Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 01-14-25_TUESDAY_7AM

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

Some calls about the ETF guest last hour, Kevin Starrett at Oregon Firearms - oooh, it is an ugly legislative session coming, more with Jo County fmr Commissioner Baertschiger, could he be the NEW one? Tina raises 30 Million, is this a problem?

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clouserdrilling.com. Chris is in Medford. Hey, Chris, you had a question about the last guest we had with Bill Flagg, CEO of the American Conservative Values. How are you doing? Yeah, I'm doing great.

What I need to know from that conversation is how do I get myself out of this controlled company thing that I have where the reason I'm in bonds instead of stocks is because I just can't get behind. Oh, so you were kind of going through the same thing. It's like you didn't want to invest, although you probably would have made a pretty penny investing in Amazon over the last few years, right? You know, that kind of thing. Right, but it just doesn't agree with my morals. And so I was wondering, how exactly do I? Well, you know, what I would do, I would talk to your broker, your financial advisor. I would never, ever, ever want to be accused of giving you financial advice or anybody. exactly do i well you know what i would do i would talk to your broker your financial advisor i would never ever ever uh want to be accused of giving you financial advice or anybody you know for that

matter because you know i'm not exactly a wealthy guy all right so you know my investment strategy is is pretty small ball you know as it were you know yeah okay i get it. But it's it's one of those things where I would talk to, you know, I would say anytime I talk to him, not because I wanted to have people invest in his fund. I talked to people want to invest in his fund. That's fine. But of course, they have to do their own due diligence and talk with their financial advisors and all the rest of that stuff. I found it interesting, though, the companies that he was pulling out of the fund and the reasons, because like he said, you know, he invests in mostly big cap, in other words, the big companies, but he's trying to invest in the big companies that are the least damaging or the least woke and yet are still performing well and do well financially for a return. So that way, all right, you can feel a little bit better about it, but rather than having $5 billion worth of Starbucks and all the other things, everybody else hates you.

Yeah, I really would. And I know that bonds are in a challenge right now. I know that because of the rising interest rate situation that may be causing problems i would talk to an advisor about this i really would you know buy a little bit of time with somebody and um that that you trust in and yeah i wouldn't do the thing you know unless you're some seasoned investor and you're always controlling everything yourself and you've you know not been doing this for years and you're an old hand at it. And if you're just trying to keep your investments on a more

moral straight thing, find an advisor and do it that way. And then they'll tell you how to do it if you want to. Okay? Alright? Seriously. Okay. And what company name again? Oh, it was American Conservative Values, ETF. And I'll put the information up like I would for any guest on BillMeyershow.com. Okay? Great. All right, yeah, Chris.

Like I said, I'm not shelling the fun. I'm not getting paid anything. And I just thought it was interesting that they were one of the people. Because, you know, what have you been talking about for a long, long time now? Everyone's saying, gosh, where do you put your money it's like everybody hates us right and so they came out with this thing pulling costco and allstate and a few other things and i think it's an interesting cultural comment too on what is going on uh hi good morning this is bill who's this hey bill it's wild salmon hey How are you? Morning. I am good. When it comes to investing, the thing that is not well understood about bonds is if you buy a bond, usually they're in $1,000 increments.

Yes. You're happy with the interest you're getting and the time frame. You own that contract. If the value changes as the result of interest rates, you still get your $1,000 back at the end of the contract and you get the interest in the meantime. Now, one of the challenges I think with people who bought treasuries, what, two, three years ago, like many big banks. And what I'm reading about, and I don't know if you've looked into this, though, that one of the biggest ticking time bombs in the United States financial system right now are the number of large banks, such as the Wells Fargo of the world, that bought really low interest rate government treasury bonds for assets a number of years ago because it was considered the safe place to put money and now that value has technically fallen a lot because of the interest rates going up right yeah and and that is true the the problem they have is it's is their balance sheet exactly they have to report the value of those funds in terms of current interest rates.

Yeah, now it's a paper loss, but all it would take is a minor run. It's a balance sheet. All it would take is a minor run on the banks with people withdrawing or moving, and then you're in trouble. Yeah, that is very true. But as an individual, if you can buy a bond, whatever value it is or whatever, whether it's a corporate bond or a treasury or whatever, you have eliminated the risk of the market if you plan to own the bond to maturity. If you plan it on it. And that good a good way of looking at that thanks for the call steve i'll take one more call before news break hi good morning who's this welcome

good morning bill terry hey terry welcome is there anybody out there you know that you can get on to talk about crypto because you know crypto's in a bit of correction right now yeah supposedly this is the year of crypto and it'd almost be great time to get into it i don't know if you know anybody you could get on to talk about that or not. You know what I could do? He doesn't sell them anymore. But I might reach out to Mark over at Jay Austin, you know, Mark Hutto, because he was really big into the crypto center for a while. And I think what happened is that his bank or whatever it is would not deal with him at that time selling, if I recall correctly. You know, it was very unfriendly to him working with crypto.

