Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 01-15-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

Morning news, Gov. Kotek wants more apartments and townhouses. More stack and pack? Climate Media, Hegseth hearings, Eric Peters on from Ep Autos - Chrysler is dead? Review of the VW Jetta and much more on the Wheels Up segment

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. Here's Bill Myers. 11 minutes after 6, it is Wheels Up Wednesday. Eric Peters will be joining me after 6.30 as always. Your calls and opinion. We'll be talking about the history of the Mafia,

and it feels like the Mafia kind of runs the country in a different way it's a left-wing mafia we'll have a little bit of that uh coming on a bit later on the program around 7 40 or so and bob hart will be joining the program too bob hart is a retired land use consultant and he has forgotten more about what's going on with land use than than many people will ever know and the reason he's coming on of course is that if you've been listening to the show the last two or three days, people are really upset about what's going on with these fire map letters coming from the state saying that, okay, here's your rating, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You have 60 days to appeal.

If you're a corporation, you have to have an attorney. I mean, all these other sort of things. And it is a massive, a massive real taking over of control. It's like they don't have property. They don't have title to your property. They just have control of your property. That kind of thing through the fire map rating. And hopefully that maybe Bob can show us a way through, maybe have a suggestion or two.

But yeah, I imagine he got a rating on his property. We'll talk with him after 8 o'clock. And then we'll also take your calls if you have questions about this, because a lot of it is going to be, is it worth it to appeal? Is it worth spending the money, or can you do it on your own? You actually can't appeal on your own apparently, but should you? It's like all these kind of questions. And we'll dig into this with Bob. And like I said, Bob's a good guy.

We've talked with him before about that. Some of the top stories here for this morning. Andreas Black is the new Josephine County Commissioner. And that was selected by the current board, Chris Barnett and Ron Smith. They ended up selecting that. It was either going to be Black or Herman Beretschiger, and so that is how they ended up doing that yesterday. We had a school bus, Central Point, ended up sliding off the road yesterday. There was a young child ended up being sent to the hospital about that,

ended up turning on its side, the bus that is. Most of the kids got out fine. And then there was one child who was taken to the hospital under an abundance of caution. The kid's just fine. Everything's fine. No big deal. But, you know, it was very slippery yesterday, and it's very slippery this morning, too. Remember, I was only half joking when I said, hey, everyone's blowing past me.

I said, that road is a lot more slick than you thought it even ended up uh you know biting a school bus driver in the behind you know thinking that you had a little more traction than really existed those same kind of conditions are there this morning maybe not quite as bad as yesterday yesterday had arguably a little bit more uh fog, at least in my neighborhood. So we have those stories. Providence Hospital putting out a simple message. It says in their press release, staffing is safe. This is Kate Kitchell, the chief nursing officer at Prava, addressing the community in a social media video this afternoon saying, hey, it's okay.

And go ahead and come in, that sort of thing. We have the ONA, the nurses union, saying that they're happy that Providence has finally decided to do the right thing and join the nearly 5,000 striking frontline caregivers at the bargaining table. So it does look like they're going to get some sort of a deal cut out. Where it's going to go, I don't know. I'm just going to remind you, though. Remember, Providence has been losing money for about three, four years. Okay? I'm just going to remind you this.

And many health care providers are losing money hand over fist and have been ever since the COVID world. And hopefully there is a deal cut that the teachers, though Providence is a very big company, you still have to take in more money than you pay out in order to stay in business. So we have that story. So all the hospitals are going to start negotiating. Governor Tito Kotek asking Oregon lawmakers in this session now to expand where and how missing middle housing such as duplexes and triplexes can be constructed. This is in the Oregonian this morning. House Bill 2138 aims to build on one of Kote duplexes and triplexes and all that sort of stuff in areas previously zoned for single detached homes.

This is more of that sustainable development sort of thing here. So the idea is to make it even easier for houses to be torn down in your single-family home neighborhood and then apartments get put up. I think that's kind of where they're wanting to go here. And given that a lot of renters are probably easier to control than a lot of homeowners, I'm sure that this is something that the democratically controlled state legislature is going to want to do. Because the more renters, the better. The more rentersters the less people who are owning the more people who are not owning the more people who will be happy with democratic control i'm being a little sarcastic you can't help me my my cynicism gets rewarded so often when it comes to

oregon legislative action all right yeah the same people who brought you Senate Bill 762, which is the wildfire map. Okay. National news. The inflation story came out. Consumer prices here rose more quickly in December. Federal reserves fight against inflation may have stalled. But the market's futures are actually looking better. Hmm.

See, to me, this is the main point. Consumer price index rose 0.4% from November to December, up overall 2.9% from a year earlier. So that's their official inflation rate. Double it, and that's probably the real inflation rate. Maybe even triple it, really. That's their official inflation rate. Double it, and that's probably the real inflation rate. Maybe even triple it, really. That's just it. This is a very understated number because the federal government is always trying to make this particular statistic look a lot lower than it really is.

