Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 01-16-25_THURSDAY_6AM

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

Morning news, open calls on Conspiracy Theory Thursday, much talk on fire map issues and more. Claton Butcher is President of CrossCurrent Digital, online conservative and Christian book portal - Important to get away from the censors.

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. Delighted that you are here for Conspiracy Theory Thursday. Number 770-5633-770-KMED. My email is bill.billmyershow.com. Read as many as I can.

Well, I read them all, but try to answer, I should say, as many as I can. But, you know, one guy, doing my best here, telling stories, having a good time here with you and your calls on local talk radio. It's kind of nice to have local talk radio in a world in which everything seems to be nationalized and there are chains, talk radio chains, you know, that kind of thing. Here, we do it our way all right and appreciate you being here one way or the other and also streamed on kmed.com whether you're catching me on podcast a little bit later on due to your scheduling whatever the case might be

and um let's see am i missing anything else oh yeah 99.3 kbxg and grants pass 106.3 kmed and kmed hd1 in jackson, 106.7 in South Jackson County. And speaking of South Jackson County, Senator Jeff Golden, I've been communicating with him, and we've had a lot of conversation about the wildfire maps and where we're going to move forward on that. People are bent out of shape, and rightly so, because it does appear to be the biggest property rights takeover that I've seen since Senate Bill 100 in the early 1970s. It almost seems like the culmination. And I appreciate that Senator Golden is willing to come on the program.

He finally settled on this. It's going to be tomorrow morning at 730. Now, the senator is also going to have a couple of people with him on the call, and I think this is about trying to get as good of information out to people as we can. And so hopefully this will not be too confusing. I'm going to do my best to study because I'm not an attorney. I'm just a regular guy. I have friends that have been looking into this law, Mr. X, among many others.

And it would appear to us, well, it's appearing to us, though, that Senate Bill 762 is really not following the law, you know, existing law, on how the state is supposed to be interacting with property owners. And Bob Hart mentioned a bit of that yesterday.

And if you missed the interview with Bob Hart, land use consultant from Rogue River, retired, go ahead and check out the podcast from the 8 o'clock hour on BillMeyersShow.com. You can also find that on KMED.com. Okay. Doing our best to try to pick our way through this because this is a big deal. In fact, it really feels like the worst part of it are the future landmines that have been planted for people who own property in the rural areas. And I also had a listener, I finally got a scan of what these letters look like because I live in a moderate area. So being in a moderate area, I didn't get the letter from the state. So I have not even seen them yet until this morning. So it's very helpful. Thank you, Jeff.

I really appreciate that. And we're going to do our best to – I still don't think there's any way of getting around the fact that Senate Bill 762 and even the fixes after it are an abomination. You're trying to – well, first of all, how is Senate Bill 762 going to put out any fire? How is Senate Bill 762 going to protect ourselves from the danger of federal lands that tend to be burning and then touch off our fires? And, I mean, is the purpose to depopulate the rural areas? Because it would appear that that is the end result.

And we'll be talking about this. I'm glad that Senator Golden has agreed to come on. He and I don't really agree on much when it comes to our political point of view. And something which has caused this much drama, turmoil, and danger coming from our Southern Oregon legislators, and I'm speaking specifically of Senator Golden and State Representative Pam Marsh because they both sponsored this on both sides of the legislature. There were a couple of dim-bulb Republicans that voted for this. Most did not because they understood the danger.

But none of this, from what we can tell, you know, when you're at this point where you can cut down every tree on your property, you could get rid of all the grass, all the brush on your property, and you're still considered at a high risk for wildfire, there's something wrong. You know, there's something wrong there. And when you can't get to the actual mathematics that calculates why you are a high wildfire risk, that's not right either. And it's really against the law. And we have this whole situation where the state university system was tasked with doing this, and as if the state university system, for some reason, as part of its business,