And so he decided to get out of it. But he really knows a lot about that kind of stuff, even though he's not in it. And, you know, Trump's talking about a reserve for, you know, for Bitcoin and stuff like that. So, you know, I don't know. It's just something else to look into besides bonds and stocks, you know. And I know I get it. It's more volatile, but still, it's just another option to look at. Yeah. And, you know, I've thinking about looking at Bitcoin back when it was like nine cents. It would have been nice to have bought, oh, a thousand of them. Oh, heck, what am I kidding

if I had five of them? There's a lot of other ones out there just beyond Bitcoin. You know, it's a whole bunch of other ones that you can get in for cheaper and you know get some money into it yeah my issue will be and this is where i this is my whole take on the crypto situation i'm concerned that crypto will be used by our governments and by uh global government especially to get us comfortable with the idea of the central bank digital currency which is essentially a cryptocurrency done by the government right and i think there's enough people out there and enough different stuff out there where they could never do that i think there's too many options for that so they might force it on people but i don't think maybe in these smaller

countries but not terry ter, I hope you're right. They may not, but they're certainly going to try because it's being discussed openly, all right? Appreciate the call. I'll see if I get someone who knows that crypto space pretty well. I know Mark, like I said, I think he still studies it. He may do it personally. He just doesn't do it as part of his business any longer. Health insurance doesn't have to break the bank. 80% of Oregonians received financial assistance

through the Oregon Health Insurance Marketplace last year. And you might qualify too. At OregonHealthCare.gov, you can explore quality health plans from trusted insurers and find one that fits your budget and your needs. 770-5633. That's 770-KMED. Here's Bill Meyer. Kevin Starrett, Oregon Firearms Federation. First conversation we've had in 2025.

Happy New Year, Kevin. Well, next week, I guess, well, I know the legislature is technically in session, but it's going to be next week that the hearings begin, right? Welcome back to the show, as always, sir. Thank you, Bill. All right. Now, I know this is going to be a very cheerful thing because Republicans are in the super minority, I suppose, here. And Democrats are speaking.

And the Republicans actually stood and applauded Tina Kotak for her State of the Speech, for her State of the State speech yesterday, you were telling me. And I didn't get a chance to watch that. So I'm wondering if you could give me a little play-by-play on what happened. Well, it was what you would expect. It was empty platitudes. It was all about, you know, this is, both sides of the aisle have this process by which they talk about, here's what we need to do. We, of course, we need to work together, right? We're so proud to have you all here. But it's always, we need to do. We, of course, we need to work together, right? We're so proud to have you all here. But yes, it's always we need to solve the homeless problem. We need to do something about the rising cost of living. We need to do something about drug addiction. Nobody ever says this is what we're going to do, which is why we sent them there. It's I mean, you see this from Helfrich and all of these people on the, you know, the Republicans. And Tina's speech was just, you know, the usual. This is what needs to be done. Well, you've been there for years and the problem keeps getting worse.

No matter how much money you steal from the taxpayers, the problem keeps getting worse. Now, most Democrats, the Democrats are evil. The Republicans are cowardly and stupid, but the Democrats are evil. Some of them are. That's a great combo. That's a great combo. One side, you know, demonic and evil and the other cowardly. OK, great. This is wonderful. But not all Democrats are stupid. Some of them are really stupid. Like James Manning is stupid. Michael Dembro is stupid. These people are just stupid people. But there's enough of them there to see that constantly paying for the same thing over

and over again as the problem gets worse is not a solution. But solutions are not what's this is not what we're trying to do here. If you solve a problem, it's no longer profitable. So the drug problem is profitable. The homeless problem is profitable because what happens is the state then takes the money of people who produce and gives it to parasites or non-profit organizations that claim they're going to address these problems, which of course they don't. The money just disappears into the pockets of the people who run the non-profits who supported

Democrat legislators and got them in office. So in essence, the non-profit world, especially when it comes to the homeless and drug addiction world in the state of Oregon, is kind of like SEIU, just another union contribution almost. You give them taxpayer dollars and the political donations come back in spades. Think about if you give the Democrats $10,000 donation, right, they can then give you $10 million that isn't theirs. That's the taxpayers. And practically not a week goes by that you won't see a story in Oregon media about another nonprofit run by people who are hilariously unqualified to do anything and have in fact done nothing. And that money is not – no one knows where it went. Oh, no, but it was but it was Grantstream funding, part of the Grantstream funding through OHA or any of the other various agencies. That's yeah, we're pretty much used to that now, Kevin. That sounds like a standard operating procedure in our state for sure. Absolutely. And so while the while the Democrats are bleeding about, you know, it's really tough.