But even with their numbers, consumer price index rose 0.4% in the last month of the year. That's a 4.8% inflation rate. Well, yeah, yeah, it rose a lot at the end of the year, but the overall rate year over year looked pretty good. 2.9, even though it was 4.8. So just remember, it's kind of weird when you start looking at the statistics. We had some pretty hot inflation at the end of the year. And I think that there may be a little hotter inflation than we think out there.

Well, all you have to do is go buy eggs, right? That kind of thing. All right. Then, of course, the political story yesterday, the hegseth the pete hegseth deal so oh no wait a minute there there's even something more important than hegseth if you can imagine that uh we have the santa ana winds starting to kick up in the la area and all of the national news media have the right talking points. You would have to be a fool to not understand what climate change is doing to this country and the world. Wildfires raging in L.A. are highlighting the risk of climate change.

Yes, climate change. The wildfires in California are the latest in a string of natural disasters made worse by climate change. A big part of why we're seeing more wildfires is climate change. We're going to talk about these destructive fires compounded by climate. A lot of people talking about climate change. Climate change set up the conditions for this supercharged fire. Exacerbated and increased by climate change. Climate change which is political but is clearly a major driver here.

Climate change will only make wildfires more common. As we continue covering these destructive wildfires out west, the state's governor, L.A.'s mayor, they are really fending off attacks from Donald Trump and his allies. Donald Trump is blaming President Biden and Governor Newsom for these fires. It is a well-worn page in Trump's playbook. This is classic deflection because he doesn't want to talk about climate change. Amplify lies and direct blame at perceived political enemies.

Everything except talking about the intensifying climate crisis. With an incoming president in Donald Trump, how do you approach an issue like climate change? You might expect that Americans worry about climate change with climate. Americans are definitely interested in learning about these wildfires, but they are not making that connection with climate change. So despite all these extreme weather events,

Americans are really no more worried about climate change than they were. What is that now? Nearly 35 years ago. I mean, there's just no real trend line here, Mr. Berman. so the question is why why yeah why why um gee i don't know why we're not believing the national media any longer oh my goodness that uh yeah they have uh one note you know it's um the fires in la and it has nothing to do with the utter incompetence of the of the marxists that were elected or not elected or just hired to run the place in the box checkers. It's never that. It's not the policies. It's not the environmental policies.

It's not the forestry policies. It's not the we're not going to clean out the canyons of the excess brush policy. It's not that sort of thing. It's not the environmental issues, nothing like that. It's just something that you can't control. And since it's something you can't control, the goal is to send more tax money to the Marxists in control, and then they'll change the weather for you.

I think that's kind of what they're looking for. But at least the media, national media, is there to help you understand it, though. By the way, thank you to MRC for that clip. I just loved it, all right? Also, some highlights from the pete hegseth hearing yesterday his confirmation hearings there it was uh it was pretty wild officers enlisted black and white young and old men and women all americans all warriors this hearing is for you meritocracyocracy, war fighting, accountability and readiness.

We have hundreds, hundreds of women who are currently in the infantry, lethal members of our military serving in the infantry, but you degrade them. I've never disparaged women serving in the military. My critiques, Senator, recently and in the past, and from personal experience, have been instances where I've seen standards lowered. What is the highest level of international security agreement that you have led? That's Tammy Duckworth. And can you name some that the Secretary of Defense would lead? There are three main ones.

I have not been involved in international security arrangements because I have not been in government other than serving in the military. Status of Forces Agreement would be one of them. Status of Forces Agreement. I've been a part of teaching about Status of Forces Agreement. But you don't remember to mention it? You're not qualified, Mr. Hexath. Summer of 2014 in Cleveland, drunk in public with the CBA team. Anonymous smears.

I'm just asking for true or false questions. That's true or false answers. December of 2014 at the CBA Christmas party at the Grand Hyatt at Washington, D.C., you were noticeably intoxicated and had to be carried up to your room. Is that true or false? Anonymous smears and what size round is the m9 beretta standard issue sidearm for the military fire uh a nine millimeter so right there you're representing qualifications that show you understand what the warfighter deals with every single day on the battlefield you understand what happens on the front line where our troops will be.

So that was Senator Tim Sheehy. And I tell you, though, after listening to all the talks about the drinking and all the rest of it, you could be excused for wanting to have a big drink yourself. If you've ever been hanging out in the swamp at any time in your lifetime, you know that the senators and the state reps, or the U.S u.s reps by the way tend to do a pretty good job of pounding it down after hours i think we have something in there another bite uh going into that maybe that was from uh hazy moronic senator hazy moronic from hawaii but uh senator pocahontas got into the act, too. In other words, you're quite sure that every general who serves should not go directly into the defense industry for 10 years. You're not willing to make that same pledge? I'm not a general, Senator.

