! Now on 105.9 FM and streaming worldwide on the WMAL app. O'Connor and company. WMAL. It's 7 0 7. Good morning. It's O'Connor and company here on this busy Wednesday in your nation's capital. Thanks for choosing us to start your day. 7 35. We're going to speak with Maryland State Senator Justin Reedy as the General Assembly in Maryland has closed. We're going to talk about the! The first day of the program is on the! He's going to give us his perspective on Steve Testifying on Capitol Hill today. It's Larry O'Connor with Cassie Smedley. Good morning, Cassie. Joining us right now, friend of the program, Garrett Exner. He's board member with veterans on duty. Good morning, Garrett. How are you? Good morning. You want to mention it? No, no, that's fine. I'm looking forward to it. You should be excited to dinner. Good. I'm giving. Garrett's been kind enough to invite me to give a speech to some folks in Annapolis. So look it up everybody. You'll see it. Garrett, we were mentioning how Fairfax County is running out of school days. At the moment, I think Fairfax County, the majority of their school weeks have only four days. They've got all of these holidays that they're observing and teachers school board is trying to respond. The solution is to get rid of Veterans Day. Honestly Garrett, Veterans Day? It doesn't, it's mind-blowing, but I think if you've been watching Fairfax County Public Schools the last few years, there's no end to the kind of craziness that's going on. 22 full weeks at a 45, that's all we have. It's 22 full weeks of school and this year we're going to move up to 23 and they're going to do it by cutting Veterans Day. It's, it's, I cannot believe that this is the one holiday of all that they're celebrating to get rid of. Right, okay. I'm going to be a contrarian and I'm with you. I'm about to be a Fairfax County school district parent and so I was paying close attention because I don't know how working parents do this with the schedule. It's, it's truly wild and then I saw, yeah, Veterans Day, but I did see a couple of comments that people were saying, okay, but so let's make it a day of celebrating our Veterans. Let's invite them into the school, have a patriotic assembly and, and make that the, how we observe this day, which I really agree with. Do you think they would do that? They have done that in the past. So Veterans Day was not always a day off. There was different periods of time where they celebrated in the school, they invited all the, the Veterans to come in, they gave an assembly at the school. It's, it's a great thing to do it that way. The only real gripe I have is that when we looked at the schedule, when the school board just, just last we've looked at the schedule and looked at all of the holidays in order, the two that they put at the bottom that they said, okay, if we can cut any holidays, we can cut these two. It was Indigenous People's Day and Veterans Day and then in the votes, they took a vote on each one, Indigenous People's Day stayed and Veterans Day got cut. And I think that's what's most offensive to the Veteran community is to say, you put us last. Gary, if you just changed it back to Columbus Day, I bet Veterans would have won. You should have thought about that first. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, it's just, it's outrageous. And what a slap in the face it is to our Veterans. And I mean, last I checked Virginia on the whole, but also Fairfax County in particular, has a huge number of former military and active duty military. And is there any thought to, I mean, what about all of the children who were in Fairfax County schools whose parents are in the military or Veterans of the military? It's the insults continue. I think, and this was actually brought up in the school board meeting, was that the difficulty that you're placing, particularly in military families, when you have this many days off, and I think on top of all these holidays, the thing that's driving people insane is the half days. They have a lot of half days, eight during the year. So effectively one a month throughout the school year, you have a half day this year. It was Wednesday. So in the middle of the week, you just had a random half day and everybody's got to leave work and go figure out childcare for their kids. It's admitted it's costing parents thousands of dollars. And Fairfax wouldn't budge on those. They only attacked Veterans Day. So it's a done deal. It is. Yeah, that's what we're dealing with. 23 full weeks will be the calendar coming out next year. All right, just I, all right. Well, I listen, I guess the solution is move out of Fairfax County or I guess homeschool, choose a private school. You could find a good Catholic school for Catholic families like mine. There's plenty of great Catholic schools across Fairfax County and they're not too expensive. Oh, go ahead, Kathy. No, I was saying that that has been something that's come back on the table in my household because what you mentioned, those half days or those early dismissal days in the middle of the week, and when you're thinking about it as a family, you're saying, what