And we've got to make Oregon more affordable. So what's the plan? We we've got to do something about the homeless problem because you see homeowning is very expensive. So what's the plan? A statewide property tax of a dollar per thousand. This is how they're going to make Oregon more more affordable. And so so so raising all of the property taxes on productive people who are already strained by the cost of living okay well this is the policy i mean and and julie fahey the new speaker of the house she did a speech i mean it was the hypocrisy is absolutely staggering and she she did a speech where she she, you know, we have to get together and protect. And who does she want to protect? Against the federal government, okay? The federal

government is coming. She wants to protect criminals, okay? So top of her list to protect are illegal aliens who are de facto criminals. We going to protect them we're going to protect people transgender people and of course the other group of people that she claims the federal government is coming to attack are jews now really what the hell it's just absolutely demented so it's like we're good we are absolutely going to. Hey, listen, you know, say what you will. President Trump is probably the, you know, one of the biggest Zionist supporting presidents I think I've seen, you know, for a long time here. So how is this coming after the Jews thing? Where's that coming from in Oregon?

So demented. It is just absolutely so demented. So you say, okay, business owners are bad. People who pay for their own homes are bad. People who paid their own student loans are bad. But we're going to protect every... No, you forgot, though, people who don't take, you know, fentanyl and other drugs, those people are bad, too, and they need to be punished. Exactly. You know, the fact is problems are profitable. And if you solve those problems, then your friends in the nonprofits who helped get you elected have no reason to exist anymore. And so there is no incentive to

actually solve these problems. It's not it's OK. We keep doing the same thing. We turned Oregon into a place that's very, very welcoming for parasites. And if you work or if let's say you are you have really you've obeyed every law to legally own and possess and carry a firearm. They are coming for you big time because you cannot you cannot ascribe this to anything else except this blind hatred that they have for people who exercise their Second Amendment rights. And of course, now we have a bill for reparations. OK, tell me about the reparations bill. This is quite interesting. That's coming in. If you look at the bill, OK, it has this it has this long list of horrors that we're perpetrating on black people. OK, and this bill was sponsored by Manning, Frederick and Travis Nelson, who, oddly enough, are black members of the legislature who get to make rules for us. Oh. So, I mean, it's like some of the list of things we've done.

Stolen labor. Political disenfranchisement. Okay? So we have black members of the legislature. I mean, minority members of the legislature. Okay, minority members of the legislature that are are okay they're already in power and so i guess um because of all the abuse that uh people like me being a white guy just a regular old member of the chalk tribe apparently i have witnessed or i put abuse on these people for many years and so i have to pay or you have to pay or we all have to pay what

if you go look at the names of the people in the legislature and then try to say that the minority people who identify as minorities are not in control you can't read so it's like that we have this long list of horrors and we disenfranchise black people who now are but they're in power though they're in power now um in a minority there's still a relatively small percentage of oregon's population when you look at it by a bigger percentage of the legislature that's what i was getting at i mean they actually punch above their weight in the in the legislature that and females i think too females and people of color actually of Of course. It's not just the legislature. It's federal judges. It's our new member of Congress, Janelle Bynum, who is an

absolute outracist, right? And, oh, yes, President of the United States. Anyone remember him? So, I mean, this list of horrors that were pathologizing the black family. Now, I don't know what that means. But in the 30s, most black people who were having children were married. And they're not now. And they stayed married. And when they're not now, that has led to the pathologies, I think, in the black family. But I would also say that to white families now, too, because we've all decided that it's OK not to have families or at least intact families.

We created a welfare state that rewards that. But if we're going to identify individuals who should be compensated financially and with services at no charge to the individual that seek to remedy damage to the individual's mental or physical health from anti-Black health care systems. Okay? Okay. Now, anti- How is Oregon, one of the wokest states in the country, how can Oregon be actually considered an anti-Black health system? This does not make sense to me in the least, Kevin. Kevin Starrett. It makes perfect sense when what you have discovered is the concept of entrepreneurial victimhood. OK, no matter how much things improve, no matter how much the society changes to address to address wrongdoing in the past.

It's never good enough and it's never, you know, the problem never goes away. It's only gotten worse. Right. Right. This is profitable. I mean, look at Al Sharpton, right? A longtime crook, grifter, pathological liar caused suicides of the people he attacked in the past. Just flat out lies about stuff, makes millions of dollars, gets his own TV show. And so he gets a TV show, is in control of media where he does nothing except talk about how put upon he is and how it's absolutely insane. But that doesn't even cover the gun bills. And so let's talk about the gun bill since you are Oregon Firearms Federation once again. And Kevin Starrett is with me. Like I said, we're just kind of going and looking at some of these bills that are there, many of them outrageous.

But this is Oregon, so this is nothing unusual. So Second Amendment right essentially is on the carving table this time around. Well, really. I don't see – I don't know what bills will or will not pass. I can tell you that there is nothing to stop any of these bills. So there is obviously, which we expected, a bill to basically implement by legislation the measure 114. Yeah, of course, that essentially bans sales of firearms in Oregon. It does that, but they actually wound up making it worse, if you can believe that. In Oregon and federally, there's a law that says if the state police or whoever is doing the background check simply does not do their job, they can't prevent you from taking possession of that firearm forever.