You'll be the one. Let us just be clear in charge of the generals. Now, actually, it was a good comeback, except, you know, to be fair, I also would have said, well, I'm not a general senator. But, yes, I would take that pledge, too. And I would imagine Pete would. But it was a good comeback. Good comeback. All right. And Senator Hazy Moronic, of course, asked him about the the sexual allegations of course they're all allegations all unproven but continuing on she dug into the other issues addition to the sexual assault allegations and by the way the answer to my second question should have been yes i have read multiple reports of your regularly being drunk at work including by people who

worked with you at fox news do you know that being drunk at work is prohibited for service members under the UCMJ? Senator, those are multiple false anonymous reports peddled by NBC News that run directly contradictory to the dozens of men and women at Fox News Channel who I work with who came on the record and said they've never seen that. In your opening statement, Mr. Hicks, that you commit to holding leaders accountable at all levels, that includes you, of course. And frankly, as Secretary, you will be on the job 24-7.

You recently promised some of my Republican colleagues that you stopped drinking and won't drink if confirmed, correct? Absolutely. Will you resign as Secretary of Defense if you drink on the job, which is a 24-7 position? I've made this commitment on behalf of the men and women I'm serving. Will you resign as Secretary of Defense if you drink on the job? I've made this commitment on behalf of the men and women i'm serving i'm not because it's the most important deployment of my life answer to my question so i'm going to move on okay and uh and once again it was the clown show that you figured it was going to be okay okay i think my favorite clip though revolver news had had this clip it had uh uh a picture of pete hegseth in the center and almost like an old Hollywood Square game surrounded by all the different senators.

I love it. That's worse duty than combat really yesterday uh so i don't think they really laid a hand on him the republicans pretty much uh circled the wagons i think protected him i think he's going to get in we'll see about this today it's going to be pam bondy and some other ones from what i understand we'll keep you up on that let's see uh just keep in mind that the other story that is in play right now, awaiting a Supreme Court announcement on whether TikTok gets to stay in business under the Chinese or not. And if anything happens, we'll let you know about that. This is the Bill Myers Show. Here at American Rent Your Garage, we respect and support those individuals who currently or have previously served this great country and our local communities. As a small token of our respect and appreciation for their service,

we extend our Heroes Discount to all active or veteran military personnel and to our active or retired first responders. There is no way to completely repay your dedication to the protection of our country and communities, but we will do what we can. George Strait's oceanfront property in 1987 was the first album to debut at number one on the country charts. Whether you're Arizona Oceanside or further inland, Millette Construction reminds you that if you have sloping floors and cracks in walls, your ground is likely shifting, causing foundation issues. Millette will fix your foundation, level your house, and solve the water problem that's causing the damage.

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Oh, you're right. We need to tell people that they don't have to call those 1-800 numbers for gutter protection from leaves and debris. They can just call Fontana Roofing to get a quote on gutter covers from a trusted local contractor. Yeah, since we've done the research and now install an industry-leading brand, we need a commercial that's informative, but clever and quirky. Let's mull this over. Indeed. In the meantime, I say we hit that food truck. Brilliant. I can't get the creative juices flowing on an empty stomach, let alone roof houses. While the fellows ponder mass media gutter cover marketing, call them to get the

straight facts. Visit fontanaroofingservices.com. Hi, this is Lisa, the Hughes Lumber Girl, and I'm on 106.7 KMED. 629. We'll be checking news here in just a moment. And then it's Wheels Up Wednesday. Eric Peter's always a great conversation. Tom's in talent. Tom, what's on your mind? Yes. Good morning. Morning.

I think we need a new bumper sticker that just says, Wokeism Kills. And I'll let it go at that. A question I have. We all heard about the insurance companies pulling out of L.A. Yes. Months before all this started. Has there been any communication from the insurance companies why they did that?

Did they somehow evaluate, go in, see the empty reservoir? What was their reasoning for bailing out of Los Angeles? I don't know about the specifics about that as far as if they know. What I can tell you, though, is that this has been something which has been a growing trend in California and, of course, in Oregon, too. And it has to do with the increasing rate of losses because, as you can recall, even when I talked with Dr. Carol Lieberman the other day, she evacuated out of Malibu. She still hasn't completely finished rebuilding her home from the 2018 wildfires, which her insurance company paid off at that time. So there has been a pattern of increasing wildfire losses, whether it's from power line sparks or whatever.

And you just get to the point where you're not going to make as much money or there's too much financial risk. And then they just pull out of the markets, which is what we're seeing happening in Oregon, too. Okay. Second question. I heard in the Lars show yesterday a story that he said 72 fire trucks from Oregon were on their way to the fire and they were pulled over in Sacramento and had to pull over in Talent for several hours so that they could drive safely to Medford, I mean, that's about the same kind of reasoning. Well, it's not about the fire truck. Now, according to Greg Roberts, now, other people are saying that Greg is wrong about this, but did you hear what Greg said about that? Yeah, basically to coordinate the uh the frequencies yeah the frequencies make sure your your safety equipment is there in other words making sure that you're uh you know that you're going to be able to communicate and uh and in

tune i guess with what is uh was going on and he says that that is a normal procedural issue with help coming in from out of state. That's what he claims. Yeah, but having, you know, overnight waiting on your way to the fire, people's houses are burning down. It seems insane to me. It really does. Well, what seems insane, though, is that they probably had no water to fight the fire anyway.