is supposed to know about wildfire prevention having never gone out and fought a wildfire in its entire existence you know just saying you know all sorts of things so anyway that'll be coming up tomorrow morning 7 30 is when we're hoping to do this and go to do my best like i said i'm not an attorney but you know you shouldn't have to be an attorney to understand what they're trying to do so hopefully we'll get it all figured out together okay by the way senator golden is having a town hall tonight and that's going to be 5 15 5 15 till 6 30 at the medford library i think it's the adams room but anyway just go there where all the people are and you'll you'll find jeff and i think these going to be mostly talking about what is happening in the future in the future legislation in this current session which really gets up uh gets going gets

rolling really on monday or no tuesday it's gonna be tuesday after martin luther king jr day which is actually the trump inauguration day let me tell, there are people in Washington, D.C. that are upset about that. How dare you get inaugurated on Martin Luther? Anyway, so we'll hopefully have a good conversation. Maybe we'll understand more. And maybe there's not as much to worry about as I think. But, you know, worrying about what the state of Oregon is doing to property rights, you can never be too careful. You can never be too careful in jealously guarding property rights because everything since Senate Bill 100 in the early 1970s has been about attacking them.

17 minutes after 6, Conspiracy Theory Thursday. Let me grab line one. Hi, good morning. And who might you be? Hey, Martin Bell. It's Cliff. Hey, Cliff, good to have you on. What are you be? Hey, Martin Bell. It's Cliff. Hey, Cliff. Good to have you on. What are you thinking?

Well, I want to read a little bit here for you because I received one of those letters, and I'm not going to be able to appeal because of the location of my property. Why is that? Because even Bob Harvey is saying just appeal anyway. It's almost like he's thinking just protest and overwhelm the system cloward pivoted you know i i don't think that's going to work in my opinion i i've got a special use permit on a forest service lot in the national forest and i'm covered around by uh national forest and you know which is like saying in essence you are threatened by the National Forest, right? Well, yeah. I mean, a lot of people are. But let me get to my point here. Okay, sorry.

Let me read something here for you. It says, the hazard zone designations are based on recent data of the four criteria on which the map must be based. Weather, climate, topography, and vegetation type. And that's what Bob talked about yesterday. Right. It is not representative of fire prevention measures you may have already implemented on your property. See, that's the example of what Bob's talking about, which doesn't matter what you do.

You know, you could pour concrete over everything. You're still going to burn in their mind. Right. Then it continues on. If you already have a defensible space around your home or belong to a firewise community, the map may not require you to do anything further. However, these actions won't change your hazard zone determination. The conditions used to create the map may change over time. The wildfire hazard map will be updated, it is sprinkled through the notice

of proposed action, final order, that everybody received the certified letter from the Department of Forestry. And it doesn't matter, like Bob and you just stated here, it doesn't matter how much remediation you have performed on your property. If you're in that high hazard area, you have to focus on weather, climate, topography, and vegetation type. And that is what your appeal will be based on, not what you've done on your property. Okay, what if you have no vegetation? You've got to get out of it. Okay, well, there's also a discovery process that's in this legal document that everybody has received, and you should, and I don't know if you're going to be able to, but you should

be able to ask for discovery of what's in that black box for the modeling that they have done on this high hazard zone assignment. In other words, the computer models, right? Yes. Yes. So in my opinion, you know, I'm not an attorney not an attorney. This isn't legal advice or anything like that. But if someone's going to appeal this, you're going to need legal assistance. You can't be an amateur and go up against this.

Well, perhaps you can, though, because of the illegality of the process you know if you can't appeal you know your particular situation you can call out the fact that what has been done here is an illegal constructed fraud and you have to have evidence based upon that and if you don't have knowledge on that you're going to to fail. Well, maybe we can help out with that and other people. Mr. X has been working on this, and of course you know what an amazing legal researcher he is, that there are amazing ORSs in effect right now in the state of Oregon that require that everything that the state is doing when it comes to you and your relationship with property rights.

I'm kind of paraphrasing here right now. Everything has to be transparent. And on the face of it, the Senate Bill 762 fire map is totally opaque to people. the mathematics, to be able to try to ferret out that information of that black box modeling that they've come out with this map on. Yeah, okay. Cliff, I appreciate that, and yeah, these are the things that we're going to be battling here over the next, well, 50-something days, because you have until, what is the deadline here march uh yeah 60 days from the 7th of january yeah so march 7th or so roughly speaking in that in the neighborhood appreciate the call thanks for making it yeah this is a big deal this is huge deal huge deal lots of like i

said it's not affecting me directly because i'm in a moderate so i didn't get this letter but um you know everybody else uh that seems to be uh anywhere in any kind of rural land, you've got it. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Welcome. Yeah, good morning, Bill. This is Terry. Hi, Terry.