So in this case, it's three business days. That's the federal law, and then Oregon law is similar. Well, they want to eliminate that. They similar well they're gonna they want to eliminate that they want to make it i want to eliminate so all the police have to do is not do your background check in instant presto no second amendment right right right and interestingly there are two bills that are what are called placeholder bills and those bills were they're they're the um they're the state police bills and they say, the placeholders say, directs the state police to study such and such. But whenever you see that, you know that that bill is going to be done. Stop. And what these bills are is the state police have come to the legislature with this long wish list of what they want to do to basically do a worse job of background checks.

So they want to eliminate the three-day safeguard. They want to, they want to, I think a 72-hour waiting period, which is in another bill. They want to work fewer hours. They, they want, they want to be able to, I mean, it's, it's such a long list of things that they basically don't want to do any more work. Now, keep in mind, there is no reason for the state police to be doing these background checks anyway, because in Oregon, the state police demanded the right to do these background checks and they charge us for it. In other states, the background checks are done directly through the FBI, the NIC system, and there's no charge. The state police do it, charge a fee and then go through

the same federal system. Because it's an income generator for the OSB. It's an income generator. And I remember years ago sitting in Kim Thatcher's office with a bunch of the heads of the state police and they were complaining then about what a terrible workload they had. And I said, look, not a problem. You guys demanded the right to do this. If the workload's too high, I will gladly lobby on behalf of you guys for a bill that turns it straight over to the feds like they do in many other states. Oh, no, no, no. We want to keep this. That's the solution. The super easy solution that costs nothing and saves the state money is to just take away the state police as a point of contact. But they don't want the police out of this because the idea is that the state police are actually used as the impediment for firearms ownership, not about facilitating it. And in fact, one of the things that the state police are doing now, which one court has already found illegal, is they're saying if you have an expungement or a set-aside for a conviction in the past, which has always been meant like that didn't happen, right? If you had an expungement, you could legally answer no to the question, have you ever been

convicted of a felony? Well, now the state police are refusing to recognize those. So people have been buying guns legally for years after going through the system to have their rights restored. Now the state police are saying, no, we're not going to recognize it anymore. And oh, by the way, the FBI made us do that. The FBI is saying, no, we didn't make them do that. So that's another thing that they're demanding is that the legislature codify that and basically

take the illegal activity that they're involved in and make it legal. So it's just an absolute endless war. They want to try once again to ban guns on any public building and the property surrounding a public building, which who knows where that ends. And it's just, I mean, there's so many, so many of these bills. Well, that bill, of course, is designed to catch people who are unwary concealed carry holders here that are following the law in every other aspect. But, oh, my gosh, you – hey, you drove by or you stepped – you were on the sidewalk and you were walking by this public building and you're in trouble, that kind of thing, right? I would like to think that all they want to do is screw concealed handgun license holders. That would be – like, that's funny. I would like to think that all they want to do is screw concealed handgun license holders.

That would be that would like that's funny. But when you think about all the places that they want to deny people the ability to protect themselves and others. Oh, well, they want to create more shooting zones, shooting zones for bad guys. It's this whole nihilistic approach that everything has to be broken. Everything has to be destroyed. And like I mentioned, the alert, it kind of reminds me of of a psychotic eight year old who's much bigger than his playmates. And all he wants to do is steal and break stuff. And that is what the Democrats are doing. But here's the thing, though. And the Republicans will now say that they can't walk out because, well, we won't be able to run for reelection. Why didn't they just walk out yesterday and and and not let the session start? Because then they can't be charged with with, you know, avoiding or what is it, unexcused absences if you never let the session start.

They're never going to do that because they want to remain on the grift. But the last time they refused to walk out, it was because, by gosh, if we walk out, there'll be a ballot measure to prevent walkouts. So they didn't walk out. And of course, we got a ballot measure to prevent walkouts, a ballot measure which they produced not a single argument against, not one, not one argument in the voter's guide against that. Now they're going to say if we walk out, they'll change the law. So they'll reduce the quorum. But there's already a proposal to eliminate the quorum, isn't there? There's already a proposal to eliminate it. So that lie goes out the window. But listen, the reality is, is that they don't lose their right

to run for reelection if they walk out. They lose their right to run for reelection if their absences are not excused. Now, you'll recall the last walkout when members of the Senate walked out. So people like Art Robinson and Dennis Lithicum, who now can't run for reelection, they walked out. The Senate Republican leader allowed the walkout to continue until it got in their 10 unexcused absences. Then in the negotiations to come back and give the Democrats everything they wanted, what did Canope not demand? That the absences be excused. They still have the power to do this. They're lying about this. They still have the power to do this. And first of all, even if, you know, I mean, they're claiming we're in the

minority, there's nothing we can do, but we want to be able to run for reelection. Who cares if they run for reelection if they can't do anything and don't plan to do anything? But the fact is, is that anytime they walk out, they control the entire agenda. And one of the things that they can insist on in order to come back and give the Democrats most of what they want to do to destroy the state is to say, excuse our absences. It's not that complicated. But Canope didn't do it because he wasn't going to run for reelection anymore. And then a couple of others who supposedly walked out weren't planning to run for reelection. Well, I also think that part of this was also about they wanted to get rid of the most

conservative senators. That's what that was all about. They wanted to get rid of the most conservative senators, and they did it. And look, you look at Tim Kano, former Senate Republican leader. His son, Reagan, is in the business of attacking conservative Republicans. That's what he and Brian Iverson, the husband of Vicki Iverson, who was the former Republican House leader, they get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to attack people like Noah Robinson. And then they criticize me for criticizing them. It's just the Republicans are in the business of eviscerating other Republicans. You remember a couple of years ago when Hansel and Finley, who's everybody's praising, oh, thanks for your good work as you're leaving. Hansel and Finley wrote a bill to make criminals out of Herman Bartschiger and Dennis Lithicum because they were serving as both senators and officers of the Republican Party. I remember that. I remember that. Yeah.