So maybe that had something to do with it i don't mean to make light of this but i know that um i i don't want to just uh do everything through the political lens that everything that they uh that all their regulation in the firefighting world is wrong great you know some are saying greg is wrong though other people have written me and said that's not true at all uh but uh i'm not trying to figure it... Yes, I'm trying to figure it out. Yeah, I'm still trying to figure it out. And it seems that there are a lot of people trying to score political points

on both sides of this issue. So I kind of wanted to hold my fire, no pun intended, until I knew a little bit more. That's all. I'll end with what I said. Woke isn't killed. Yeah, but you see, that's still true.

You end with a truth, okay? Thank you. All right, let me go. All right, thank you, Tom. Let me go to the next line. Hi, good morning. This is Bill. Who's this?

This is Kirk. Hey, Kirk, how are you doing? Doing well. Hey, I just heard the last caller. My understanding was that obviously the risks are getting greater with regard to fires down in Southern California or California in general. So my understanding was that the California Insurance Commission would not allow any insurance companies to increase the rates. And then it just becomes a business decision by the insurance company you know you can't ask me

as a company to to uh uh take on a situation where i'm bound to lose money and i think there's a lot of that going on too you can't on one hand say you're not allowed to cancel that customer and i would say the same thing about the customers here um and yet at the same time, it's almost like you can't just chain someone, chain an insurance company to provide the coverage. It has to be something that is a win-win in everyone's view, that sort of thing. Yeah, exactly. I've got one other question for you. Sure. I just got the thing about I'm in the midst of going to be cleaning out my closet and i've got a lot of extra clothes uh is there anything or any place in southern oregon possibly that people are

taking things and items for these people down there where we can just uh you know throw them in a giant truck and they all get down there so i'm not spending 200 bucks on on postage i don't know but uh let's put out the uh the request here normally i i must say most of the time the disaster response agencies say it's better to send cash be rather than uh than items but uh maybe that is different this time around it could be different but i know in past disasters, they would say, hey, by the time you end up stuffing a truck, taking it down there, sorting it all out, figuring out what's good and what's not so good, etc., etc., it ends up taking a lot of labor to do it.

But if there is an agency doing so, if anybody knows about that, call the show or email Bill at BillMeyershow.com. We'll let you know when we find out. Okay, and you'll put that on your website? I certainly will. Other than that, everyone's saying, you know, donate to the Red Cross, but a lot of people don't want to donate to the Red Cross either. But if there's another way, we will let you know, okay? All right, very good. Thank you. Thank you. 635-KMED, and it's Wheels Up Wednesday time with Eric after news. One of each.

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The nurses and doctors strike against Providence Health continues as negotiations on contracts are set to restart. Providence told its mediators that negotiators are ready to resume bargaining with all eight hospitals, including Medford. Both sides have accused the other of illegally refusing to talk. More Red Cross volunteers from the Northwest are headed to Southern California to help run shelters for wildfire victims. Rebecca Marshall with the Red Cross Cascades says it's a long-term operation for local volunteers. Shelters are providing food, a place to sleep, and reunification with relatives, but that'll change as people use the facilities to learn what's next in the recovery process. The Red Cross, by the way, says it needs blood donors

because a lot of blood drives were disrupted. Oregon Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley joined 39 other Democrats in support of a bill that would make the District of Columbia the nation's 51st state. The bill's introduction comes after Republicans regained control of the Senate with a slim margin. Bill London, KMED. Looking for durable and custom-fit metal roofing? Stephen Westfall Roofing, Inc. specializes in metal roofing. With two portable snap-lock machines, they pull right up to your door, allowing them to custom-cut every panel for a perfect fit. With over 18 years of experience, they serve Jackson, Josephine, and Curry counties, offering reliable roofing solutions tailored to your needs. Licensed, bonded, and insured for your peace of mind.

Visit StephenWestfallRoofingInc.com today for your free estimate. CCB number 250730. 638. And we're looking forward to the Trump administration's start on Monday. But, you know, the question is, as I was looking at those inflation numbers earlier, is inflation still going to be a much bigger problem for even President Trump? I mean, these are big, big deals. And the numbers, the real numbers, I think, are really higher than what are being reported.

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is something that they're recommending that you actually hold physically and don't put it in the electronic forms that so many people are trying to persuade you you know how many times they're recommending that you actually hold physically and don't put it in the electronic forms that so many people are trying to persuade you. You know, how many times are you saying, oh, hey, our company will hold the gold for you. Okay, how about you hold your gold for you? But one way or the other, get your gold and silver from Jay Austin and Company, good people and big supporters of talk radio. 1632 Ashland Street, 6th and G in downtown Grants Pass. Stop by there today

