, what didn't. I go up on the second floor in four... They have every dehumidifier and fan that they could muster stuffed in offices, sitting, not connected to any power, because there was no power to connect them to. And they're charging for every single one of them. They unloaded a full semi of dehumidifiers and fans. And they put them in the second floor, and they were never powered.

contacted the building owner and someone advertises on your radio station. And I says, come with me. We need to go upstairs. And I showed him all this. He says, you're kidding me. And, you know, he called that company and says, you get your butt down here. Every piece of equipment you have, I want it out of my building and I want it done right this second. And they got a different restoration. Be wary. You know, they want to get in. They want to help you. Some of them are great. Some of them not so much. But, you know, to me they charge exorbitant rates to sort through your stuff, which has been turned into junk because it's all soaked, and haul it away. So just, you know, it's nice. It's going to go away. But I can tell you, I got one customer over in the tree streets over there in Girard area off of Salt Springs. They had them tied up better part of six months by the time they got done with their house. And, you know, the basement was finished. And, you know, it was never truly restored.

drug their feet, but once they get in and nail it down, you can't really get someone else. You know, they're in the process. Oh, we'll be there tomorrow, and then tomorrow doesn't come, and the day after doesn't come, and, you know, they're hounding them to get them in to, you know, get this addressed. So just go cautiously. What on average just ballpark would somebody expect to have to pay for a new furnace? Oh, okay. So that's easy. I thought you were throwing a hard question. Standard 80% furnace today from me, $3,500 installed. One of my competitors, they're 106 because I bid against them and they lost it. You know, one step down from what you have at your house. Average, $5,500. Two pipe, 96%, two-stage burner. 98%, equivalent of what you have at home. But in a ream, about $7,500. And, you know, the air conditioner is outside. It's unless you got wind damage to it or something fell on it. The air conditioner uses off the furnace is the blower. And the coil. You won't. But the a coil is independent. Yeah. You got the coil is independent, so all we need is a fan to move air through it. You can take the old coil or the coil and put it on a new furnace. Right. Absolutely. Right. Okay. So I'm just trying to give people an idea of price. So at 80%, 3,500 installed. Uh, uh, uh, uh, a two stage one. 96% about 55. Mm-hmm. 98% 13 stage burner, 75. And currently, say like a three-ton air conditioner, average job. Before we get to the three-ton air conditioner, I'm at the point where I think you're probably best off with the middle one, with the two-stage one than you are with. Yeah. I mean, it seems that's the better value than the one I have. It is. You know, I mean, it's just sometimes. Well, I don't sell 98% for energy efficiency. I sell 98% and the only reason to buy it is for comfort. Because with a 13-stage burner, you don't wait to get hot to get cold to get hot. And so my older clients, you know, north of you and me. All right, Dieter. Those be fight words. But, you know, they're more sensitive to drafts and chill. Yeah, I hear you. And the potential is they're on more drugs, you know, which is going to affect maybe their mobility and all that. So those real high-end furnaces, I sell them only for comfort. It's not about saving 2%. Right. It's about cum laude. All right. So the bulk of what I sell is 96 to say. And what should people think on a three-ton air conditioner? Average, seven grand.

You know, 60, depending on brand, I have another brand I can offer. I'd say $68,000 to $8,000. Boy, I remember when they were $4,000. Well, it wasn't, I'll tell you right now, compared to where we were at COVID, the systems I'm selling for $13,000 and $14,000 used to be $8 to $9. Because of all the increases. Yeah, I've had 22% increase on major equipment this year. From the supplier. Yeah. Yeah. It's ridiculous. It is. And just as a side note, here, so I just cover some stuff because of the tornado and all the stuff that's going on. A furnace should last roughly at least 20 years. Would you agree? That would be my gut average. I'll tell you, like, my old reams, old ream. So a 30-year-old ream. Model nomenclature in RGRA. It was an all stainless steel heat exchanger. All right. You're a lifetime warranty to the original owner. You're over everybody's head at this point. Yeah, but I'm saying the side-bended furnace is now like 30 years old. Yeah. Had a lifetime warranty to the original owner. Yeah. Well, any more, Bob, when I buy a product now that has a lifetime warranty, doesn't mean that much to me at my age. That could be like six months, right? I say, you better put it in my son's name. Hang on, Dieter, hang on. All right, we'll find out about air conditioners, and just, I don't want you getting scam, folks, all right, that have been affected by this tornado. All right, so. Just some of those stories about some of the shenanigans they're going on. But unfortunately, Bob, this happens in so many industries that can happen. And I know people that hire roofers, I mean, because we have a lot of issues going on with people in their roofs. If you, you know, hire a roofer, hire a name that you recognize that's a local roofing company. Because if you have a problem, they're here to fix it and follow up on it as opposed to somebody. that's from out of town or you're not familiar with. You know, whether, I mean, you know the local names that you hear. Those are the people that you would want to do business with because they're here if you have a leak or a problem. Yeah, we have some excellent roofers in the area that stay here year round. Right. They don't travel a circuit like some of the ones that show up. For a storm, like the storm we've experienced here. Right. But I know a woman that had these storm chasers, they came and did her roof. And they put in a ridge vent where she had your, what do you call them the... the metal vents that were in there, you know, the holes. The static vents up on the roof? Yeah. Okay. But you know what they did? They cut in a ridge vent and they just rolled the felt paper right over the existing holes. They never patched the holes. So once they got paid and they got their money, they left and guess what happened? The roof started to leak. And it just took time. So she ultimately had to pay someone else out of her pockets.