And so then you get people like Bonham and the Iversons and and Canope and all these people who criticize me for calling out the Republicans when Republican elected people are in the business. And then you Kim Wallen, who is another Southern Republican, endors far-left Democrats and that they have a problem with me calling them out on this. Yeah, I guess we're just not supposed to notice things like that. Yeah, I had some real issues with that. I had some real issues with this, and I never did receive an answer from Kim on why she did that, So I'm not bothering this time. I will tell you why they do this. Why Christine Drazen is back. Right. OK. That's when it became clear that there will be no opposition to this horror story by the Republicans. Christine Drazen is a Democrat

and she can say what she wants about the party she's affiliated with, but all I ask people to do is go look at her voting record. She votes with the Democrats constantly. She voted twice to put tampons in the kindergarten boys' bathrooms and then lied about it. When Derek Chauvin was convicted of the killing of a drug-addicted violent felon, which of course the regular media just says was a murder and in fact plenty of evidence indicates it's completely untrue christine drayson tweeted guilty justice is served she's anti-cop she's anti-people she's a colossal fraud she is a democrat and this is why we had these battles for Noah Robinson, as an example, earlier this last year, you know, last year to try to to make sure, because there is, you know, there is there are Republicans and there are conservatives.

There are very few conservative Republicans in the state legislature right now. And this is going to be a challenging five, six-month session, okay? Going to have to keep an eye on this. But one of the biggest concerns is that just because someone's a Republican doesn't mean they're necessarily your friend when it comes to your values. Kim Wallen voted against an anti-gun bill because she didn't think it punished gun owners enough. Kevin Mannix votes for anti-gun bills. He votes to crush people's liberty. He's supposedly a Republican. This is pretty commonly what these people do all the time. And we just keep allowing it over and over again because

nobody is really addressing the fact that these people, I mean, there's a significant proportion of people who are involved in Republican politics in Oregon who are determined to make sure that conservative people never have any power. But here's what's interesting. The leadership in the Republican caucuses always say, well, we can't walk out because the people don't like it. Well, when Herman Bartschiger walked out, after that walkout. We elected more. Every single Republican who walked out got reelected. Got reelected. You know, we loved it because you were actually showing some fight.

And then they were told, well, we can't show this fight because then they're going to change the rules like you had just mentioned. And then Measure 113 comes and then the republican yeah you know this is this is uh this is the real challenge and and i know that uh i imagine a lot of people probably don't like you talking about this kevin because uh they would just like the status quo approach well republican is well if you're a republican you must be supporting our values. I wish that were the case, but that is also what ails our situation in the state legislature now that we're in the session. The status quo is whatever the lobbyists demand that it be. But here's another thing to consider. I remember after that major walkout, having a conversation with Dwayne Stark, who has now moved to his third home in Texas, right? Saying, oh, Kevin, you know, we didn't feel like

we were rewarded for walking out. I said, every single one of you got reelected. But now they're still the same tune. We don't want to walk out because, frankly, it's hard to grip when you're walking out, right? But let's look at what happened. They're claiming that people don't like walkouts. Look, they voted for this ballot measure to stop walkouts. Well, they voted for a lot of ballot measures they don't understand, like legalizing drugs and all kinds of other crap because they don't because ballot measures confuse people. But if they really were opposed to people walking out, why did they elect the people who were clear surrogates for the people who walked out? So Dennis Lithicum walked out. They elected his wife. Art Robinson walked out. They elected his son. Yeah. It's just not true. You know, I think that the ballot measure to

attack walkouts was misunderstood by a lot of people, obviously, just like just like the drug ballot measure was misunderstood, like the gun ballot measure was misunderstood, passed by less than a percentage point. And many people didn't understand what it did. That's the point of ballot measures to confuse people. But the problem is that the Democrats will always do what Democrats do, which is break things, steal things, because they're essentially that's their goal is to destroy stuff. And our push for the Republicans that are representing us here in Southern Oregon is that don't help them break things. OK. Hey, Kevin. Yeah, I got I got a role. I'm out of time at this point. But, you know, it's it's going to be interesting. And I know that you put out that alert the other day. And I'm going, hey, I got to talk with him about this because it's what, 30 anti-gun bills coming up in this session.