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News Talk 1063. KMED. You're waking up with the Bill Myers Show. Eric Peters, automotive journalist and genius, epautos.com. And I hate to start it off this way, but Eric, welcome back. But it seems like someone has dropped a bomb on Chrysler, finally. You have the news there this morning on a memo which was leaked. What's the latest story from the automotive world, huh? Yeah, well, let's preface it by noting that Chrysler, since 2023, has had

but one model in its lineup to sell, which is the aging Pacifica minivan, and it's really difficult to maintain a brand when you have just one model to sell. Well, they apparently were going to replace what had been taken away, specifically the 300 sedan that was a very popular model, by the way, with, guess what, electric-powered luxury vehicles. And these were supposed to start appearing right around now. Except those electric luxury vehicles have not been selling all that well over the last year or so, really. Although there was a – I think there was a brief burst of activity end of the year because of the expiration of the incentives in some places. And clearing of inventory and so on at probably fire sale prices, no pun intended. Yikes. But so a memo got released internally

that was sent out to suppliers that were involved in these supposedly coming down the line electric luxury vehicles that were going to be sold under the Chrysler nameplate, that effective immediately everything has been put on indefinite hold, meaning they're not going to go through with this. And the obvious implication is that Chrysler is done. They can't continue to maintain a brand with a minivan, an old minivan at this point, one that's been around for a long time. It's not going to sustain the brand. And it's unfortunately not going to be limited to Chrysler.

You know, this is something that is affecting Dodge, which still hasn't come out with the electric charger. And here we are already into 2025. Where is it? You know, and I've got a whole other story to tell you about that. Okay, so that's right. Now, did the gasoline charger completely disappear for 2025, or is there— Oh, it's been gone since 2023. Oh, okay. So, all right, because I still see them on the road all over the place. They've been very popular around here in Southern Oregon.

Oh, yeah, and keep in mind that it's hard to tell one model year from another, because they kept that thing in production for, what, about 16 years? Yeah. With just little changes here and there. So very hard to tell whether the one you're looking at is 10 years old or three years old or five years old. But anyway, the last of the new ones was made in 2023. They still had some holdover that were left on the dealer lots that they were selling during 2024, but no new ones. And I have heard that they have actually produced thousands and thousands of these battery-powered chargers that were supposed to have appeared months ago.

And, in fact, I think you had on your site the YouTube ad which showed the amazingly fast charger. They were putting it through the slaloms and everything like that and doing some drifting. It was just amazingly – it was a cool-looking car, I have to admit. You know, the device. It was a cool-looking car, but apparently not a very operable one. Apparently, what's happened is that there's some kind of systemic glitch with these things that's causing them to brick, and they're literally sitting, thousands of them, on distribution lots waiting to be sent to dealers,

but they can't do anything with them because they won't move. They're apparently having to send technicians out to each individual car to try to get them booted up. And they've succeeded in getting a few of them booted up, but then they put them in what's called shipping mode to send them out to the dealer. They get to the dealer and they try to operate them and then they brick again. So this could be perhaps the greatest catastrophe that's hit the car industry since the Edsel and the Yugo and it might even dwarf both of those yeah maybe we could uh rename those uh dodge chargers the nova as in remember they no go yeah no go that was the joke back in in the 60s when the chevrolet tried selling the nova down in mexico they couldn't understand why nobody would buy them and they said well nova

nova means doesn't go, right? Sure, and at least it did go. And so did the Yugo. You know, the butt of jokes. At least they were able to deliver the Yugo, and the Yugo actually operated as a vehicle. And I think fundamentally, though, the real tragedy is here. This electric charger is the car no one asked for, that no one wants, and probably no one is going to buy this idea that they had that somehow people who are interested in big traditional american cars with big v8s um are going to be interested in basically

teslas that's what we're talking about because fundamentally all evs are teslas it's the same thing are going to be interested in buying something like that it's just preposterous yeah it's not working i'm really sad to see chrysler and most likely is is dodge now going to be circling the drain? And what about Ram and Jeep? All of them, I think. And I get into this in my article. The real problem has to do with the fact that cheapskate Carlos Tavares, who is no longer the CEO of Stellantis, that is the parent company of all of them.

Now, didn't he get $20 million to go away, though? He did. He did. In addition to the apparently $40 million he was getting every year to run the brands into the ground, they had a big problem because the vehicles that they were selling that were popular, like the Charger and the Challenger and all the V8-powered trucks and everything else, were incurring a lot of compliance costs. Stellantis, more than any other car company, had to buy carbon credits from, guess who, our favorite buddy, Elon Musk. Our favorite grifter. Yep, you betcha. To the tune of many, many millions of dollars.

But rather than explain that to people, which is what I would have done if I'd been in charge of the thing, you know, and say, look, the reason that we're jacking up the prices on all these vehicles that you like and want to buy, but are becoming unaffordable because we're folding the compliance costs

into the price of the car. Instead of doing that, they just caved in and said, okay, we're going to stop building these things and we're going to build these electric cars, and then we won't have to pay carbon credit taxes anymore. The problem is they're not going to be able to sell those things. So it's absolutely suicidal, absolutely suicidal. That is just amazing to hear.

I mean, how long has Chrysler Dodge existed? It must have been a while. Well, it's Stellantis now, or I understand it's a different name, but, I mean, the brand has been around for more than 100 years, hasn't it? Oh, yeah, 100 years. That's in the 1920s. Oh. It's very, very sad.