can we withstand? Can we juggle that or we better look at a different option? And I think that that's something that I hope the school board will pay attention to too is more parents. I'm so glad you're one of them are speaking up and speaking out. Well, I just want to point out that Fairfax County has been losing students over the last few years by the thousands. And something that is in direct correlation to this is that they've increased the superintendent's salary year on year. Not many residents in Fairfax County know that the superintendent makes over $450,000 a year. Her chief of staff makes over $300,000 a year and the chief diversity and equity inclusion officer makes over $250,000 a year. The average parent is not making that in Fairfax County. And we're just hemorrhaging money into these administrators and they're not actually doing the job of educating our children. And Garrett, while I've got you and if you need to take your veterans on duty hat off, please feel free to do so. But I know that you're a Marine Corps veteran and so is your amazing wife. And you've got a long history in our military, not just in the Marines, but of course your connections with the United States Navy. And you've got a lot of brothers and sisters were in the Marine Corps uniform sitting on Navy ships right now off the coast of Iran. From your perspective right now and based on your expertise, how is this campaign going so far, especially with the new blockade strategy over the last several days? I actually think things are going well. I know I'm baffled sometimes at a lot of the criticism that this administration is coming under for what's going on in Iran. I think this regime was long overdue to come under some punishment for their pursuit of nuclear weapons, for their killing of thousands Americans. When I talk to military members that are still in, they are eager to get this job done. They want to get it done. I think if you look back just a few weeks ago over each weekend when we rescued the down pilot and weapons officer, I woke up that next morning feeling very proud to be an American that we will go get our service members out of there regardless of the costs or kind of equipment and material. We will come get you and we're the only country in the world that believes that way. Philosophically we believe that any American can do anything and that's why we need to spare no expense to go get them out. I was just very proud of the way our military is conducting themselves. We all should have been and by the way I feel pretty confident asking this question but only because I spoke into so many veterans who have served over the course of the last 20 years. This idea that the Pentagon and our armed forces had not trained or were not prepared and didn't have a plan in Iran. I don't know, Garrett Exner, when you were in the military did the subject of Iran ever come up in any of your training? We've had a plan for Iran for decades. Since the 1980s we've had a plan and it is every year it is dusted off, it is reshaped, it is redone. They went in, they knew exactly what they're doing, they knew that the straight of horn moves was going to come under threat and I think we're moving through methodically that plan right now and President Trump is trying to negotiate with the regime and it seems like right now they don't want to negotiate. They want to keep fighting so we'll take it to them. Let's see how that works out for them as they say. Garrett, veterans on duty thank you for giving voice to so many veterans who didn't have a voice at the Fairfax County School Board meeting. It is an absolute disgrace, but you know listen, every time these elected officials in Fairfax County tell us who they are and who side they're on, we should really start listening. Garrett, thanks so much. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. It's 715. The NFL Draft presented by Bud Light is coming to Pittsburgh and it's your chance to witness the future of the game for free from April 23rd to April 25th. Feel the energy of the NFL Draft. See the Vince Lombardi trophy and Super Bowl rings. Meet NFL players and legends. Enjoy interactive games and live music performances and be there as the future of the NFL takes center stage. The NFL Draft starts April 23rd. Register for free entry at nfl.com slash draft access today. Hey there, I'm Paula Pan. I help people make the smartest money decisions possible. Joe, you know what's been great about being a saver? For money in the bank. And that money over the past couple of years has made a pretty good yield. Pre pandemic, money was making zero. Now it's actually making something, but that's starting to go down, down, down. I love how we can play the fact that inflation has been really high as a positive. But if you're a saver, you know what that means? So over lining Joe, so over lining. Afford anything, follow and listen on your favorite platform. That's right. It's time for critter news, but you know, I can't overlook the fact that our weather report just said that we're hitting a record high today in Washington. Last time we hit that high was in