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>> Well, turns out the price of gas is going up and it's up there right now, but one senator wants to do something about it.

We'll talk about that on Donny Brook.

Thanks for joining us.

Let's first meet the panel.

Starting with Wendy Wiese, the media veteran from the St.

Louis Post Dispatch, one of our founders, Bill McClellan.

Also from the Post and STLtoday.com, Joe Holleman.

And from the St.

Louis magazine, last week's host with the most, Alvin Reid.

Thank you, Alvin.

Did a great job as usual.

>> St.

Louis American.

>> Oh.

Oh, yeah.

St.

Louis say St.

Louis magazine.

>> Oh, no.

St.

Louis American.

And I was confused.

You'll be like, "That was last week, but I guess I think so."

Yeah.

St.

Louis American.

Joe's with the post.

>> Game tonight, ain't it, >> man?

Off to a E1.

You're going to mark that one, too.

Exactly.

>> Hey, uh, Joe.

So, the price of gasoline is high.

I was in South Dakota last week, and I paid $5 a gallon to fill up.

So, Josh Holly and some others, including President Trump, would like to eliminate for 30 days, maybe 60 days, the national gasoline tax, which is 18.4 4 cents a gallon.

If you fill up your car 20 gallons, you save $3.70 roughly.

Okay.

Do you think that it's a good idea to do that knowing that we're going to lose about 11 billion a year for the National Highway Trust Fund?

>> They always talk about doing it on a temporary basis.

I'm one who generally likes when someone says, "I think we should reduce taxes."

I'm willing to take a look at it.

You know, uh, Joe Biden proposed a gas tax, uh, freeze moratorium when the gas prices went above $4 before.

So, it's one of those ideas that who's ever in charge when the gas prices go up, say, why don't we back off that tax for a while?

>> I think it's a terrible idea, though.

It was a terrible when Biden wanted to do it.

It terrible.

Now, it it's just putting everything on our kids and our grandkids, you know, because the the money that we should be paying to kind of stay even, we're saying, "Well, things are hard for us, so we're going to not pay these taxes, but it'll get paid, but it'll be our kids and our grandkids."

I think it's awful.

>> Funny thing, in 2022, when Biden proposed that, Josh Holly said it was the dumbest thing he ever heard.

>> Yeah, things change.

and the occupant of the White House changed.

So, uh, so did Josh Holly's opinion.

I feel like this is more politically motivated when you think of the savings at the pump and as you said the cost of the future uh with the gas tax and the president has had some some very bad news lately and I think he desperately wants some kind of a win and that's why he's putting the pressure on all of these Republicans >> and and like Bill said I thought it was a bad idea in 2022 as well because you you create these situations and say like well here's a way we can kind of get out of it and that's just not any way to do business.

And this is the guy that's going to be driving to Seattle later on this summer.

I'm a guy looking at, you know, like, yeah, okay, I could use a little tax relief, but this is one I'll be a good American and say like, no, let's keep the gas tax where it is.

And besides, in the state of Missouri, our our taxes are so low anyway.

I mean, just I we're not paying our fair share, I don't think, in gas tax anyway.

So weed should definitely not cut.

>> You feel like you're losing money if you don't smoke cigarettes in Missouri.

>> But yeah, good point.

We have such low cents for regular and then 55 cents for diesel.

I thought that was what the >> Well, that might be true, but I I don't think our sales tax is low >> in No.

I'm just about gas.

I said gas.

>> I also think, you know, actually go back to Ray Hartman, one of the first shows I ever did, and everybody figured we would be on the opposite side of the issues.

We both agreed that what we need to do for paying for roads is start charging tolls.

>> I agree with you.

And so and we first agree on that issue.

And I also want to say as I come out here and I say I'm for less taxes, less taxes.

Everybody goes, "Well, how are we going to pay for things?"

That's the other shoe that needs to drop on here.

We need to quit spending so much on things.

So it's not like I'm just saying, "Well, we need to cut taxes because we don't need the money."