You know what? With their maps, is Phoenix and Talent in the high hazard area? I mean, I almost guarantee more houses have burned to wildfire in the urban areas rather than the rural areas, if you look at the map. Why aren't those in the high-hazard area? I don't know if it's – actually, I haven't looked at the fire map to see if the city of Phoenix and Talmud are in the high – but it looks like every – it looks like every urban area has been calculated to not be, to be mild or moderate. You understand what I'm saying here? Is that hundreds of houses burned in there.

And over the years, how many houses have burned due to a wildfire out in the county or somewhere like that? So it almost looks like like Lahaina. You have Southern California. You have Phoenix, Dallas. Those have burned thousands of houses. Why wouldn't those be in the high hazard area? That's a very good question. And I might just have to ask the group tomorrow about that.

Yeah, because Senator Golden is going to be coming on and he's going to have a couple of people with the agencies involved here. And then also how many people have died between urban and rural. I would say a lot more died in the cities due to wildfire than in the counties. Yeah. Interesting. All right. Hey, thanks for that, Terry. Good thought process there. Interesting. Hi, good morning. This is Bill. This is Ed, Bill. Ed, I appreciate you calling back. All right. Thank you. What I've what I tried to do is get into the fine print, let's say, of 762. And it takes you to the control statutorily that are based, you know, that are set that up.

And one of them is ORS 477.490. Now, I want everybody to remember that the statutes are supposed to guide the administrative rules that you're going to appeal on but if you uh can post that link so people can read this 477.490.490 okay i'm writing this down right now ed okay all right yes state statewide map of wildfire risk. Okay. Now, this is literally the statutes that govern the creation of this map. And specifically, I want to take you, for the sake of time, right now to item number seven under, and it says the map must, and I'm going to go to 7B so everybody understands how this can be fought at a hearing. And 7B says sufficiently be, the map must be sufficiently detailed to allow the assessment of wildfire risk at the property ownership level. So this has to be very granular, very detailed information available to you, right?

No, am I right about that, though? I just want to be clear. Am I correct in that assumption? Yeah, I think you are, yeah. And it gives you the ability to go to a hearing and say, your mapping is flawed. I have done this, this, this, and this. And they must alter that map at that point, note, 477.490 to 477.504. Okay? Now, 477.504 was interesting. It says, no effect on management of private land.

Okay? of private land. Okay. So you go to 477.504 and you read that reduction of wildfire risk. And this is ORS 477.503 reduction. Well, does not expand, diminish, or otherwise affect a right, privilege, duty, or function established under federal, state, or local laws or rules that pertain to the management of private lands in this state. Well, what is that? They're supposed to do this. We're not expanding or diminish or affect a right a privileged duty or function then i guess the question would be why are they doing this why are they doing the map that's the that's the thing so in a hearing you have to understand if you're going to this hearing okay if you in i would hire legal counsel but make sure your legal counsel is educated to these particular things.

Because if you have taken certain steps, you have a right to argue this. And if you argue it within the law, that's what you have to do. Ed, thank you. And when did you send me that correction here? Because you had sent me some information yesterday. Did you send it this morning or not? I'll send it again right now, Bill. And what I did, this came from a link within another state document, okay?

Okay. So what I'm going to do is send you directly that link right now uh and it's just literally ors uh 504 or no uh 477.490 okay all right please uh send me in detail because what you sent yesterday didn't take me to where i thought i was going to go so i just want to make you make it easy for people i know it's going to take a little bit of reading for folks to understand this but as you have said before there is peace within the law and the chaos which senate bill 762 appears to be trying to foist upon the lands is um is not not supposed to be really when you look at some of the other ors's that seem to have been getting ignored so it at least would give you the opportunity to argue this okay would that be a good way to wrap this? And that's the truth, Bill.