the 40s when SUVs were really, really bad. They were like a carbon emissions were terrible back then. Right? That climate change stuff. Yeah. Anyway, we do have some critter news. And in fact, it's a follow up on some critter news that we delivered you a couple of weeks ago. It has to do with the state of Maryland and well, history that has now been made just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water. Maryland is now the first state in these United States of America to proudly proclaim a state shark. We have a state shark, ladies and gentlemen, and this is a big deal. Are you excited, Cassie? Are you fired up? Is this going to make you move to Maryland? Is it going to make you on a vacation on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay? Okay, that was my thought. This can't be. Was this run by the tourism board? In Ocean City? Yeah, exactly. Hey, everybody, great news. We have a state shark. Well, in a way, it's not anything to be afraid of because our state shark happens to be extinct. So there's no danger of our state shark. We could have fled with that. Yeah, we have now officially designated the Megalodon as the official state shark, which is a shark that used to roam around, I guess, off the coast of Maryland, but is of course extinct. But of all the sharks, it was the baddest ass of all the sharks. Let's face it. If you've got kids who like sort of do science or bio, well, you have kids, but they haven't gotten into like science and biology and researching animals and things like that. As soon as they get past their dinosaur phase, I promise you, when they start getting fascinated by sharks, they're all going to be about the Megalodon. The Megalodon is awesome. Yeah. Okay, I'll flag. I'll bookmark this. Can we visit it in a museum? Or something? Sure, absolutely. They're huge. They're amazing. By the way, the Megalodon is this, naming the Megalodon the state shark of Maryland may be the only piece of legislation that was proposed by a Republican in Annapolis this year that will now get through and signed by Westmore. That's it. That's the only thing they let Republicans drive is the naming of the state shark, the Megalodon. You know, there's a movie, the Meg. Have you heard about the movie? No. I'm looking it up now. Oh yeah. It's Jason Stratham. And it's, I think the rock is in it, too. And it's about this action movie where the beast is a Megalodon, where it's like one of those crazy disaster movies that make no sense. I can't believe I missed that one. The Meg is going to be right there alongside the Baltimore Oriole, one of the state, iconic state beasts of my state of Maryland. And I couldn't be more proud. Don't go in the water. Can I just tell you, I know this is weird, but if we're really going to pick a state bird, I know Baltimore Orioles, I get it. There's a baseball team. I never see an Oriole. I live in Maryland. I live, you know, between D.C. and Baltimore. You know what I see? I see Turkey buzzards. Can we name the Turkey buzzard? Actually, you know what we saw the other day? We live near the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, you know, close to D.C., but not too close. And close to Annapolis, closer to Annapolis, by the way. That's why I'm always in such a good mood. And we saw a bald eagle circling above our home two days ago. It was majestic. It was an incredible thing to see. But you know what I didn't see? A Baltimore Oriole. I never see Orioles, unless they're, you know, at the baseball stadium. You know, you need to get a bird watcher on the show and ask them to explain where I can go to see. Maybe you just have to commit a little more. The blue heron. See those guys all the time? See, there's a lot of other great birds we could have, but no, we got the Oriole and they can't even win a pennant. Anyway, back to the shark. This is a big deal. We are the first state to select a state shark. Megalodon, by the way, joins other state symbols, as I said, like the Baltimore Oriole. And did you know that we have a state dinosaur? No, what's with all the extinct state things? Okay. By the way, I'm told that we can't prove that a Megalodon is extinct. They could be living down there many miles below the surface. They just, they just chill. They hang out there. There's a lot of stuff in the deep waters that we will, we have no idea what's down there. And so I'm told that it could be extinct. Might not be extinct. It's just down. Wait, now the tourism board is saying, wait a minute, we were okay with this because you told us it was extinct. And now you're telling me it might not be extinct? Yeah, no, no, no, no. I'm sure we're going to be fine. Delegate Todd Morgan, by the way, who wrote one of the two bills backing this election was celebrating on Facebook says there are so many people young and old who have worked beside us to make this possible. It's been so much work people don't see. But to the hundreds of kids literally who have written letters and drawn pictures, this has been one of the most enjoyable bills that legislators actually had some fun with. Well, good, we're having fun with it too. It's the largest fish to ever exist. The megalodon it is now ours. It is Maryland's congratulations. And by the way, there's a Meg two. So sure, check that out the sequel. Just when you thought it was safe again, to go back in the water. Um, by the way, I didn't mean to leave you hanging. We do have a state dinosaur in Maryland. Do you know, you know what the state dinosaur is? It'd be that'd be Steny Hoyer. It's 723. 