Because it was an insurance claim to come out and rip that part of the roof off to fix the holes that these guys have left. Well, or you have a leak and you don't know how to get a hold of any of these people because they're not from our community. They come in town, get the money, and they leave versus knowing so many of the names, you know, that's advertised on our station and you know how you can get a hold of them. You know that they live here and that they'll back up what they do. I mean, that's... You see it in roofing, you see it in so many of the homeowner businesses that are out there, if you will. It's service people. It's reprehensible. One of my gal friends in Bordman had a roof replaced. She came home at lunch to see how things were going, and they're sitting on a roof smoking marijuana. And she said, get off my roof. They go, well, we're on our time. And she says, no, you're not. You're not on anyone's time because you don't work here anymore. You know, so what's the liability if someone's up on your roof and they're stoned? You know, whose fault is that? So, you know, she fired them right on the spot. Again, you've got to be careful who is actually coming to your house. Right, who you allow on your property, absolutely. And I would agree with that. I mean, I would agree with that. I'm just reading an email. I just read this to you. Bob Dieter is awesome. I'm sitting in a nice cold house because he installed a brand new furnace and air conditioner last year in my home and was an expert at doing so. His pricing was very reasonable and he was very honest, couldn't be happier with his work. The guy's first name, I won't give you his last name. His first name is Jim. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Jim. But anyway, so be cautious, I mean, because there's a lot of people that are going to need a lot of services. I mean, it's a helpless feeling when you've got a tree on your roof and say you need to get your roof fixed and you've got to get work done inside your house as well. I mean, so be careful who you hire and who does the work and so many tips that you put out there for people, Bob, in these type of situations. And if you're getting quotes, be very specific that they write down everything they're going to do and how. You know, it just, you need to know these things. I mean, whose responsibility is it to get rid of stuff? Are they getting rid of it? Are you getting rid of it? Are they using all new materials? You know, these, they may seem like silly questions, but you need to have those answers. You just need to verify, you know, I send contracts out, and they're in great detail as to what we're going to do and how we're going to do it. And, you know, if someone says, could you clarify that more? I don't have a problem with that. You know, others, they say, we're putting in a furnace or putting in an air condition. They don't tell you what size, what efficiency, what brand, and they just got one number. You know, we break ours out so that...

the layperson can actually understand, maybe I've got to hold their hand to do it, but they can understand exactly what they're buying and what they're going to get. Is there major differences in brands, just in general, yes or no? Yes. As far as the quality build? Yes, and I will tell you, when I was a kid, because I've done this forever, we had... About 250 furnace manufacturers back when I was, like, in my early teams. We are down now to basically six major players. So, you know, American Standard and Train are the same company. They're owned by American Standard. They have several offshoots that they also sell. Ream, Rude, Weather King are wholly owned names of Ream Manufacturing. And we have built over the years for other companies. The Luxair product was acquired by Board Warner, York, and then eventually Coleman Evcon, and Johnson Controls owned it. And here about a year ago, it was purchased by Bosch, which is an international company. Carrier group, there's roughly 13 furnaces. Carrier Bryant, Day Night, Payne, Utec, Cobra, Hile, Temstar, Comfort Maker, and a couple I don't remember off top my head. They are effectively the same furnace. The premier furnace like you have is only sold in the Bryant and the carrier label. all the other product, a lesser product than that, you can buy with, you know, pick a name. They're all the same. Most of them don't know what they're going to be until they hit the end of the line. They roll off the same factory. So, you know, I will tell you the quality today has gone up because everybody shares, you know, like in Ream, we have at least... Three engineers I know of that came over from Carrier. Well, you know, they didn't forget everything they'd been working on for the last 10 or 15 years. They brought the best ideas with them, and they integrated it into our product. Sure. And it's becoming more and more this world product. Right. And, you know, a rising tide lifts all boats. We keep getting better and better and better technology. Across the board, for the most part. I mean, some of them kind of fall on their sword. Right. I got you. But so there are, even though there's different names under brands, there are some quality differences. Oh, absolutely. Sometimes you get what you pay for. But look at the paint job, the quality, the thickness of the metal. Do they have sharp corners and sharp edges that will cut you when you take the doors off? All of that is part of the quality control and, you know, why is this furnace $1,000 less than that system? Right, right. That's what you find. All right. I leave you with this for everybody out there. One thing, which I've never done, Bob. I've never done.