The reason we need the money is because I think we overspend on way too many things.

>> Well, those highways don't pay pave themselves.

Joe, >> I'm defending on why I am for in general the lowering of taxes that maybe it'll convince politicians to lower spending.

>> Well, it won't.

It won't.

I mean, you know, we used to have, you know, Democrats were called tax and spend and Republicans were fiscally conservative.

Now there is no more Republicans.

It's all Trump and it's borrow and spend.

And borrowing spending is not fair to the next gen.

I I got to tell you, uh, Ronald Reagan kind of ran on that.

He spent money like nobody's business.

Even though his, uh, budget director, wasn't he cap the knife or was that Nixon?

So, he was the the defense secretary.

>> I'm I'm not defending any of these people you've mentioned.

It's just that people selectively criticize who they want to on these things.

I criticize them all for spending too much.

>> Alvin Reed, I want to ask you about uh not spending any money on certain tornado relief.

uh when she was here just a couple of weeks ago, a woman by the name of Sarah Labowitz said, "It doesn't appear that St.

Louis has received any money from a certain federal fund called the community block grant uh development community block >> development block grant.

>> Development block grant >> and then >> disaster recovery fund.

Sorry, it's the CD quite an acronym.

>> Yeah.

>> Uh we haven't received a penny.

And then Mark Maxwell from Channel 5 looked into it and he actually looked at a blueprint of cities that had had disasters through the years.

They all got this certain money and St.

Louis got zero.

So he asked Wesley Bell, congressman, about that.

Wesley Bell at first didn't seem to know too much about it.

He later told KOX, "No city has received this money in recent years after Trump got elected."

So, I guess the question is who's to blame when there is this money out there supposedly, but doesn't seem like anybody's been advocating for it.

>> Well, you know, I just still remember that press conference the day after the, you know, tornado hit that Saturday morning and we were going to do everything and and Schmidt was there, the mayor was there.

Um, I think Wesley couldn't be here because he was out of town and was coming into town.

But at that moment, you know, you got to turn over every rock.

you got to separate every, you know, shrub and be looking for every penny.

And I just don't think that that I don't think that was done.

And I understand when it first started there was this, you know, saying out there, we're the nation's guinea pig because of FEMA, and no one has ever been through this, but Joplin went through it.

Other cities went through it.

We just didn't do a good job of really just scouring the floorboards for loose change and it was too important an issue to to to not put forth I won't say they didn't put forth any effort but it just seems like things were just you know not eyes weren't >> well I think in the city in city hall you put some people in charge like Julian Nicks nice guy but he had no disaster relief experience whatsoever so he hadn't this this was his first rodeo right and then It it appears that our congressional delegation, including Senators Holly and Schmidt, they weren't on top of this.

I didn't hear them, you know, protesting that we weren't receiving this money, whereas other natural disasters did get the money.

I didn't hear it from Wesley Bell or Anne Wagner or Bob Wander.

Uh, and I didn't hear the mayor screaming that we weren't getting this federal money.

>> Well, I I sorry, I just think if if you say like who's to blame, I think everybody gets a little bit of it, you know?

Let's not try to figure out who's the one person we can all dump this on.

Somebody or everybody should have been looking, as as Alvin so aptly put, checking the floorboards for loose change.

And apparently it wasn't.

And it was obvious from the answers that both Senator Schmidt and Congressman Bell gave where they responded to Mark Maxwell's questions in this vague kind of word salad way.

Then the next day gave a written statement when I'm sure they went to some aid and went, "You need to look into this and come up with what's going on."

Well, so I I think yes, they were all caught unawares, all >> and didn't Eric Schmidt immediately point the finger at Chuck Schumer.

I mean, Mark Maxwell is to be commended because this was a terrific job on his on his behalf, but um on his part because he was not letting them off the hook, you know, and uh but there there was a lot of a lot of word salad and definitely a lot of fingerpointing >> and there are very few I think instances where seriously regardless of party affiliation where like no really we need to literally sit down at the same table and and hash this out.