737. Good morning, and thanks for tuning into O'Connor and Company on this Wednesday in your nation's capital tax day, 15th day of April. Get those extensions filed. I'm not I'm not going to insult you by thinking that you're actually getting your full returns in on time. Come on, you're too busy for that. Make them wait. But yes, get your get your extensions filed coming up at 805 Jonathan Fahey. He ran against Steve Discano in Fairfax County. He's a former federal prosecutor. We'll get his commentary on the pending testimony from Discano on Capitol Hill today about his sanctuary policies and how it's making the people of Northern Virginia. Well, walking victims, joining us also from Northern Virginia is Cassie Smetley. Good morning, Cassie. Thanks for joining us. Well, on that note, I'm so glad to be a Northern Virginian. But yes, exactly. Well, you know, just getting changed the elections. Although, trust me, as as bad as it is, you know, I'm in Maryland. So, mention how we feel. It's very we're used to being outnumbered, as is our guest, Maryland Senator Justin reading state senator for District five, Frederick and Carroll County, some of the last remaining sane bastions in the free state of Maryland. Good morning, Senator. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. Well, whenever we sort of look back at the closing of the legislative session, I always want to say, Well, what's the damage? You know, how badly do I have to open up my wallet this time? Well, you know, it's it's tax day. It's actually my birthday, Larry, which I'm treating. No. Yeah, I'm spending with you all. Yes. I know. Hold on. I love the fact that a dude born on tax day ends up being a Republican senator trying to cut taxes every chance he gets. This is beautiful. I do. And I think what Marylanders are finding is that they're like, I Marylanders are like, I came to the legislative session this year wanting relief from high energy cost and high cost of living and all I got was a lousy t shirt because basically the only thing that you're getting from the from the Democratic supermajority that they did not raise any taxes or fees, which they celebrated as if they hadn't done it for three straight years. And it just took one year off in the election year. But the only thing you're getting as far as relief is basically an energy bill that passed a Frankenstein energy bill 93 pages long that does a whole bunch of things. Most of it will not help our long term energy problems or our long term energy crisis. And you get about 12 bucks a month in relief, because they're just barely scaling back one part of their radical green energy subsidy program to delay it a little bit to give you 12 bucks a month in relief. So don't spend all that in one place though, Larry. That's it. So that's less than 50 cents a day. Yeah, that's what that's what they're given us. Yeah. And what they could have, they could have very easily, our Republican, we had the number of proposals. And I actually think in the Senate, there was more willingness to maybe go a little further. But the House of Delegates are just unwilling to do anything to roll back any of these green sort of these green programs like in power and being part of Reggie and some of those things. And so we had a proposal where like if you pass our proposal and all it took is just getting out of some of these or even just slowing down and pausing some of these subsidy programs that take money out of everybody's bills every month, if they pass that we could have quadrupled that savings per month for people right away and started the process of reducing. It's cost so much to produce energy in Maryland because the government puts so many mandates, restrictions, requirements on it. And those because utilities pass those on to the consumer. Right. For anybody who doesn't already follow you already, you're a great follow because there's like the headline and then you tell the real story. And exactly one of those points is that the Democrats outlined deal to save Marylanders $150 on energy bills and go, Oh yeah, but the same bill, hand solar companies $100 million plus, correct, and does nothing to reduce the savings. So more about that. What are these other bills like that that say they're going to tout this as something good, but here's the reality. Well, for one thing, there's the, there's a bill that the governor says, cost of groceries and cost of living is my highest priority. So his big bill was to ban the practice of grocery stores using what they call dynamic pricing, meaning that you walk into the store and the price could change based on what you look like or what kind of day it is or whatever. Well, it turned out nobody in Maryland is using that