You should really look at, like if your system isn't getting as cold as it should be, in many cases, it's because your outside units is dirty on... on the fins, yeah, fins going in from cottonwood trees or dust or anything like that. You never, never, never hit that with a power washer. And don't ever do it. You'll hurt them fins, but you can rinse it off with a hose and what have you to clean that off. But you've got to take the fan out and so it's probably best left to a professional to do that. So keep that in mind. Ideally, you want to push the dirt back the direction it came. So to do that well, You need to pop the fan off the top of it and take a garden hose with, you know, good pressure and blow it back out of the coil. Because if you bury it in the coil, you may have just ruined your unit because we can't get it out. Right. And you've got to be careful at doing it, but that should be done probably on a regular basis, right? Once a year, at least. Right. All right. Well, that's something that should be done. And I'm trying to think of, I think that's all I got. All right. Keep the builders clean on the furnace and don't buy the super high efficiency, one inch. Right. Or high-rated filters. They're too restrictive. Yeah. Right, exactly. Like trying to breathe through a pillow. It doesn't work very well. I think you've helped a lot of people out with this situation that we have in our community. And I know you have helped a lot of people out with some of these places just ripping them off. So thank you. Thank you. I know I've occupied a lot of your time. You have a pleasant evening and hang in there, buddy. Okay? Thank you, Ron. Appreciate it. There he is. One and only Bob Dieter. Great advice, man, because I don't want any of you to be taking advantage of whether it's roofing, siding, tree removal, or anything in this type of situation. You're on here. Good evening, Ron. How are you? It's G2. It's 544. I only got 15 minutes left. What's on your minds? Well, you know, it's been a while since I've been on, and a lot has happened in these last couple of weeks. You know, and the pace of change seems to be increasing. Today we saw that, you know, oily, well, West Texas Intermediate and Brent had dropped down right around 70 degrees. They're about up, or $70. They're up about five points today as Iran attacked a couple of tankers in the straight, and now the U.S. Central Command is beginning to attack Iran. So we got a little spark in the war again. Hard to say what that means. They could settle this down in a couple of days or we could be game on. So that's not a positive, but it has been nice to see the gas prices coming down across the country. That has been a welcome respite for people. I think the primary focus still has to be these midterms. And I spoke to somebody recently about one particular candidate.

And the enthusiasm that was expressed that somebody has been in, you know, a member of the Republican Party for a very long time just seemed very naive and not very well considered. So I think there is, I think people are having a hard time analyzing the field of battle outside of whatever bubble they're in. You know, I think, I think there's a lot of work to do to get to figuring out what really is coming and what has to be done to win. Interesting. How do you think the midterms? How about the Democrat socialists that keep winning in these Democrat primaries? Well, you've got to ask yourself, when Thomas Massie gets a $30 million attack in a primary, and they put in a candidate who's got absolutely nothing to offer that's good, and yet these people run unopposed. I mean, there's no similar counterattack against them. So it's clear that Israel doesn't mind. And I don't understand why there isn't a bigger fight here. Clearly, they're going to continue growing power. Clearly, it's a move to the left. There's a significant amount of leftist messaging that's out on social media, constantly pushing celebrities and whatnot. And we can all say they don't have any impact. Of course, they don't on probably most of your listeners who are paying attention. But to the average public, these constant messages do, in fact, have an impact. I heard a clip of Sean Hannity, I don't listen to very often, but he was interviewing Werner de Blasio, the former mayor of New York, the radical lunatic. And Werner was talking about how, you know, he thinks that they're not representative of the overall Democrat Party, but they're coming on. He thinks the Democrats are becoming more reasonable and delivering these messages. And he just kept repeating a bunch of points against Trump. Sean Hannity kept saying, give me some substance, and he wouldn't because he knows there isn't any for the points he's trying to make. So what you're up against people are very well-crafted propaganda that's going to be delivered across a lot of different platforms simultaneously and repetitively versus messaging that is in disarray and ineffective. So I think anybody that's just, this gentleman I was talking to is about a week and a half ago. about one particular candidate for governor. And he's talking about this candidate is like a shoe-in. And I was stunned because I've talked to a lot of folks. Nobody sees that. But he's just absolutely convinced this is a great candidate. And so I think there's a lot of delusion out there, and I think it's going to take a while to get down to... to what's in front of us. But when you see the Democrat Socialists of America taking over that party, gaining ground, not just in Manhattan, but across the country, when you see no resistance from Israel, who's, you know, theoretically, is supposed to be against these guys, but they're instead attacking people like Thomas Massie. And that doesn't make sense. You know, when you see all of this happening, you know, there's something bigger. And I think we've got to kind of get to the bottom of it.

So the situation in Iran is still in flux. Would you agree based on what you said earlier? Yeah. I mean, it is. And the last time we spoke, which is some time ago, it was in flux then. We said, listen, this could hold today. It could change tomorrow. It could change the next day. It's hard to say. Well, you know, a couple of projectiles and a couple of tankers, and now it's game on again. It's very difficult to resolve a situation like this with so many competing forces and factions with so much devastation in Iran and this question about who's really in charge. They just buried Khomeini. You saw the crowds. This wasn't some small event. This was massive crowds for that. So I think... Yeah, I think we've got a lot more work to do there than we realize to kind of come to an agreement. So this idea that, oh, the people were willing to take over the regime, and then you see that turnout at his funeral, makes you question that, does it not? Well, we questioned it when they said it, and it didn't make sense then. It makes much sense now. That was just something said by Mossad to get Trump to go in and do this war. And, you know, we still have people to think that there was a nuclear threat, an imminent nuclear threat. I had this conversation about two days ago with somebody, and they believe we were all about to die in an Iranian mushroom cloud. The problem is it's just simply not true. So, yeah, it's... This is not a group of people that are waiting for us to drop off a few firearms so they can go overtake the IRGC. Of course, there are people, especially those that have been, you know, basically who had to flee the country that were part of the former aristocracy, who are now out about in the diaspora, who would want to see this Tehran regime taken out, of course. But that doesn't account for the millions inside the country who support them. It's just, you know, it's not zeros and ones. It's not all in or all out. You know what I find interesting in this situation in the Iran situation, you don't see any embedded reporters that you've seen in other situations with reports. from the front line, if you will. Well, and part of that is because we don't have troops on the ground. Part of that's because Iran has, I think, blocked a lot of the Internet access that people would need to get cell phone videos out. And part of that is because... I think there are very powerful forces who don't want us to know anything about what's happening in that country so they can craft our image of what's going on in Iran. That's why we were hearing. I don't know if you remember this, but a couple of weeks ago, people were just constantly saying they get stronger every day. They get stronger every hour. Iran is winning this war. Based on what? We talked about this a couple of weeks ago, based on nothing.