Okay.

I leave Trump out of it, leave FEMA out of it, leave Democrat, Republican, because >> are we going to help?

You know, we we need to find all the money we can.

Then we can all say >> and isn't this is this is Congress.

This is not President.

>> But I'm just about our our local people.

>> Correct.

That's what I'm saying.

the the the Joplain recovery was so remarkable as I remember uh Governor Nixon was suddenly talking about was being talked about in national terms and to head FEMA and everything and I know it's a different time and different administrations but it does seem like we could have talked to somebody from Joplain and said well >> how did you guys do it >> and I think there's a certain amount of I think when you have these generational sort of tsunamis where, you know, generations are kind of wiped out of these administrative offices when they're, you know, congressional aids, these offices.

I think a lot of this institutional knowledge goes out the door with them.

>> Well, that's because the Trump administration fired a lot of people with FEMA as soon as he got in in the second term.

And he also moved a lot of the FEMA guys over to ICE.

>> It's chronicled in the Wall Street Journal.

And so FEMA was they're about to do a special on it on Weather Channel.

Not to plug Weather Channel, but but this was 15 years ago.

And I thought to myself, I really didn't realize that was 15 years ago.

So I mean a lot of people have come and gone in 15 years and we found ourselves in a situation we're like, yeah, we could have probably >> and according according to Mark Maxwell, it took three years though for them to get those >> the whole you know, and we concentrate on a lot of things that aren't as important like tarps off.

big issue this week, Alvin, where some college baseball players from Texas came to town and in one section of Bush Stadium, they took off their shirts and it went viral and Ali Marl loved it so much.

I think he's paying for their tickets now and people are talking about it.

What do you think?

I think it's stupid.

I'm sorry.

I mean, I don't I it it I guess maybe 65year-old Alvin, who is a baseball fan, been lifelong, who wants young people to go to the game, want to be interested in the game, but in the long run, I think this makes us look bad.

And to borrow a line from Spongebob, it looks like we just blew in from stupid town.

You know, I just I'm sorry.

I don't want to be a chromagin.

I don't want to be a stick in the mud, but >> you are.

>> I know.

And I I admit it, but this is just it's just lowest common denominator stuff.

I'm I'm gonna defend the first weekend.

I thought it was glorious >> because it was organic and it was natural.

Those kids from Stephen F. Austin were out there in the stands.

They're up here, you know, it's a road trip, okay?

We're up here and playing baseball in Illinois and we're going to go see a Cardinals game and you're 18 to 21 years old and they take their shirts off and wave their shirts for rallying the team.

I thought that was amazingly wonderful.

I thought it was great when uh Ali Mormal said, "Yeah, for the next weekend's games, I'm going to buy the tickets.

We encourage everybody to come out here and do this."

Because it had that feeling of something that happened.

Problem is is then the marketers and the promotion people get a hold of it and we got to monetize it.

So now apparently it's going to be an everyday thing.

They should have let it go for that weekend.

Things pop up sometimes naturally, organically, and you ride it and when it's done, it's done.

>> But now they're just going to try to squeeze.

Maybe it's like the wave, you know, maybe the first time the wave.

>> It's a lot louder than the wave and we were there obviously because I'm married to a Kansas City Royals fan and and we were at the the ballpark and it was so it was such it was such a it was so disruptive.

I mean, it was so loud.

The wave is kind of, you know, just beautiful like a physical sculpture, but this was just you'd be talking to somebody and then you're thinking this some kind of an expl and don't call me a kromagin.

>> No, I don't think it's embarrassing at all any more than uh the chop chop Atlanta Braves or Build Me Up Buttercup, whoever sings that or Sweet Caroline or or The Wave.

I mean, these are fun things.

Kids are having a good time.

>> Well, they're trying to put they're trying rain on that parade.

>> They're trying to put uses in seats.

So, I don't blame the market >> and I and look, I I get that point, too.