technology in any, in any way. The only ones that really sometimes we use some of that dynamic scoring honestly are like DoorDash type set ups. So we ended up passing a heavily, but the way the bill was written, it was going to ban grocery stores from using loyalty programs. So we had to amend the bill, so we didn't ban like coupons and walk through programs. So by the end of the day, the bill, so by the end of the day, the bill that's passed and will be trumpeted is saving people money, bans the practice nobody was using. And I don't think it'd be good if the grocery store was using algorithmic rhythms to change the price right in front of you, but that's not going on. They'll say that's saving you money, but it doesn't do anything real. Marylanders will hear all of this and say, yeah, we know the cost of living is super high and the regulations are awful. And there was a time when they wanted to tax the rain and Westmore is not too different from that era. And, and yes, the taxes are expensive, all that. But, but here's the good thing about being in Maryland, at least it's a nice safe place where everybody respects law and order. So Senator Reed, I'm willing to pay the cover charge for good roads and transportation safety. Well, but all of that is going out the window and that that's right. The big headline, as you guys have I'm sure I know covered that we just passed at the end of the last session, I'm sort of undercover of night, past this so called Community Trust Act. That's where I was headed. Yeah. Yeah, essentially is making our state completely a sanctuary state. Unless you're a convicted felon illegal immigrant, and then they can do some level of communication with ICE, but it's very, but the devil's even in the details there. I mean, yeah, let's be clear here. Yeah, the hoops you have to jump through for that convict and felon is one thing. And also you use the operative word, you can communicate with ICE, not you must communicate with ICE, not that it's mandatory that you communicate with ICE and make sure that this felon violent criminal who has been convicted in Maryland, who is eligible for deportation and has a detainer must be handed over to ICE. No, no, no, it's voluntary. So we know what's going to happen in Prince George's County and Montgomery County. Yeah, because they're already not really cooperating at all. Prince George is certainly is in Montgomery County cooperates a little bit, but not much. And what this bill does is it tells all our other counties, many of whom were trying to cooperate, even even counties like that are a little more liberal than say Carroll County. We're mostly cooperating on on like, Hey, if ICE wants this guy, let's be sure we get it too. But now what they're doing is saying, unless the person is literally been convicted of a felony, and let me tell you, second degree assault is not a felony. There's a bunch of things that are not drunk driving, not a felony, a number of like spousal abuse. And Senator, we see it playing out with Steve Doscano in Virginia, these prosecutors, these states attorneys, they're going to negotiate and plead down for these people, give them preferential treatment so that they don't get eligible for deportation. In other words, if you're in the country legally and you're a citizen, they're going to throw the book at you. But knowing that there's this extra level of punishment that you might get deported, these states attorneys are going to be soft on those criminals. Well, and for many years, even in liberal blue Maryland, we held a lot of this at bay. And now they finally, they passed a bunch of anti-ICE stuff this session. But what I tried to say, and I have a force speech, I'm going to be putting up soon on YouTube, but it was long, we laid it all out. What this is beyond just saying you can't do a 287G agreement or saying we're going to keep ICE from getting certain data, you know, from our state or whatever, I'm against all that. But this is literally going to put people at jeopardy. Now, we're sending a letter to Governor Moore from the caucus, from our Republican caucus, there's going to be a law enforcement pleading with him, you got to veto this bill because this is not just like some in your nose at ICE or saying, hey, you know, the lady that's been here for 20 years, don't deport her because she got pulled over for speeding. This is like, you're basically saying, by making a conviction also, they go, well, what's wrong? Don't you want them to get convicted before we hand them over to ICE? So basically right now, a sheriff could arrest somebody, could pick somebody up for a very serious crime, alleged a serious crime, like in the act of assaulting. They could catch them in the act, right? Yeah. Catch them in the act, and look, oh, they have a rat sheet a mile long, they've had all these charges, they've been convicted of multiple smaller offenses that were probably pled down. I can't even talk to ICE and find out what ICE knows about this guy. That's right. That's what this, yeah. The last case, the last case like that, Senator Reedy was in Fairfax, it was a guy who had been in custody 41 times, and he just murdered a woman at a bus stop. We know how this story ends. 24 hours after they let it, right? 