But what evidence do we have that that's not the case? Well, you've got common sense, which is in short supply. And that's about it. Stand by. Back with G2 to wrap it up on News Radio 570 WKB and Sean Hannity tonight at 6. L-D-D-E-A. Your night in just got legendary. Get ready to chase the rush, spin, win, and redeem instantly straight to your bank account at Legendswithazee.com. With free-to-play slots, blackjack, quino, roulette, and more. Experience all the thrills of Vegas without leaving your couch. Legends has it all. Legends is a free-to-play social casino void for prohibitive. Must be 18-plus play responsibly visit Legends.com for full details. Get in the game now and score a 100% match on your first purchase only at Legends withazee.com. What's going on, everyone? It's Bluff here, and we're driving through the States in the BluffMobile, and the best thing that we can do is play our favorite casino-style games on SpinQuest. They have over a thousand games, including Live Dealer, Blackjack, and craps, with tons of slots and unlimited. You can get a $30 coin pack for just $10 for new users. Sign up today. Go to SpinQuest.com right now. SpinQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visitspenquest.com for more details. Dad, Disney activities are on Lingo Kids. What? Moana and Elsa and Marvel Spider-Man, all of them. On Lingo Kids? Yes, Dad, on Lingo Kids. That's pretty cool. I know. You just lost them for the rest of the afternoon. Worth it. Full of fun activities inspired by Disney's Moana, Frozen, Zootopia, Marvel Spider-Man, and more. Lingo Kids is where little ones discover more about favorite characters. Lingo Kids! Everything Kids love. Download it for free. Got plans this summer? A brewery crawl? Another lake trip? The same festival you've been to three times already? Do something different. This August, Virginia International Raceway becomes the ultimate summer destination. Watch Inns's Michelin GT Challenge at VIR, August 21 through 23rd, bring some of the fastest sports cars to battle through VIR's legendary corners. Camp with friends, enjoy live music, and experience a weekend you'll actually be talking about afterward. Start planning now at govir.net. Ron Verbe. On News Radio 570, WKVN. All right, so just some of those stories about some of the shenanigans they're going on. But unfortunately, Bob, this happens in so many industries that can happen. And I know people that hire roofers, I mean, because we have a lot of issues going on with people in their roofs. If you, you know, hire a roofer, hire a name that you recognize that's a local roofing company, because if you have a problem, they're here to fix it. and follow up on it as opposed to somebody that's from out of town or you're not familiar with. You know, whether, I mean, you know the local names that you hear. Those are the people that you would want to do business with because they're here if you have a leak or a problem. Yeah, we have some excellent roofers in the area that stay here year round. Right. They don't travel a circuit like some of the ones that show up. For a storm, like the storm we've experienced here.

Right, yeah. But I know a woman that had these storm chasers, they came and did her roof. And they put in a ridge vent where she had your, what do you call them the... the metal vents that were in there, you know, the holes. Got static vents up on the roof? Yeah. Okay. But you know what they did? They cut in a ridge vent and they just rolled the felt paper right over the existing holes. They never patched the holes. So once they got paid and they got their money, they left and guess what happened? The roof started to leak. And it just took time. So she ultimately had to pay someone else out of her pockets. Because it was an insurance claim to come out and rip that part of the roof off to fix the holes that these guys have left. Well, or you have a leak and you don't know how to get a hold of any of these people because they're not from our community. They come in town, get the money, and they leave versus knowing so many of the names, you know, that's advertised on our station and you know how you can get a hold of them. You know that they live here and that they'll back up what they do. I mean, that's... You see it in roofing, you see it in so many of the homeowner businesses that are out there, if you will, that service people. It's reprehensible. One of my gal friends in Bordman had a roof replaced. She came home at lunch to see how things were going, and they're sitting on a roof smoking marijuana. And she says, get off my roof. They go, well, we're on our time. And she says, no, you're not. on anyone's time because you don't work here anymore. You know, so what's the liability if someone's up on your roof and they're stoned? You know, whose fault is that? So, you know, she fired them right on the spot. Again, you've got to be careful who is actually coming to your house. Right, who you allow on your property, absolutely. And I would agree with that. I mean, I would agree with that. I'm just reading an email. I just read this to you. Bob Dieter is awesome. I'm sitting in a nice cold house because he installed a brand new furnace and air conditioner last year in my home and was an expert at doing so. His pricing was very reasonable and he was very honest. Couldn't be happier with his work. The guy's first name, I won't give you his last name. His first name is Jim. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Jim. So there. But anyway, so be cautious, I mean, because there's a lot of people that are going to need a lot of services. I mean, it's a helpless feeling when you've got a tree on your roof and so you need to get your roof fixed and you've got to get work done inside your house as well. I mean, so be careful who you hire and who does the work. So many tips that you put out there for people, Bob, in these type of situations. If you're getting quotes, be very specific that they write down everything they're going to do and how. You know, it's just you need to know these things. I mean, whose responsibility is it to get rid of stuff? Are they getting rid of it? Are you getting rid of it? Are they using all new materials? You know.

