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Will the absolutely free iHeartRadio app Now, all right, Billy Cunningham, the
Grand Americans welcome in this two stay afternoon of the tri Stay. Reds Baseball
continues about six oh five to night. It's really the Cubs are non competitive
against the Redge. The Dodgers are non competitive against the Reds. The only
team competitive is Milwaukee. Fortunately they don't play him anymore. Their game and
a half on first play in first place at this point first pitch about eight
ten to night. But until then, about a week ago, the governors
of Ohio in Kentucky, the Buckeyes and the Third Bread's got together Andy but
Sharon, Mike Dowane to talk about the Companion Bridge to the PS Bridge,
when it's going to open, the construction companies were selected, etc. And
when's the first shovel of dirt gonna happen. Plus I got to talk to
Governor Mike Dwine about the High State Fair going nuts as we speak. Plus,
I know that the Dwine family has been well connected to Haiti for many
decades, named after Becky, his lovely daughter who died in a car wreck
many many years ago. And the Dwine family is donated and participated in literally
millions of dollars to help the Haitian people. And right now it's in complete
collapse. But until then, Governor Mike Dwine, welcome again. And first
of all, this afternoon, you find yourself at the High State Fair.
How are we looking well? Bill? The State Fair is doing well,
Fran. I've been out here every day. At some point we've actually taken
three sets of rank Yester the Ohio State Fair. Fran yesterday was doing something
she does every single year, which is go into what's called the Taste of
Ohio, kind of und round building that has has all kinds of different Ohio
food and she was working with kids, cooking, making baking pizza. So
she starts off that every time we got some wheat from our farm, and
she grinds it, shows the kids how to grind it, and the particular
the little boys, they love to grind the wheat, so they grind the
wheat and then turn into flour and then they make into pizza. So that's
what she's been doing out here at the fair as well as uh, you
know, taking taking our grandkids around. We're actually uh standing, I'm standing
with doctor Gonzalez, the president of Ohio University, and she and I are
actually getting ready to go into the Loose building named after a former governor of
o Highway way back. But I want to get a little plug for this
because the side out size says Youth Exploration Space presented by Intel, and we
asked Intel to really kind of step up things and have something to be in
her active. So they're here along with Kosi as well as Battel Honda,
NASA Glenn and when you walk in, it's just a fun thing for kids
to get inspired about science, gets inspired about space, all kinds of different
different things. So a lot to do with the Ohio State Fair. Let's
talk about the bridge because most of your lifetime and mine the bridge and needed
to be replaced. That I can recall that George Bush the forty three stood
in front of the bridge. Then we're gonna build the bridge. We then
had Barack Husaint Obama stood in front of the bridge. Then we're gonna build
the bridge. Then we have President Donald Trump in front of the bridge.
We're gonna build a bridge. And Joe Biden probably doesn't get up to about
ten o'clock in the morning, so I don't know what he's doing with the
bridge. But at some point he's gonna say, let's build the bridge.
And when you appeared last week with Andy Basher, the governor of Kentucky,
you two were confident that dirt would be turned by the end of the year.
Uh is First of all, is that accurate? And secondly, I
got a text from somebody who said, why isn't Governor DeWine using an Ohio
company? So deal with the first part. In the second part then we'll
go, Oh that's that's I love that, because we are an Ohio company
CosIng. Uh. There they are the company that's the lead on this for
the for the construction of this uh three plus billion dollars um bridge. And
so as you know, Bill, we're not only we're building a brand new
bridge, uh, and we're also taking the current bridge and and you know,
making it, making it better. But uh, it is cocosing.
They were named. That's what Governor Bisher and I announced a few days ago.
Cocosing is an Ohio company. Uh. They built a lot of things
in Ohio and they've been here for you know, they're probably in the third
or fourth generation company now. All right, so it is an Ohio company.
And can you give us, give Tony Benner some sort of a time
period. I think you and I will long be gone by the time it's
accidentally operational. In nineteen fifty eight, Brent Spence, a congressman, had
to get his vote, and so Sam Rayburn went to Brent Spence and said,
hey, I need your vote on this thing. And Brent Spence said,
well, let's build a bridge. It took five years from saying hey,
let's build a bridge to the first car that flew over it. Here
we are in twenty twenty three. Can you give me some decade that this
might actually happen in a car will travel on the new bridge. The goal
is by the end of twenty twenty nine, and you know that's a long
time. Governor Pscher and I were joking with each other yesterday or a few
days ago and said, well, neither one of us will be in office
when that occurs, is to keep this thing on schedule and to keep moving
forward. That we got a hiccup, uh, you know, with words
from the federal government that we've we need to do another environmental assessment. Now
we have done. I think this will be the fourth one that we have
done in the last ten years. We don't think anything's going to change.