Right. Isn't it about that many at last? At least, and there's more coming. Yeah, all right. And Kevin Sterrett of the Oregon Firearms Federation will keep us up on this, and it's going to be quite the battle. It really is. This is going to be a battle royale. I appreciate your insight as always, Kevin, and thank you so much. Be well.

Thank you. All right. 737 at KMED, 99.3 KBXG. We'll catch up on the rest of the news coming up here at a flash. And speaking of one of those people that was, you know, they were trying to make a criminal of, that would be Josephine County, former Josephine County Commissioner Herman Barachiger, who will be joining the show. And we're going to have a good conversation about the current status. And, of course, from the sounds of it, he could be on, well, he may have another term or at least a serve out John West term. We don't know. There's a couple,

they've narrowed it down to two. We'll talk about that and more coming up. Looking for your next adventure from the rugged Subaru Outback to the versatile Subaru Forester, Southern Oregon Subaru has the perfect vehicle for you. Plus we're offering a lifetime powertrain warranty on all new Subarus. Deb with Father and Son Jewelry, and I'm on KMED. Some breaking news, Rashida Jones, the president of MSNBC, has stepped down. I would imagine she is stepping down because, well, you know, the ratings are too good, and if you're going to go out, you want to go out on top. i'm having fun uh let me talk with herman bear chigger of course former josephine county commissioner how you doing herman welcome back

good to have you on i'm doing fine thank you how are you doing doing fine that was a cheery little conversation about the legislative uh session with uh with kevin sterrett looking at all these bills i guess he's gone through quite a few of them and it's um there's gonna be a battle huh big one over the five six of course is there going to be a battle, huh? Big one over the five, six. Of course, is there going to be a battle? I don't know. You know, from the sounds of it, the Republican caucus is what? Just going to vote no and then say, well, we voted no.

That's all there is to it. Right. That kind of thing. Well, you know, I don't I just I don't know what's going to happen. Well, you know, it's't know what's going to happen. Well. You know, it's the legislature. But like he said, he even mentioned you by name that they were trying to make you a criminal during your tenure there. Interesting times.

Interesting times. They're still trying to make me a criminal. Are they? Really? Oh, the Democrats. Come on, Bill. They're constantly after me they you know we had somebody now they they filed a zoning complaint against my son's feed store uh they just filed a uh debbie bird just filed an epic complaint said that uh i didn't do a very good uh conflict of interest statement before i voted on fees

i mean it's just a constant onslaught look at john west how many ethics complaints see i don't even have lost and then of course the ethics reports are the ethics complaints then get reported breathlessly in the in the media then as if they are convictions, when a lot of times it's just been a politicized process here. That's what we're dealing with, right? Oh, I've just seen a post on social media, which I've got to stop looking at it because it's so full of BS. But, you know, Ms. Berg said, oh, they've accepted my ethics complaint. Well, of course they do.

They accept every ethics complaint. But they say it like, oh, he's guilty. See, they accepted it. He's guilty. So, you know, it's just, I'll tell you, since Donald Trump has gotten elected, the Democrats have lost their minds. And they are lashing out. They talk about it. I guess there's some kind of big meeting in Eugene with Democrats on how to combat Donald Trump. It's fight, fight, fight, you know, no matter what. I mean, it's not good, Bill. It's not

healthy for the country. Yeah. So even though that things are looking better in the swamp, in the state of Oregon, in some ways, Donald Trump's election has put added emphasis on the challenge. Would that be a fair way of looking at what's going on, you know, our challenges here in Southern Oregon? Yeah, it's turning neighbors against neighbors and family members against family members, and it's not good. We're not headed in a good direction, is my opinion. Yeah, I wish we could report something happy about that, but we're here just to talk about the way it is and work our way through things. Just mentioned that I was reading that you are one of two people that could possibly be the next Josephine County Commissioner to serve out John West's term after he was recalled a few weeks ago. And so it's you and Andre Black, right? Right. Yep. So, you know, we'll see where that goes.

I'm surprised you apply for that because I thought that you were getting out because, hey, you're ready to get out. What's your line of thinking here? I am, but you have to remember, Phil, the reason we have staggered election seats, so you have three commissioners and they're not all elected at the same time, they're staggered, is so that you have continuity all the time. There's somebody that has been there before to have some idea of what is happening. It's called continuity. Well, some sort of institutional memory, right? Yeah, yeah.

And since John West was recalled, they have two new commissioners coming in with with no government experience or, you know, no elected government experience. And so then you have no continuity. So it does make sense that they picked myself and Andreas because we were there. We were the last ones there so today that they'll pick one of the two of us and it makes sense you know but the democrat oh we're going to recall we're going to do this we're going to do that i'll tell you what it's not the politics all it is, is everybody wants to fight. And it's not good. I've seen it.