They may seem like silly questions, but you need to have those answers. You just need to verify, you know, I send contracts out, and they're in great detail as to what we're going to do and how we're going to do it. And, you know, if someone says, could you clarify that more? I don't have a problem with that. You know, others, they say, we're putting in a furnace or we're putting in an air condition. They don't tell you what size, what efficiency, what brand. and they just got one number. You know, we break ours out so that the layperson can actually understand, maybe I've got to hold their hand to do it, but they can understand exactly what they're buying and what they're going to get. Is there major differences in brands, just in general, yes or no? Yes. As far as the quality build? Yes, and I will tell you, when I was a kid, Because I've done this forever. We had about 250 furnace manufacturers back when I was, like, in my early teams. We are down now to basically six major players. So, you know, American Standard and Train are the same company. They're owned by American Standard. They have several offshoots that they also sell. Ream, Rude, Weather King. manufacturing. And we have built over the years for other companies. The Luxair product was acquired by Board Warner, York, and then eventually Coleman Evcon and Johnson Controls owned it. And here about a year ago, it was purchased by Bosch, which is an international company.

There's roughly 13 furnaces. Carrier Bryant, Day Night, Payne, Utec, Cobra, Hile, Temstar, Comfort Maker. And a couple I don't remember off top my head. They are effectively the same furnace. The premier furnace like you have is only sold in the Bryant and the carrier label. All the other product, the lesser product than that, you can buy with You know, pick a name. They're all the same. Most of them don't know what they're going to be until they hit the end of the line. They roll off the same factory. So, you know, I will tell you, the quality today has gone up because everybody shares, you know, like in Ream, we have at least three engineers I know of that came over from Carrier. Well, you know, they didn't forget everything they've been working on for the last 10 or 15 years. They brought the best ideas with them, and they integrated it into our product. Sure. And it's becoming more and more this world product. Right. And, you know, a rising tide lifts all boats. We keep getting better and better and better technology. Across the board, for the most part. I mean, some of them kind of fall on their sword. All right. I got you. But so there are, even though there's different names under brands, there are some quality differences. Oh, absolutely. Sometimes you get what you pay for. But look at the paint job, the quality, the thickness of the metal. Do they have sharp corners and sharp edges that will cut you when you take the doors off? All of that is part of the quality control and, you know, why is this furnace $1,000 less than that system? Right, right. That's what you find. All right. I leave you with this for everybody out there. One thing, which I've never done, Bob. I've never done. You should really look at, like if your system isn't getting as cold as it should be, in many cases, it's because your outside units is dirty on the fins, yeah, fins going in. from cottonwood trees or dust or anything like that, you never, never, never hit that with a power washer. And don't ever do it. You'll hurt them fins, but you can rinse it off with a hose and what have you to clean that off. But you've got to take the fan out, and so it's probably best left to a professional to do that. So keep that in mind. Ideally, you want to push the dirt back the direction it came. So to do that well, you need to pop the fan. off the top of it and take a garden hose with, you know, good pressure and blow it back out of the coil. Because if you bury it in the coil, you may have just ruined your unit because we can't get it out. Right. And you've got to be careful at doing it. But that should be done probably on a regular basis. Right? Once a year, at least. Right. All right. Well, that's something that should be done. And I'm trying to think of, I think that's all I got.

All right. Keep the builders clean on the furnace and don't buy the super high efficiency one inch. Right. Or high-rated filters. They're too restrictive. Right, exactly. Like trying to breathe through a pillow. It doesn't work very well. I think you've helped a lot of people out with this situation that we have in our community. And I know you have helped a lot of people out with some of these places just ripping them off. So thank you. Thank you. I know I've occupied a lot of your time. You have a pleasant evening and hang in there, buddy. Okay? Thank you, Ron. Appreciate you. There he is. One and only Bob Dieter. Great advice, man, because I don't want any of you to be taking advantage of whether it's roofing, siding, tree removal, or anything in this type of situation. You're on here. Good evening, Ron. How are you? It's G2. It's 544. I only got 15 minutes left. What's on your minds? Well, you know, it's been a while since I've been on, and a lot has happened in these last couple of weeks. You know, and the pace of change seems to be increasing. Today we saw that, you know, oily, well, West Texas Intermediate and Brent had dropped down, right around 70 degrees. They're about up, or $70. They're up about five points today as Iran attacked a couple of tankers in the strait, and now the U.S. Central Command is beginning to attack Iran. So we've got a little spark in the war again. Hard to say what that means. They could settle this down in a couple of days or we could be game on. So that's not a positive, but it has been nice to see the gas prices coming down across the country. That has been a welcome respite for people. I think the primary focus still has to be these midterms. And I spoke to somebody recently about one particular candidate. And the enthusiasm that was expressed that somebody has been in, you know, a member of the Republican Party for a very long time just seemed very naive and not very well considered. So I think there is, I think people are having a hard time analyzing the field of battle outside of whatever bubble they're in. You know, I think, I think there's a lot of work to do to get to figuring out what really is coming and what has to be done to win. Interesting. How do you think the midterms? How about the Democrat socialists that keep winning in these Democrat primaries? Well, you've got to ask yourself, when Thomas Massie gets a $30 million attack in a primary, and they put in a candidate who's got absolutely nothing to offer that's good, and yet these people run unopposed. I mean, there's no similar counterattack against them. So it's clear that Israel doesn't mind. And I don't understand why there isn't a bigger fight here. Clearly, they're going to continue growing power. It's a move to the left. There's a significant amount of leftist messaging that's out on social media, constantly pushing celebrities and whatnot. And we can all say they don't have any impact. Of course, they don't on probably most of your listeners who are paying attention. But to the average public, these constant messages do, in fact, have an impact.