You know, I mourn for all of these brands, which I think we're going to see disappear. I mourn for Pontiac when Pontiac disappeared, and for Plymouth and so many other brands. And I don't think it's going to be restricted to these Stellantis brands. Volkswagen is in a really, really bad way right now. And there are a number of other major car companies that are looking a little green around the gills. And it's all because they have behaved in a really craven, poltroonish manner, in my opinion, instead of saying, no, you know, this compliance stuff is killing us and it's not reasonable. It's not rational. It's not justifiable. They've gone along with it, thinking they can

comply their way out of this and it's not going to work. Well, you know, I don't know if I necessarily blame them for wanting to go along, because essentially they've been doing it for about 50, 60 years, haven't they? Well, they've been doing it in earnest, really, for about 30, and I can speak to this because I've been a witness to it. Okay. It was in the 90s when the wheel kind of turned. At that point, there was still some resistance. You know, they would, for example, fight things like the SRS airbag mandate. They did try. I was there. I saw it. In the sense that they at least pushed back a little bit and said to the government regulatory people, look, this is a bad idea because of X, Y, and Z.

Now, not only do they roll over, they go out of their way to anticipate this and be on the cutting edge of it and develop even more and more of this sort of thing, thinking that it's a way for them to make money because they can add more to the sticker price of the car. And it's really dumb to me to think that they think that people just have a limitless, bottomless amount of money that they can afford to spend on vehicles. They don't see it. The average family income in this country is like $65,000. The average transaction price of a new car now is pushing $50,000. It's not sustainable. Yeah, but maybe then the way they're looking at this is that if this is the reality where we find ourselves with inflation, with compliance costs, and all the rest of it,

they see, though, this push to go to transportation as a service, and maybe they're thinking about this being the cutting edge or the way for them to survive supplying the transportation as a service market instead. Sure, and that has a possibility of being viable in a purely functional sense in very urban and suburban areas, maybe. But how is that going to work when you're talking about significant distances? What would I do, for example, if I needed to go grocery shopping? I'm going to, what, tap my phone and wait for my automated rideshare car to get up to me, which is 30, 45 minutes away from downtown? I guess so. And I'm going to think about the time suck that it would be.

But, of course, that might be part of their plan. Like they're trying to force people out of the country and out of the rural areas into their 15-minute freedom cities, or as Gavin Newsom calls it, LA 2.0. Or as we call it, climate-friendly, equitable community in Medford and surrounding communities. The same kind of plan. And it's fascinating the way the Marxist-glo globalist cabal have been pushing this. The one problem that's involved in all of this, and even when it comes to the climate-friendly, equitable community, LA 2.0, is that the people that want to do this are utterly incompetent. Yep. And that's the one thing I want to make sure that people understand. It's like they've got the plans, they've got these regulations, but still they are ultimately incompetent. So I don't know, can we survive

until their plans collapse into a large pile of baby excrement or not? I don't know. I think so. And there's another aspect to this, I think, that's worth discussing. Not only are they incompetent, they're insulated, which is part of the reason why they're able to get away with being incompetent. People like Newsom, people like Keir Starmer in the UK, people like Biden, the whole lot of them, all of them. Maybe they're a little less insulated today, though, perhaps. Well, they're a little less insulated. But for decades, they have been able to impose all of these things on us, all of the costs, all the externalities, because they don't feel them. It doesn't matter to them.

Crime, all of that does not matter to them. They live safe ultra gated ultra rich places right so none of it matters to them but it's beginning to matter to them and more importantly we're beginning to see it i think there is indeed a red pilling whatever you want to call it an awakening people are beginning to notice but the question will be can the awakening in the red pilling of even the left wing that has been happy with all of the climate-friendly this and that and the other before the system is completely collapsed and destroyed? Well, I think probably, unfortunately, the system is, if it's not going to collapse, which I think is possible, it's going to go through some really difficult paroxysms before it recovers itself. And, you know, that's not necessarily a bad thing. You catch food poisoning, you know, and you wretch at the toilet for 24 hours. You feel terrible, but then it passes and you're fine again. And we may have to go through something like that. to 30 percent of the people in this country to really get it and refuse to comply anymore and begin to question everything if we can get to that point and i think we may already have gotten to it

all will be well it's just not going to be well tomorrow and it won't be pretty all right and and the other thing you have to remember though is that collapse is not an event you know a lot of people uh you know one of my favorite meme pictures from a while back i remember there was a guy that was taking his head and kind of like pounding it into the steering wheel saying, me going to my stupid job because society refuses to collapse, you know, that kind of thing. But it is a process. And I think that, you know, it's not like a one thing event and then it's all gone. It is a process, a death of a thousand cuts. Arguably, the United States has endured a lot of that over the last two, three decades, as you're talking about.