Right.

But, all right, this is testimony to the fact that we aren't drawing well, so we can fill up a section.

Um, and that's good.

But, you know, the Cubs are coming to town.

Both teams are playing pretty well.

They'll probably sell out, you know, the seats, but we're going to have this section of, you know, >> Well, I think the Cubs have lost six were playing response.

It's not going to work with the Cubs because half the Cubs fans will have their shirts off just for no reason.

>> I hope like college teams basketball and football emulate it and start doing it.

>> Actually, that's where it started.

Oklahoma State >> Oklahoma State Oklahoma State actually started.

>> Oh, so we're not original.

>> No, not at all.

Not at all.

Well, that >> Sorry.

No, it was you know what it was though?

It was an excitement at Bush Stadium when everybody was saying this is going to be a terrible year.

It's a terrible year.

The Cardinals are so bad.

We're winning ball games and there were some kids excited about it.

I thought it was fabulous.

>> Well, at the next Downy Bash, we'll be taking off our shirts.

>> Not this one.

>> Wendy, I want to ask you about >> Montgomery County uh near New Florence.

New Florence has a population of about 600 people.

And uh it was just announced yesterday by the president of Google that she's going to put a $15 billion data center there on $900 acres.

I think it's like across the street from an Amazon data center that'll be$2 billion dollars.

If both these projects happen, it'll be $50 billion in New Florence, Missouri.

What do you make of those apples?

>> That is where I started my career in Montgomery City at KVCM.

Um, but I have friends that live out there and they said that while the landscape is just dotted with no to data centers, no to data centers, they're for it.

They have a huge chunk of land.

Uh, the Amazon thing, it has a lot of sunshine meeting law violations and a lawsuit currently pending.

So, I don't know how long that's going to be sort of hamstrung.

But this Google thing has a lot of people excited about it and a lot of people up in arms.

So, and I don't know if it's a red or blue issue anymore.

It's really not.

>> I I'll go back.

You remember when we first started talking about this?

I said they're going to get built somewhere.

Some community is going to accept them and whatever benefits there are.

And to me, it's never been more than a nimi issue with a lot of legs because everybody's only complained about the data centers near them.

If the folks in New Florence don't have a problem, then I don't see why anybody else should have a problem with that data center.

You don't want them by your house.

Show up at the meetings at 8 a.m.

in the morning, protest for 16 hours, do whatever you can to keep that data center out.

But for the people who want them, >> welcome.

>> Well, they're going to be the guinea pigs.

We'll see if it works for them.

You know, I mean, maybe it won't be a drain on the the water.

Maybe electricity rates won't go up.

We'll see.

I don't how how can you increase demand for electricity and not have the price go up?

>> How I don't see it either, Charlie.

>> Well, they're talking about doing a gigawatt of producing their own power and then 500 megawws after that in the same way with the water system.

And like Bill said, we'll see.

They're saying we're going to supply our own power.

>> Now, we'll see if that is indeed the case.

>> Let me ask you this, Mr.

uh data center.

Why is the local government giving according to your report uh the state is not going to get any incentives give any incentives to this data center but the local government local government will why would that be >> because they want it there >> they want the jobs that it would generate >> but uh they are in the catbird seat they can call the shots because most cities and towns do not want these data centers >> I don't know if that's true I think that's the story being reported but I think there are I I was surprised when I talked to my friend.

I thought she was going to be up in arms.

She said, "No."

She said, "For every," She said, "For every job at the data center, you're going to have nine additional jobs or 10 additional jobs throughout Montgomery County building up the infrastructure to sustain the data center."

I understand the math sometimes doesn't math, but there are people who are actually in favor of these things.

>> But when you hear from these people, Charlie, it's not that I'm opposed to data centers.

It's basically if you scratch just a little bit, it's I'm opposed to data centers near my house.

>> Well, I think issue.

>> I think there's also the concern that we are subsidizing these data centers which are going to replace workers.