24 hours after they let him out, he went and murdered somebody. Senator Reedy, I appreciate, at this point, Republicans are reduced to coming on this program, letting everybody know, and then writing a letter to Governor Moore. Sadly, I know you didn't get into this business, you could just write letters, but do me a favor. That letter to Governor Moore, just CC Mark Wayne Mullen, CC Tom Homan, CC Stephen Miller, and CC President Donald Trump, because if Westmore signs this, there needs to be federal action against Maryland. That's the next step. Everybody in Maryland listening, every state legislative office is on the ballot this year in Maryland, so please, if you're listening, get involved, please, and help people locally with trying to collect some better at the local and state legislative level, we gotta get some better people who will look out for public safety and our tax dollars. State Senator Justin Reedy, thank you, congratulations on getting through the session. Now get back home and get back to your real job. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. 746. We talk about California a lot here, first of all, because it's the most popular state in our country. A lot of people who live in this area, like yours truly, have family or even roots and origins in California, but more importantly, if you've noticed a trend here, most of the prominent high profile national Democrats come from the state of California. You look at your Nancy Pelosi's, you look at your Kamala Harris's, you look at your Gavin Newsom's, etc. etc. They breed Democrats who want to come to Washington DC and Gavin Newsom wants to be president, so you should look at what they do there to learn what they're going to do for the rest of the country. This latest bill that is now being advanced in Sacramento is, well, pretty offensive, in contrary to the First Amendment. It's being called the Stop Nick Shirley Act, which would basically criminalize investigative journalism. This is, you know, Nick Shirley, of course, the independent journalist who exposed the fraud at the Leering Centers in Minneapolis and has recently done the same thing with hospice centers and daycare centers in California. Well, this bill, which is called the, well, again, referred to as the Stop Nick Shirley Act, but I don't think that's the actual name of the bill. AB 2624 is about protecting immigrant organizations from threats of violence when the fact, but that's not what it is at all. The legislation would apply to any left wing group that claims to provide any services to legal or illegal immigrants. It would stop people from asking questions and investigate. Again, you're getting federal money, you're getting state money, and you're doing these services under that umbrella and under that guys and under those protections. There should be transparency and you should be held accountable for whether you're actually spending the money, the taxpayers money properly. But what this does is it allows individuals affiliated with organizations to demand the removal of video recordings, even if they were taken in public and impose costly financial penalties against those who publish the videos online. Now this is absolutely outrageous and contrary to every journalistic ethic that has been employed since the dawn of the First Amendment. Imagine how 60 minutes operates here if they can't make a video of somebody they're investigating and then publish it without their permission, right, Cassie? Right. And it's, I do something, something democracy dies in darkness. This is against our First Amendment. I've heard that before. Yeah. Where are they calling this out? Yeah, good question. Assembly member Carl DeMaio is trying to push back on this saying California Democrats trying to intimidate citizen watchdog journalists and protect waste and fraud happening in far left wing NGOs. AB 2624 can only be described as the stop and actually act. A bill designed to silence citizen journalists exposing fraud and abuse of tax credit dollars. Imagine if they put as much energy and focus into those organizations that are wasting the money. And by the way, endangering children by claiming that they're a daycare center when they're actually doing nothing of the sort. That's where their focus should be. But instead, they're angry at the guy who's exposed it. Amazing. Exactly. As Chris Plant often says, the left is coming for your rights. 753. Hi, I'm Joe Salci. I host of the Stack In Bedouin's podcast. Most economists agree small amount of inflation is actually good. 2% is what you're going for. But why is everybody freaking out? Oh, because it's the fallout. People don't track their budget. You have this slow slipping that happens every month. To all of a sudden, you go, man, I don't have any money. The reason is now two people go to a restaurant. The bill is 60 bucks for two. Two guys walking to a restaurant. They start screaming. Is that hilarious? $60. Stack In Bedouin's. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.