Oh, sure. It's evident. You just look at the car industry for the obvious example. Think about how many brands have gone away over the last 15 years or so. And we're going to notice this more because there's going to be a consolidation as more brands go away in the coming years. And we'll end up with a couple of really big corporate brands. And my hope is that we'll open up an opportunity for upstarts to come in, provided they can get around the government, you know, and get around all of this rigmarole. There are plenty of innovative, smart, hardworking people out there who could develop

the kind of car that we need at this point in this country, something that gets 60 miles per gallon and costs $10,000. It's absolutely feasible. Yeah, it's very possible to make something more affordable than what it is. That's for sure. Hey, Eric, hang on. Let's take some calls if people wanted to talk to Eric. Either opine, ask a question about a vehicle maybe they're looking at,

and maybe give us a road report or something else. 7705633. Speaking of the road, congestion congestion relief zones let's get into that story okay okay that is the uh you know the next one coming up on wheels up wednesday kmed 541-770-5633 that's 770-kmed eric peters epautos.com automotive journalist and questions or comments for him go ahead and join in if you wish like the man said 7705633 eric you are talking about how um you that chrysler appears to be on its way out and it's just like done because of the memo which was leaked you have that up on ep autos but uh and you said that the chargers were bricking but then you also have

another article in which teslas have been getting bricked. What happened with them? Just curious. Well, apparently there has been an issue with Tesla's full self-driving technology. The computer that controls that has got some sort of a problem, and it's causing the cars to brick. But I only, I used that as a peripheral segue to get into what I thought was more interesting in that when Teslas work properly, they can be bricked whenever Tesla slash Elon Musk wants to brick them. They have that technology, you know, related to this, which is, I think, equally interesting. When that guy drove the Cybertruck up to the Vegas hotel and detonated it, within hours, it was made public that they knew everything about this guy's

peregrinations. And there was a part of it, I think we both said it at the same time, who wants a vehicle that's talking to everything, talking to the system, to the manufacturer like that? I mean, who wants that? Who wants it? And you don't have any option to opt out of it is the other aspect. And you and I love to hit the Elon pinata, but it's not just Tesla. It's all of them. And I'm doing everything that I can to spread awareness of the fact that these cars all send and receive telemetry, just like a spaceship. You know, they're constantly in communication with the hive mind, to call it, you know, to use that term. And that data is getting sold, from what I understand. That's the whole purpose. Yeah, it's not like you have the option. When you buy the car, this is the part that really

galls me. You're the one who is allegedly the owner of this thing. You're making the payments, your name is on the title, and yet somebody else, and you don't even know who it is specifically, has operative control over your vehicle. They can dive into its guts, so to speak, and they can find out where you've been, how far you've been driving, how fast you've been driving, all these sorts of things. How is that tolerable? Are you sure, though, that there is no way to opt out of those? Because usually they ask for all sorts of permission or clicks before you're able to give up that data, or is this not happening? I think what happens when you sign the paperwork, when you buy the car, you sign a EULA, just like when you get your cell phone or sign up for any other electronic Internet thing.

You sign the EULA, and probably the way it works is if you don't agree, then a lot of the functionality of the car won't work. You know, they've designed them now that they have to receive these updates in order for their various systems to work. And if you don't get the updates, then the thing doesn't work. So it's kind of a rock and a hard place situation. All right. How has the rollout been of the so-called congestion relief zones in New York City? Can you tell me? Yeah, well, let's begin with the verbiage. I think

it's very important to deconstruct the words. Yes. You know, they call it things like that, like they ask you to pay your fair share, right? And you're contributing to Social Security. No, you're not. This isn't about congestion relief. It's about making driving more difficult, more expensive in order to discourage driving. That's what it's about. And it's not just New York City, which is the focus of the article, where people now have to pay $9 a day just to drive into the city on top of what they have to pay to park. And by the way, I think that's any, is that to go in and out or just to go in or out? And so they pay you one way or the other. I don't know. It's one way, but if you run

the numbers just one way, it still amounts to about $2,100 a year. Now, mind you, everybody's paying for the roads in the form of motor fuel vehicles taxes. They're now specifically adding a double tax to people who just want to get into the city to work. And a lot of those people have no choice because it's so expensive to live in New York that they have to live across the river in New Jersey or Connecticut or some other place. And it's absolutely outrageous. And this is something that they pioneered in Europe, and they're beginning to beta test it here. So it's not going to be confined to New York. They're going to try to extend this to other cities and eventually all over the country if there isn't significant pushback.

That is what was being done here a number of years ago in Oregon, testing the OriGo system, which was the chipping, which is the equivalent of the E-ZPass. I guess if you're in the East Coast, the E-ZPass is what that's called, that sort of thing. Yeah, and again, look at that term, E-Z. Yeah, it sure is E-Z for them to fleece you. To fleece you as you go by. Yeah, yeah. Okay, how much pushback has there been in New York? Because I imagine if you're a cabbie or you're someone and you're delivering into the city,

it's like you don't want to go there, I would guess, right? Sure, there's been a lot of pushback by, you know, the rank and file, by working people, and also, by the way, from people who are trying to run a business, you know, in New York, an eatery, anything that involves catering to commuters. You know, there are going to be fewer commuters, fewer people going in there to buy lunch or breakfast or whatever it is on their way in and out. It's just going to encourage more mass migration, I think, away from these dying urban cores, which very few people, or at least fewer and fewer people, seem to be willing to live in anymore.