It's been coming for a while. I remember when I was the minority leader in the Senate, and I walked in to have my morning coffee with President Courtney. We had coffee almost every morning. And he sat there, and he had his head in the hands and looking at the table. And I said, are you sick? And he looked at me, and he says, it's all over. He says, all they want to do is fight. Ah, so in other words, the institutions are breaking in Oregon. Right, yes. do is fight ah so in other words the institutions are breaking in oregon right yes and if you study

history that's not a good space to be in i think this is also another reason why you have people that uh you know down here and elsewhere in oregon that continue to bring up separating from oregon or joining idaho you know the greater idaho, which I know has a very, very high bar to me. But if Oregon were being run effectively and efficiently and properly, you wouldn't be hearing talk about people wanting to separate. They might say, OK, yeah, the Democrats are in control, but things are being done pretty well. Nobody can say that, though, with Democrat control here.

They just can't do that. You can't you can't say it's a good thing. And look at your property rights are evaporating as you sit here now i wanted to ask you now i wanted to ask you about that too and i think i want to see if i get bob hard on to talk about this a bit further i had a friend of mine pretty well-to-do friend call me up yesterday he says bill this appeals process on the fire map is just BS. It is destined to fail. He says we're all screwed right now. He's a big guy, big guy here, big wheel here in Southern Oregon.

And he saw it getting out. Would you agree with him after having looked at that? I imagine you got that. Absolutely. The way the law is written, how do you appeal? The other thing is that process is so lengthy, you'll be on your third set of teeth before you ever have your appeal date. I had a person who dropped by the station the other day talking about it and said, Hey, I'm retired, don't have a lot of money, and are you going to have to hire lots of attorneys to be able to do these appeals or can you do these yourself do you know um you probably you probably can do them

yourself but you know you better be pretty versed in the law on how to conduct yourself an appeal process okay well the one thing i keep mentioning to people is, remember, you have to remember that Pam Marsh and Jeff Golden sponsored these bills and carried these bills, okay? And – Senate Bill 862, and I had a lengthy conversation with some Republican senators, including Senator Hansel, and I thought I had him convinced to vote no on it, and he voted yes. Yeah, so there was some Republican help on this. Yeah. But the one thing I wanted to remind people of, though, is that Jeff Gold is having a town hall meeting, the first town hall meeting.

He wants to talk about the upcoming session. I would recommend that people who got their fire map letter would go to this town hall meeting. It's going to be 515 p.m. this Thursday in the main branch of the Jackson County Library in downtown. I know he wants to talk about the upcoming session, but there's a massive mess that he helped create. And doesn't he need to hear about that or not um yes i hope people in that district show up and ask him about what is what is that going to do to his to our property well you're losing property right that i can tell you right now in the i mean just the you know how you have to build where you have to build what you have to do on your property

sure oregon department of forestry uh the ability to tell you what to do on your property so it's not a good thing it's gotten real now with the actual letters arriving in people's mailboxes now and i think it's finally you know focus them they were they were angry about this in theory well we don't really know how this is going to look right and then the map comes out and the uh and the papers come in and then people are really hot and bothered about this and you know i i don't know what they were thinking about this because you could you knew just by looking at this, having the the Oregon University students actually in charge of putting this together. You knew the fix was in Herman.

We knew this right from the beginning. Very, very sad. Sorry to say that. OK, I wanted to talk with you here about the governor's office. Governor gave a state of the state yesterday. Antenna Kotech is pretty uninspiringinspiring as it were filled with these standard platitudes at least she didn't say anything about climate friendly equitable communities and what we're well there was plenty of talk about equity i'm sure but be that as it may you had mentioned that something

we need to keep in mind is that oregon is not really in control of its own destiny politically because most of our money these days is coming from out of state. Could you detail a bit of that? And I don't know if people quite understand or grasp the significance of this reality. Yeah. So, you know, if you look at a map of the United States, the vast majority of the country is red. And it's just basically the East Coast, the West Coast, Colorado, and New Mexico that are blue.

And so they are just divvying up their money on those states. So if you look at the last governor election, Tina raised, I think it was 30 or just a little shy of $30 million for a state that has 3.2 million voters. And a job that pays 98,000 a year, just under 100,000, if I recall. Right. And the vast majority of that money was from out of state. She raised it towards the end. And if you look at, you know, the Democrats have about a million one registered voters. That means she could have spent $28 on every Democrat voter to get them out to vote. So it's how do you combat that?

You don't. They have the Democrats have their thirty two percent of the registered voters and the Republicans have twenty three percent. So are twenty four, twenty three and a half. And a lot of the independents send independent sandalene democrat too to be fair right and so you know when i got a lot of flack from endorsing betsy johnson people didn't understand that i was trying to prop up what we call a spoiler and i find it fascinating that people don't seem to grasp that concept because you can even look at the last election cycle that we had in which the only time that the statewide Republican got even close was when they had a third party candidate in there bleeding off Democratic support. Exactly. And that's what

we did with Dennis Richardson. And we had a green party candidate and that's how we got him elected but to win a statewide race and it's a mathematical equation it's pure and simple you can wish and hope and get excited about your candidate all you want but if the numbers don't add up the numbers don't add up yeah but with 30 million dollars why, though, campaign finance reform has never been able to catch fire in the state of Oregon? Because it's pretty much unlimited. You know, for statewide office, you can, you know, we have quarter million dollars on each side for county commission races in some places. You know, that kind of thing. And it's just amazing the amount of money being spent on some of these races.