In fact, things maybe even look better. So what we've asked the federal
government to do is just speed up the process. We know they're going to
require them to do is kind of when we play King Pong and we send
a report back to them. We asked them to be able to turn that
report around quickly and so we can just keep moving. So we've come up
with a compressed schedule and if we're able to if they're able to meet that
compressed schedule, then we will not get behind and we'll be able to continue
to move forward. So it's gonna take longer than anyone wants. But hey,
you know, we've waited a long time and the key is to get
started, and we are now started, all right. As far as the
bridge, For those who think the BS bridge is going away, it is
not the BS bridge as it's currently configured, will be improved. That'll be
the so called local bridge, and the bridge next to that, which should
be on the west side, would be the I like to call it the
Great American Bridge. I have that bridge which should be the traffic going from
and bypassing Cincinnati. Well, we could keep the tradition of having two names
and called the Bill Cunningham Bridge. What do you think about that? That
would be a bridge instead of a ps bridge. There might be a little,
a little objection to that by some in the city of Cincinnati. I'm
not sure, maybe not. You know, I was born in Covington and
I was raised in Cincinnati. So I feel like the Colossus of roads with
a foot in each state. And so, uh, well, you know
that or the Great American Bridge, you know, whatever, whatever we can
we can come up with. But I get I've kind of joked with Governor.
But here I said, you know, Governor, you guys owned the
Ohio River, which we always think is kind of strained, but you own
the river, and so it would seem that you should pay for the most
most of the construction. But he did not buy that, so he said,
no, we need to slip this. So that's what we're doing.
It's kind of odd because the Ohio begins at the eighteen o three northern boundary
of the Ohio River. So over the last two hundred and thirty years,
two and twenty years, there's been a little bit of movement. I think
Ohio Minor own about thirty to forty feet of the northern boundary of the Ohio
River. Is that true? Well, I don't know, Bill, but
you know what historians tell me is that before we did all the flood control
and before we put the dams up in the locks up, that the Ohio
River free flowing, was actually a much smaller river. And so that's it's
it's kind of interesting if you go back and you know, watch some movies
that are supposed to be set back in the pioneer days, if they're accurate,
they should show that Ohio River a significantly smaller than the river that you
and I are used to dealing with. Just a little, a little,
a little history there. I didn't know. Now, before we talk about
Haiti, I get calls from some of your Republican compatriots wanting to become the
next governor. Uh, you're not quite done yet. In fact, you
hit most of your term remaining, and uh, are you going to make
an endorsement for governor, whether it's Sean Eustead or David Yost or someone else.
Are you staying out of that business well straight after go So I kind
of feel I'm not sure what the analogy would be, but you know,
I'm still going strong. So we got locked a do and uh, first
of all, Uh, you know, John Eusta has been a great,
great partner and uh, you know, really focused on economic development for the
state. We're you know, we're now creating more jobs every day than we
have people to fill them. So our real emphasis, candidly is on education.
Uh. Something that the Lieutenant Governor I are really focused on right now,
had a meeting on it yesterday. UH is moving to the science of
reading, which is really how kids can learn to read. For some of
us, we called it phonics. For about twenty or twenty five years,
we got away from it in many schools, and we got to get back
to it. And so we're providing every school in the state of Money to
switch over their curriculum if they have to do that, if they have to
teach their teachers, you know, to focus on this, but it's it's
really getting back to what we now know clearly worked, and that's called the
science, the science of reading. Let me share with the American people a
story from twenty twenty one. The headline is few would elected leaders know the
inner workings of Haiti, like Ohio Governor Mike DeWine. And the story says
that you have a school named after your daughter, Becky, who was killed
in a car crash in nineteen ninety three when she was twenty two years old.
I saw an NBC report on Haiti today. It has fallen into complete
chaos and sewers. There's no government, there's no police department. The president
was assassinated. If someone says to the president, they get assassinated. A
terrible kidnapping is taking place right now with a woman and her daughter. What
is the status of the Dawine School in Haiti in this environment? Well,
it's interesting, Bill, you know, all the things you say are true.