Which is really interesting. At the same time that they're making it less desirable to go there, the push is to force you into it, such as with the 15-minute city, the climate-friendly, equitable community sort of thing. We're going to make sure you can't live in the rural lands, so you're going to have to live in the city in Oregon. Yeah, it's a Sovietization of America. It really is. People ought to read the history of the Soviet Union. They did a similar thing back then. They did it more roughly. They rounded up the... They were called kulaks, meaning, you know, bourgeoisie, small landowners, farmers,

and people like that, and forced them into these collectives and into urban areas and transformed them into worker armies. And it was absolutely horrific and miserable. And piece by piece, in a little gentler and softer way, they're trying to implement the same sort of thing here. Yeah, history rhyming a little bit, not exactly a repeating of it. Now, in spite of all of the challenges, which you certainly detailed over the last 15, 20 minutes or so, Eric, you ended up taking out a 2025 VW Jetta GL1 for a review this week, and you're really enjoying this. Tell me how you're enjoying it. What's the deal? Well, it's spectacular because it's so unusual to find not just a car, but a four-door car, a sedan that still comes standard with, wait for it, huh? What's the deal? Well, it's spectacular because it's so unusual to find not just a car,

but a four-door car, a sedan, that still comes standard with, wait for it, a manual transmission. I didn't even know they made them anymore, but it's good to know that someone still is. Okay. Yeah, and it's standard. You don't have to pay extra for it. You know, I'm like, even the Corvette now is automatic only. You know, it's getting so difficult to find a manual in anything that it's refreshing to find one that's standard. Now, is it standard because they haven't changed the design? You know, sometimes it's, you know, the only way they're able to not have to go to the automatic because of the fuel economy standard is if they're updating the design. They're changing things, so they have to match the current regs. Yeah, it's a holdover. It is.

The current cheddar, they refreshed the looks a little bit, but fundamentally it's the same dating back to about 2019. So I'm worried that this might be the final year for this car before they make it automatic only, just like everything else. But it's still available, and that's really good news. And I know I harp on this a lot, but a manual makes such a difference in terms of the driving experience, which becomes less passive. You're actually involved in the driving, and that makes it fun. Even you and I can remember when even your, you know, ratty little Chevette or Pinto or whatever you had to drive back in the day was at least more interesting to drive when it had a manual. And, you know, we've lost that. Yeah, well, you had to do something.

You had to do something other than just sit and push, you know, that kind of thing. And actually think about it and strategize. Okay, all right, how fast can I take the, speaking of a Chevette, I had one for a while in the early 80s. Ay, ay, ay, ay, boy, what a, yeah, what a bucket of problems it was. But, hey, it was my first new car, okay? But you could do a burnout. It was rear-wheel drive. Imagine an economy car that was rear-wheel drive.

Yeah, that is true. That is true. You know, you were able to do it. I think the only way to make the Chevette burn out, the tires had to be on wet pavement. Wet pavement, and then you'd have to hold the clutch in, wind the engine up to about 5,000, and dump it, and you might leave a little bit of rubber. I love the memory. All right. Hey, Eric, I appreciate you coming on here.

What are you going to be reviewing for next week here? What's in the driveway? It looks like another crossover is coming, I think. Yay! Yeah, Lexus RX, I think, which is, you know, it's another example of our diminution, if you will, because the RX, and mind you, this is Lexus, a luxury brand. That thing, from its inception back in 1998, always came standard with a V6, as it should for $50,000, right? Right. It no longer does. It's got a turbo hybrid four now

because of the compliance issue. But at least, you know, the four-cylinder is now the luxury engine in today's America, right? Yeah, it seems like it. Yeah, that's where we're going to head to. You know, soon the four-cylinder is going to be the ultimate status symbol, and the proletarians will have a three or maybe even a two-cylinder Briggs & Stratton. I don't think it would pass a mission. It's going to be kind of going back to like the Trabant in the old Soviet old soviet union the uh east east germany right is that where they had those with you know at least the trabant was cheap in the sense that it was affordable it when you eventually got your turn to get one whereas here we're going to be

paying through the nose to drive the equivalent of a trabant well it's going to be an interesting time for sure it already is here and what are you thinking about uh the trump pick for transportation secretary have you written much on that? Well, not yet because I haven't thoroughly looked into it, but he's far and away better than what we've got right now in the form of Pete Buttigieg, who even leaving aside ideological issues, has no business being in that job because he has no experience, no knowledge at all. Hey, the only reason he was picked is because he was gay. That was all. It was just because he was a transformational character.

That's all. That's the only reason. He checked the right box, so that's good. You know because he was gay. That was all. It was just because he was a transformational character. That's all. That's the only reason. He checked the right box. So that's good. You know, I'm cautiously optimistic about things. We'll wait and see what comes down the pike. I really hope that Trump goes for the jugular with regard to these regulations, which are killing everything and pointing out that these regulations are for regulation's sake.

In other words, they're not doing anything to save the planet, save the environment, or safety, or any of that. They are just designed to just strangle us and make things so expensive and to immiserate and to impoverish us. All right. Eric, thanks so much. We'll catch you next Wednesday. Be well, okay? Thanks, Bill. You too. Eric Peters, epautos.com.