>> I agree with that.

You know, okay, I get that.

All right, I hear that.

But that's just one of those things I said like once again, we'll see who does and doesn't lose a job.

I'm not saying that that's the be all and end all.

Think about McGomery County.

It is out in the middle of nowhere.

These things are going to be sitting around no one's house.

And as I said before, no matter what I feel about it, if Google had said like, "Hey, I need 10 15 blocks in North St.

Louis and I'm bringing a check for $15 billion."

All of a sudden, I'm a >> builder on building in North St.

Louis.

I'm sorry.

I I would just tell the people in North St.

Louis, say, "Look, I'm sorry.

You You'll You'll like that humming noise, >> right?

And you'll learn you'll you'll like the fact that this money is coming to your community.

All right?

That's what I mean.

Like we're not it's not going to general fund necessarily in St.

Louis.

It's going to the place where it's at and it now all of a sudden there'll be police all over North St.

Louis.

The roads will get fixed.

All these things will happen and you'll look around and say, >> "Man, we need casinos."

Alvin say, >> you know, it's funny you bring up casinos.

I remember everybody nobody wanted casinos in Tuna, Mississippi said, "Hey, we'll take one."

Then pretty soon after everybody's like, "Well, wait a minute.

How much money did they make off of that?"

>> And we'll take one.

How long was And they did in fact solve all our education fun.

>> No, because No, because what has now you're skipping the point of this?

What happened was Missou's legislature took the money and put it in general fund.

That was where people missed the boat.

They should have said it has to go directly to education.

it.

Money goes to education, but they just changed the formula.

How about the NGA?

Did that do anything for North St.

Louis at the end?

>> So, you just want people to pay more property taxes.

>> Well, I I do know that communities that raise a lot of property taxes, they have decent schools.

That's the way.

>> You mean like rich community?

So, No.

Now, wait a minute.

Now, Kirkwood is not a rich community.

>> Well, I guess it is.

>> We're all right.

We're talking it down.

We all know what you drive.

>> Okay.

Joe Hollowman, I want to ask you about a story you report on.

I thought this was very interesting because we have Senator Durban from Illinois up against Senator Eric Schmidt of Missouri.

They can't agree on one Justin Smith who's a an attorney who uh he's worked for Eric Brightton's the former governor of Missouri.

He's worked for Senator Schmidt and he's also worked for President Trump.

>> So, he's about 42 years old.

He's never basic.

He has no judicial experience, but he's going to be on the second highest court in the land, the Missouri 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Okay.

But no judicial experience.

Don't you prefer someone who's a little graying around the temples, who's actually been in the courtrooms like that?

>> Me personally, I would just as long as I got to choose, I have a variety of people I'd love to put on the appeals court.

But I, you know, to me it was a case of uh one side, one political side disagreeing with another political side.

And I believe in Bill and I, and you all have probably heard this before in our careers, that a judge is nothing but a lawyer with political connections.

And that's what this is.

Justin Smith has connections to Eric Schmidt, who's now on the Senate Judiciary Committee, also is very familiar and I'll say friends, but also knows Josh Holly.

He's a lawyer with political connections.

Now, that's always going to stop at the one side's going to say he's not qualified for it when both sides have been doing that for decades, appointing lawyers with political connections to judicial post.

>> You know what?

What it really goes to though is the fact that we what should be stopped is these lifetime federal appointments where like you look at the judges in in uh federal court here mo most of these they're young ideological smart people.

They all went to good law schools, but they have very little experience.

And the lawyers who have to work in front of them can't say much because they know that these are the judges that are going to be there for the rest of their careers.

That's right.

>> So people can't criticize them, but you you get guys going, you know, it would really be better to have, like you said, somebody with judicial experience, somebody who kind of knows what's going on instead of these really young lawyers.

And that's what both sides are doing now.

They're trying to get these 40year-old kids, get them in federal positions where they'll be there for the rest of their life.

And it's it's a mistake >> who are true believers.