It's kind of dropped off the radar for most Americans and really for the
national media. And it wasn't until tragically missionary she and her child were kidnapped
several days ago that really started reviving interest in Haiti, and that's just a
horrible tragedy. Kidnappings occur there all the time, and it's just a tough
situation. But father Tom Hagen, who named after our late daughter Becky for
about twenty years, he was with us this past weekend and fran I had
a chance to really talk to him about what's going on down there. Uh,
Bill is chaos. Uh. The last time that this country really uh
there was law and order and that people could go about their business was when
we had us marines down there. Uh and fran I were actually down there
to see our marines, which is how we first got back in nineteen ninety
five, how we first got interested in Haiti, and we were just overwhelmed
by the poverty. Uh. But but how lovely the people are. But
you know, how do we We started thinking, well, how can we
help? And to make a very long story short, we started looking for
someone to help, and fortunately we found father Tom Hagan. We knocked on
his door one day we'd heard about him, and um, you know,
we've been very close to him, you know ever since when we first started
talking with him, I think he had about one hundred kids in school.
Now he has all over Haiti, about ten thousand kids in school any education
but for his schools uh and they give them a meal a day. And
but his he's basically operating out what is called city, a slum of about
four hundred define mine thousand people um in Port of Prince. And it's just,
you know, what you described as open sewers um just get horrible,
you know, conditions, unbelievable conditions. The only thing now that's operating because
of the chaos, definitely, the only thing is operating in City so lay
and so Um. You know, he has the gangs have taken over,
and so the police are corrupted. The police won't go into City so lay
Um. Even if they do go in, they don't do much. And
so the gangs have taken over. And what father Tom just to tell you
and a little story, He was able to get a peace agreement or a
cease fire so that these schools could stay open. This was like ten days
ago. And he told us about it, and he said it was particularly
difficult. He said, I just you know, had to go to the
two main gang leaders try to broke or at least to cease fire. And
what made particularly difficult is the one gang leader that killed the other gang leader's
mother. And you know, so it's just he said, it's just trying
to work this out. But he's eighty years old. Father Tom is but
he continues to work miracles down there and kids get get are educated, and
they get they get food in spite of nothing else working in Haiti very well.
I can assume that Mike DeWine and fran Dwine would not go to Haiti
today. I would not advise any any American to go. Anybody to go
to Haiti is just too too risky. Your risk kidnapping, you also risk
just getting getting shot, uh at random random bullets. The last time we
were down there, Bill was in twenty nineteen. We want, we want
to Haiti. We've been down there about We've made about twenty five business I
think over the last twenty five years. Um, and just to you know,
encourage Father Tom and help him. And you know, we're not as
friends as we're not doctors, we're not nurses, we don't have a great
expertise, so um, you know, what we try to do is just
inform people about what's going on in Haiti. We go down there to you
know, encourage Father Tom. He comes back. Um, we we've held
fundraisers for him at the Great American Ballpark. We've done a number in Columbus.
We've also done him my friend in Berto Fidelli up and and Finns Champanelle
up in Cleveland. So we we did one. We do want every every
July, and we did one in Cleveland, as I said a couple of
weeks ago. So probably more than anybody wants to know. But as a
situation down there, you know, if you think about it, you know
it does impact the United States because drugs come through Haiti and if there's no
police then it's easy for the drug dealers to operate down there and to use
that as a transshipment point for drugs going into the United States. It's also
important because look, we have a lot of uh when nothing is working in
Haiti, guess what people in Haiti want to do or they want to come
to the United States. So all of these things, yeah, do impact
us. And even though it's kind of dropped off our radar radar screen,
what happens in Haiti matters, and um, I'm we send US troops back
there. But you know, I've made it very clear to the Biden administration
that we need to do something. We need to have some deserted effort to
the UN or some way so that, uh, you know that there's some
some sort of stability there in that in that in that country that's very you
know, an hour flight from Miami. Yeah. Yeah, I often say,
you think we got problems. Other parts in the world have so urious
problems, and ours is about about the Ohio State Fair when it opens,
when it closes. I'm sure doctor Gonzales and Athens has problems. And then
I look at an NBC News report from Porter Prince and I'm thinking, okay,
I'll take my problems anytime. Well, Governor, we gotta run.
I love having you on, all right, don't forget what Fran Dwine owes
me. I want to keep that quiet. Ye, I predicted your victory
cherry pie. I'm sure she's growing the trees right now to make the pie,
and I can't we you predicted the margin too, Yeah, so you
were so clearly we owe you a cherry pie. So you want me to
bring that up with fran and yes, that goes, Yes, bring it
up with her, all right, we'll be working on it. France.
France the pie baker. Um, I'll tell all right, Mike, thank
you very much, God bless you. Thank you all right, Billy,
let's continue. That's Governor of Ohio, Mike Dwine live from Ohio State Fire
by the by the butter, elephants, and so much more. He's making
that wheat and making that rice and not making cherry pie. Let's continue with
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