I heard a clip of Sean Hannity. I don't listen to very often, but he was interviewing Werner de Blasio, the former mayor of New York, the radical lunatic. And Werner was talking about how, you know, he thinks that they're not representative of the overall Democrat Party, but they're coming on. He thinks the Democrats are becoming more reasonable and delivering these messages. And he just kept repeating a bunch of points against Trump. Sean Hannity kept saying, give me some substance, and he wouldn't because he knows there isn't any for the points he's trying to make. So what you're up against people are very well-crafted propaganda that's going to be delivered across a lot of different platforms simultaneously and repetitively versus messaging that is in disarray and ineffective. So I think anybody that just, this gentleman I was talking to is about a week and a half ago. about one particular candidate for governor. He's talking about this candidate is like a shoe-in. And I was stunned because I've talked to a lot of folks, and nobody sees that. But he's just absolutely convinced this is a great candidate. And so I think there's a lot of delusion out there, and I think it's going to take a while to get down to... to what's in front of us. But when you see the Democrat Socialists of America taking over that party, gaining ground, not just in Manhattan, but across the country, when you see no resistance from Israel, who's, you know, theoretically, is supposed to be against these guys, but they're instead attacking people like Thomas Massie. And that doesn't make sense. You know, when you see all of this happening, you know, there's something bigger. And I think we've got to kind of get to the bottom of it.

So the situation in Iran is still in flux. Would you agree, based on what you said earlier? Yeah, I mean, it is. And the last time we spoke, which is some time ago, it was in flux then. We said, listen, this could hold today. It could change tomorrow. It could change the next day. It's hard to say. Well, you know, a couple of projectiles and a couple of tankers, and now it's game on again. It's very difficult to resolve a situation like this with so many competing forces and factions with so much devastation in Iran and this question about who's really in charge. They just buried Khomeini. You saw the crowds. This wasn't some small event. This was massive crowds for that. So I think... Yeah, I think we've got a lot more work to do there than we realize to kind of come to an agreement. So this idea that, oh, the people were willing to take over the regime, and then you see that turnout at his funeral, makes you question that, does it not? Well, we questioned it when they said it, and it didn't make sense then. It makes less sense now. That was just something said by Bashar al-Assad to get Trump to go in and do this war. And we still have people to think that there was a nuclear threat, an imminent nuclear threat. I had this conversation about two days ago with somebody, and they believe we were all about to die in an Iranian mushroom cloud. The problem is it's just simply not true. So, yeah, it's... This is not a group of people that are waiting for us to drop off a few firearms so they can go overtake the IRGC. Of course, there are people, especially those that have been, you know, basically who had to flee the country that were part of the former aristocracy, who are now out about in the diaspora, who would want to see this Tehran regime taken out, of course. But that doesn't account for the millions inside the country who support them. It's just, you know, it's not zeros and ones. It's not all in or all out. You know what I find interesting in this situation in the Iran situation, you don't see any embedded reporters that you've seen in other situations with reports. from the front line, if you will. Well, and part of that is because we don't have troops on the ground. Part of that's because Iran has, I think, blocked a lot of the Internet access that people would need to get cell phone videos out. And part of that is because... I think there are very powerful forces who don't want us to know anything about what's happening in that country so they can craft our image of what's going on in Iran. That's why we were hearing. I don't know if you remember this, but a couple of weeks ago, people were just constantly saying they get stronger every day. They get stronger every hour. Iran is winning this war. Based on what? We talked about this a couple of weeks ago, based on nothing.