Is that helping or a bad thing in your view well it's not it doesn't matter if it's helping or bad or whatever it's not going to change because it's working in favor of the controlling party in oregon so it's simply not going to change but you know when i first when i first um ran for senate i didn't spend a lot of money. It was in the second time I ran, I spent even less. But now when I was helping run Senate races, you know, we're spending over a million dollars for a Senator race that pays $37,000 a year. You know, and you just, you roll your eyes.

And the other side is spend a natter more. The money is unbelievable how much is spent on politics. And I know this kind of sounds like a Democratic talking point, though. You know, a lot of Democrats have talked for years about campaign finance reform. And is this kind of that Citizens United effect? Is that what we're dealing with at this point or something different? All of that. I mean, it's just, they're pushing everything to the edge. So if you go and look at the lookup of the Senate back in 2013 and look it up today, you have no moderate Democrats in the Senate anymore. Floyd Prusansky is a moderate Democrat. You know, and you have a lot of people that simply don't have, in my opinion, a lot of life experiences.

And now they know they can pass anything they want. So, you know, buckle up, because here it comes. All right. There's going to be some stuff coming that's just going to blow your mind. That is going to be the operating deal for this legislative session. I think the most interesting part will be to see this battle that we're going to, I mean, to talk about a $1 per thousand statewide property tax in order to help build affordable housing. So we'll make your house more less affordable, my house less affordable,

everybody else's house less affordable in order to build affordable houses for other people, apparently. What could go wrong there, Herman? Listen, the Democrats have been doing that all the way back to Roosevelt is take money, give to people that don't have money in exchange for their their votes and their commitment to the Democrat Party. They do that. That's what's going on with the homeless. Kevin Starr is right. They do it. That's what they do with minorities now they've done it with the um you know the lgbt plus community because i can't remember everything anymore um and that's what they've done they and and they've tried to do it to the hispanic community it's not working out so well with now the hispanic community is culturally more conservative than others, okay? Yes, and they have a work ethic and a family and a religious commitment. So it doesn't work out too much.

But if they can pick up all the others. So how many times I've said it on your show, it's free ice cream. It's free ice cream. You know, I always go back to the fourth grade class, and they're running for class president and the young little boy gets up and he gives a very nice speech and he's in his nice suit and tie and looks very, you know, dignified and speaks well and gives a nice lengthy speech on what he's going to do for the class. And then the little girl gets up there. i shouldn't use genders let's just say a person another person no just persons no genders and the other person gets up there and says you

vote for me i'll give you free ice cream that was the end of the speech yeah guess who yeah exactly the one with free ice cream well you know what i thought uh is that uh if i were in charge of the school curriculum this is what i would do okay and i I said this to someone who wrote me about, you know, the free ice cream sort of thing. I would say, I would say that every now and then all the teachers should eat the children's lunches. All right. I want them to eat their school lunches, to eat their lunches. No, you don't get lunch today because the teachers need to be eating. I think people need to be trained early on what government's really all about i don't know if they'd let me do it or not okay all right teacher

you eat to teach this kid an economic lesson you eat their lunch and then you'll understand the true role of uh these people you're voting for just saying well my i had a steady diet and grammar school of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. So that's what they would get in my life. Yeah. Well, that was back in the days before everybody had a peanut allergy. Do you remember that? When I was a kid, nobody had a peanut allergy.

Was it just me? No. And the only way I got away from peanut butter and jelly sandwiches is I went and worked in the cafeteria washing dishes, and then you got a free cafeteria lunch. Cool. But you missed out on playtime out on the playground because you're in there washing the trays. That sounds like something that Dwayne Yunker would have done back in his day.

I'll have to ask him about that. I'll have to ask the junkyard dog about that. Hey, Herman, I appreciate the talk as always, but the takeaway, though, is buckle up with the legislative session here, because this is going to be one of the more challenging ones of the last 20, 25 years we've been talking about this stuff. You know, I've been so busy with other things, I haven't had time to sit down and look and see what the bills that are being dropped. And I listened to Kevin today, and I'm just just like i don't even want to sit down and look at the bills that have been dropped all right maybe it's time to get on and binge on

netflix instead we'll talk soon all right be well and uh by the way what happens when uh when is the current county commission vote on whether or not you or andreas end up ends up being the one serving out john west i'm good i have to be there in an hour, so I've got to get going. Oh, so today's the day? Today's the day. Okay. And if you're selected, you get sworn in immediately and attend your first meeting this afternoon.

So you've been retired two weeks. Wonderful. Okay. Two weeks? It hasn't been two weeks. i worked i was commissioner to the six oh okay one week we'll see what happens you might you might be back into it we'll see what they say the current board okay all right thanks arvin see you it's a couple minutes after eight this is kmed kmed hd1 eagle point medford kbxg grants pass we got a half hour or so of the open phone time here and it is pebble in your shoe tuesday and if you got a pebble you'd like to share it's a good time to do that