I mean, they have to be true believers.

And a lot of those true believers though, I mean, if you think about some of the the, you know, when you think of some of the appointees to the bench, they can kind of change those belief systems in midstream.

So, so you never know.

But it does seem to be less like the the CV these days than which silo you fit into.

>> Um, judge uh former Supreme Court Justice uh Michael Wolf and I did a thing on due process Kirkwood Human Rights Commission on Monday.

But one of the things he said is if you look and this dates back over some you know over some years the you know the judiciary you know do you approve of what's going on used to be really high Supreme Court too.

Now it's plummeted and people are kind of losing faith in judges.

And he says that's scary and that's not a necessarily a blue red thing.

That's a how are we doing our business that people don't have faith in judges anymore.

I grew up believing in I might disagree but at the same time I had faith in judges if not the judiciary.

And now that's changing.

>> Let's squeeze in one more topic because we two-minute warning on the floor.

Two-minute warning.

Bill Mlen.

Uh, next year will be the 100th anniversary of Charles Lindberg's historic flight from uh, New York City to Paris.

First person to fly transatlantic solo.

But since he made that flight, we found out a lot about his opinions.

He's been accused of anti-semitism.

He had three families, unbeknownst to his wife, here in the United States in Europe.

Do you think that we should or will we be celebrating Charles Lindberg on the centennial anniversary?

>> Oh, we should.

Historically, that's a big thing for St.

Louis, the spirit of St.

Louis going the first nonstop transit Atlantic flight.

But I we should be honest about it and we should make a big deal about the fact that he he was not a perfect man, very flawed and these other families.

It's all very odd.

But we should definitely celebrate it.

>> And I think it's a we celebrate the event, >> not necessarily the person.

>> Yeah.

I mean, it was a landmark event.

It It changed the world and how we viewed it.

And yes, I think we should celebrate the event and St.

Louis's role in advancing.

>> Since it was a solo flight, it'll be difficult to separate the hero from the event.

>> I bet you you could do it, Charlie.

You could.

>> Well, Charlie, we'll we'll be honest about who this man was.

Absolutely.

>> He used to have these huge PR firms, and that was they had to whitewash everything and everybody.

I think those days are gone.

I mean, we know everything.

>> I think it'll be out there.

How many public figures could put up to the scrutiny of I don't know why.

Well, >> when you go to the halo when you go to the National Aeronautics Museum and you see that plane, you you looking that that went across the >> Alvin, we got to go to the old mailbag and see what people had to say about the show you hosted last week.

Your grading of Mayor Spencer lacked consideration of the pre- tornado neighborhood conditions and socioeconomic context, both which exacerbated recovery efforts.

Why didn't you grade officials with better access to recovery assistance, including Governor Kho, Senators Schmid and Holly, represent representatives Bell, Wagner, and Ander, and even President Trump.

Their response pales to that of Nixon, Blunt, McKascal, and Obama after Joplain.

Thank you, Nol Tfair, for writing us.

We also heard from Patrick Hayes of St.

Charles, who wrote, "Since the trades are seeking apprenticeship level trainees, why not invest in local labor groups to repair existing brick structures?

They could train new hires, and we could help to maintain the structural integrity of the many old masonry homes in the city."

James and Susan Martin wrote, "The excessive amount of money that the police board is asking for will most certainly diminish other city services such as recycling, street repairs, and other essential services."

You can write us care of 9PBS63108.

Don't forget those emails, donnybrook npbs.org on use donnybrookst.

Call the nine 314-512994.

Operator standing by till midnight tonight.

and listen to us on your favorite podcast source like I did last week from South Dakota.

You can also listen to or watch Last Call on the Donnybrook YouTube channel.

This week we'll be talking about the water rates in the city of St.

Louis among other topics and we hope you join us.

Thank you so much.

We'll see you next week at this time.

Donny Brook is made possible by the support of the Betsy and Thomas Patterson Foundation and the members of Nine PBS.