But what evidence do we have that that's not the case? Well, you've got common sense, which is in short supply. And that's about it. Stand by. Back with G2 to wrap it up on News Radio 570 WKBN. Sean Hannity tonight at 6. There's an opportunity for you. Flinch Tires. From the Money Talks Investment Coach, John Arnold Studios. This is 570 WKBN Youngstown, an IHeart radio station, guaranteed human. I'm ABC News. I'm Wayne Cabot. The U.S. is launching new strikes against Iran. Answering new Iranian attacks today on ships in the waters off Alman in the Strait of Hormuz. ABC's Luis Martinez. There were three ships that were targeted overnight and earlier today in the Strait of Hormuz by Iranian missiles. That's according to U.S. officials. And so what we have been expecting is whether the United States was going to respond militarily against Iran for this, as we had seen in previous weeks, during the memorandum of understanding. That is exactly what is happening today. Also, the U.S. is cutting off Iran from selling oil. Oil is up right now between 5% and 6%. All this happening is President Trump meets with NATO allies in Turkey, and as Ukraine's president tries to get Trump to pressure Vladimir Putin to finally end Russia's war on Ukraine. A fatal ICE shooting this morning in Houston. Ice saying that it killed a Mexican nationally abating arrest, and they say allegedly he was trying to run over an officer. Another woman just came forward to the Washington Post making allegations against Graham Platner. Today, Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani urged Graham Platner to end his Senate race in Maine. A federal judge says the Trump administration cannot obtain personal information of poll workers in Georgia. In quashing the subpoena for the names, home, and email addresses and phone numbers of every poll worker in Fulton County, federal Judge William Ray II says the statute of limitations for possible crimes related to the 2020 election has long expired. The Trump-appointed judge writes, everyone, whether you support the president or you do not, or whether you believe the 2020 election was fair or believe that it was not, should be concerned about the DOJ's ability to utilize the power of the grand jury to appropriate your private information. without a legitimate purpose. Stephen Portnoy, ABC News, Washington. Stocks dragged down by AI stocks. The NASDAQ fell 1.2% today. You're listening to ABC News. Of all the wireless companies in America, only one has five stars in every category from Consumer Reports, and that company is Pure Talk. Coverage, support, value, data. Five stars across the board. Plus, no service contracts and no cancellation fees. Just phenomenal U.S. customer service on a crazy fast 5G network. Dial pound 250, say micro, and switch to a five-star American wireless company that won't let you down. Pure Talk.

Ever wonder why you have insurance for your car or home, but not your digital life? Meet WebRoot Total Protection, your digital bodyguard that includes antivirus, identity protection, VPN, cloud backup, and more. With plans for individuals and families, WebRoot takes the guessing game out of cybersecurity so you can get back to living your best life online. Go to webroot.com forward slash protect and get 60% off today. That's webrude.com slash protect to get 60% off today. Live a better digital life with WebRut because peace of mind shouldn't be optional. ABC's Aaron Katersky thinks he sees a slight lean to the former Pfizer building on 42nd Street in Manhattan, which is being converted over to apartments. Upper floor beams are buckling. The FDNY fearing a partial collapse. Since the FDNY has been on scene from about 8 a.m. They have noticed the building moving. I can tell you from here what could be an optical illusion, but it does appear that the top of the building is leaning slightly. Evacuations now on 42nd Street. The nation's three biggest airlines would like you to be happy when you fly. Well, if you have enough money. How you get from point A to point B on the three biggest airlines in the country is a very different experience for those who can afford to fly premium versus those of us in economy. Delta, American, and United all say they're investing more into the premium experience for those in business and first class, including chef design menus and gift bags that include luxury skin care products. The airlines make far more money on those more expensive business and first class seats than they do when the entire cabin of cheap seats is full up with the rest of us, so expect the trend to continue. Sherry Preston, ABC News. Messy does it again. A goal today giving Argentina a come from behind win over Egypt, his eighth goal in this year's World Cup. Tennis at the U.S. Open today, American Cocoa Gough, defeating fellow American Jessica Pagula. I'm Wayne Cabot. ABC News. Of all the wireless companies in America, only one has five stars in every category from Consumer Reports, and that company is Pure Talk. Coverage, support, value, data. Five stars across the board. Plus, no service contracts and no cancellation fees. Just phenomenal U.S. customer service on a crazy fast 5G network. Dial pound 250, say micro, and switch to a five-star American wireless company that won't let you down. Pure Talk. Weather brought. Your night in just got legendary. Get ready to chase the rush, spin, win, and redeem instantly straight to your bank account at Legendswithazee.com. With free-to-play slots, blackjack, quino, roulette, and more. Experience all the thrills of Vegas without leaving your couch. Legends has it all. Legends is a free-to-play social casino, void, but prohibited must be 18-plus play responsibly visit Legends.com for full details. Get in the game now and score a 100% match on your first purchase only at Legends withazee.com.

Hey everybody, Lady Luck here, and we're celebrating America's 250th birthday. Now, all summer long, I'm going to be celebrating by playing on SpinQuest.com, which is an American-owned social casino. It obviously features over a thousand slot games and live blackjack, live craps, live bubble craps. Head on over to SpinQuest.com. Get yourself a $30 coin pack for just 10 bucks. SpenQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit SpenQuest.com for more details. Dad, Disney activities are on Lingo Kids. What? Moana and Elsa and Marvel Spider-Man, all of them. On Lingo Kids? Yes, Dad, on Lingo Kids. That's pretty cool. I know. You just lost them for the rest of the afternoon. Worth it. Full of fun activities inspired by Disney's Moana, Frozen, Zootopia, Marvel Spider-Man, and more. Lingo Kids is where little ones discover more about favorite characters. Lingo Kids! Everything Kids love. Download it for free. Trade screen time for race time at Virginia International Raceway. August 21st through 23rd, Insa's Michelin GT Challenge brings some of the coolest cars to VIR for an unforgettable family weekend. Explore, meet drivers, see race cars up close, and experience the thrill of racing from every corner of the track. It's more than a race. It's a memory waiting to be made. Kids 12 and under get in free. Get your tickets at VIRFam.com. That's VIRFAM.com.

From ABC News, I'm Wayne Cabot. The U.S. is launching new strikes against Iran. Answering new Iranian attacks today on ships in the waters off Alman in the Strait of Hormuz. ABC's Luis Martinez. There were three ships that were targeted overnight and earlier today in the strait of war moves by Iranian missiles. That's according to U.S. officials. And so what we have been expecting is whether the United States was going to respond militarily against Iran for this, as we had seen in previous weeks, during the memorandum of understanding. That is exactly what is happening today. Also, the U.S. is cutting off Iran from selling oil. Oil is up right now between 5 and 6 percent. All this happening is present. President Trump meets with NATO allies in Turkey and as Ukraine's president tries to get Trump to pressure Vladimir Putin to finally end Russia's war on Ukraine. A fatal ICE shooting this morning in Houston. Ice saying that it killed a Mexican nationally abating arrest and who may say allegedly was trying to run over an officer. Another woman just came forward to the Washington Post making allegations against Graham Platner. Today, Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani urged Graham Platner to end his Senate race in Maine. A federal judge says the Trump administration cannot obtain personal information of poll workers in Georgia. In crushing the subpoena for the names, home, and email addresses and phone numbers of every poll worker in Fulton County, federal Judge William Ray II says the statute of limitations for possible crimes related to the 2020 election has long expired. The Trump-appointed judge writes, everyone, whether you support the president or you do not, or whether you believe the 2020 election was fair or believe that it was not, should be concerned about the DOJ's ability to utilize the power of the grand jury to appropriate your private information. without a legitimate purpose. Stephen Portnoy, ABC News, Washington. Stocks dragged down by AI stocks, the NASDAQ fell 1.2% today. You're listening to ABC News. Of all the wireless companies in America, only one has five stars in every category from Consumer Reports, and that company is Pure Talk. Coverage, support, value, data. Five stars across the board. Plus, no service contracts and no cancellation fees. Just phenomenal U.S. customer service on a crazy fast 5G network. Dial pound 250, say micro, and switch to a five-star American wireless company that won't let you down. Pure Talk. Ever wonder why you have insurance for your car or home, but not your digital life? Meet WebRoot Total Protection, your digital bodyguard. That includes antivirus, identity protection, VPN, cloud backup, and more. With plans for individuals and families, WebRoot takes the guessing game out of cybersecurity, so you can get back to living your best life online. Go to webroot.com forward slash protect and get 60% off today. That's webrute.com slash protect to get 60% off today. Live a better digital life with WebRut because peace of mind shouldn't be optional.

ABC's Aaron Katersky thinks he sees a slight lean to the former Pfizer building on 42nd Street in Manhattan, which is being converted over to apartments. Upper floor beams are buckling. The FDNY fearing a partial collapse. Since the FDNY has been on scene from about 8 a.m. They have noticed the building moving. I can tell you from here what could be an optical illusion, but it does appear that the top of the building is leaning slightly. Evacuations now on 42nd Street. The nation's three biggest airlines would like you to be happy when you fly. Well, if you have enough money. How you get from point A to point B on the three biggest airlines in the country is a very different experience for those who can afford to fly premium versus those of us in economy. Delta, American, and United all say they're investing more into the premium experience for those in business and first class, including chef design menus and gift bags that include luxury skin care products. The airlines make far more money on those more expensive business and first class seats than they do when the entire cabin of cheap seats is full up with the rest of us, so expect the trend to continue. Sherry Preston, ABC News. Messy does it again. A goal today giving Argentina a come from behind win over Egypt, his eighth goal in this year's World Cup. Tennis at the U.S. Open today, American Cocoa Gough, defeating fellow American Jessica Pagula. I'm Wayne Cabot. ABC News. Of all the wireless companies in America, only one has five stars in every category from Consumer Reports, and that company is Pure Talk. Coverage, support, value, data. Five stars across the board. Plus, no service contracts and no cancellation fees. Just phenomenal U.S. customer service on a crazy fast 5G network. Dial pound 250, say micro, and switch to a five-star American wireless company that won't let you down. Pure Talk. What's going on, everyone? It's Bluff here, and we're driving through the States in the BluffMobile, and the best thing that we can do is play our favorite casino-style games on SpinQuest. They have over a thousand games, including Live Dealer, Blackjack, and craps, with tons of slots and unlimited. You can get a $30 coin pack for just $10 for new users. Sign up today. Go to SpinQuest.com right now. SpinQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visitspenquest.com for more details. Ready to put a little spin on your day? Then check out Chumba Casino's new online social casino game, Ryan Seacrest 10K Waves. It's free and packed with 10,000 ways to play. Only at Chombacasino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group, void where prohibited by law. CTs and C21st, sponsored by Chumpa Casino. Dad, Disney activities are on Lingo Kids. What? Moana and Elsa and Marvel Spider-Man, all of them. On Lingo Kids? Yes, Dad, on Lingo Kids. That's pretty cool. I know. You just lost them for the rest of the afternoon. Worth it. Full of fun activities inspired by Disney's Moana, Frozen, Zootopia, Marvel Spider-Man, and more. Lingo Kids is where little ones discover more about favorite characters. Lingo Kids! Everything Kids love. Download it for free.

Entertain clients, reward employees, or enjoy a first-class race weekend with VIR's premium MSA hospitality experiences. August 21st through 23rd, enjoy exclusive viewing areas, premium amenities, food and beverage options, and access that puts you close to the action. Whether for business or pleasure, elevate your weekend at Virginia International Raceway. Explore and upgrade your tickets at VIRVIP.net.