And these are the things that what we have to understand is that it may take an effort, but we can go after these people to do their jobs. And I don't agree that the university should have been used in this at all. And that's, I believe, where whoever wrote this law, whoever put it in, they made an assumption that they could gain power by using the academics at the university to, you know. But this is not the academics area of expertise here. None of them have fought fires. None of them understand what's really going on there, you know.

I'm talking philosophically. It's a communist intrusion. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it. That's always the goal. You know, the the revolution is the point, right? It's the right. Yeah. All right. And thanks for the call. And I look forward to seeing the link. And I will share that a little bit later. It may take me a little bit later on in the morning after the show. We'll see, okay? 6.30 at KMED. Hi, this is Bill Meyer, and I'm with Charisse from No Wires Now, your Dish Premier local retailer. It's time to switch to Dish. If you have direct TV or cable TV,

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Escape stock number TR59789. All financing on approved credit through Ford Credit. Hi, I'm Charlene, owner of American Industrial Door, and I'm on 106.7 KMED. By the way, we're going to have a good half hour of open phones coming up at 7 o'clock. 7 o'clock. I do have a guest coming up here in a few minutes, but we will definitely get more of your calls on Conspiracy Theory Thursday. We can talk more of your questions or comments on the fire mapping issue because it's just it's blowing up as the as the media would like to say. Well, it's just blowing up, right? Yeah, because the letters going out there that people have been getting the last few days has really brought it home.

And Senate Bill 762,2 of course was held back what two three four times and every time it seems to come back and it's still deeply flawed at the core uh michael shaw's here hey michael i'll give you a quick bite before news time how you doing uh real quick uh looking at the organ uh math that we're talking about, it appears that 90% of the low-risk area is Eugene, Corvallis, Salem, and Portland. That strip right there. There's a couple of other green spots, you know, that are low-risk. But any of the low-risk spots are major population areas, you know, Medford and Ashland. Callant and Phoenix are moderate risk.

Okay, they're moderate. Where I am, out by Foothill, is considered of moderate risk. How was Grants Pass rated, do you know? Inner City is considered low risk. But fires in L.A. prove that that is absolutely not correct if they're talking about fire damage potential. Yeah, firestorms don't care if you have a densely populated city area. That's not going to help at all. You're going to have more loss.

You're going to have not only loss of property but potential loss of life in a city area versus a wildlife area. Ultimately, my suspicion, though, is that Senate Bill 762, I think the real intent, and I may be wrong about this, I don't claim to be an expert on it because I'm just like you, everybody else, we read it, we see what's happening. I think it's really about finding a way to assess and tax the daylights for firefighting protection out of the wildland areas. I can't help but think that that's what this is really about. Yeah, look at the green area from Eugene, Corvallis, Salem, and Portland. Look where the universities are.

Yeah. Of course, I don't know. Maybe Southern Oregon University is getting pretty close to the edge of town. It might be close to a moderate area. Hard to say. Well, that's considered a low area because you've got a school down there. It's a ridiculously stupid map. It really is. All right. Well, it was made by the school. So there you go. Yep. Thanks for the call, Michael. Like I said, we'll have some more open phones 7 o'clock or so, maybe even a little bit later on this hour. Okay, so we'll check what else is going on with some of our news.

And we're going to shift into a conspiracy theory topic I've wanted to get to, Conspiracy Theory Thursday. And people don't talk enough about this, but I think it's important. The censorship of conservative or alternative viewpoint books in the online booksellers and is it necessary to do something about that i'm going to talk with um with clayton butcher he's the president of cross current digital kind of knows his stuff on this and i think it's an interesting interesting situation on what's getting censored what's getting yanked out of the Amazons of the world, okay? Hi, this is Glory from Eagle Point. My dad asked me to get a quote from my own auto

insurance and suggested I call Steve at Sky Park Insurance. Steve said... Visit WashBuggyAutoSpa.com. It's the Bill Myers Show on KMED, Southern Oregon's place to talk. Clayton Butcher joins me. He's the president of Cross Current Digital. We wanted to dig into a part of the free speech arguments here. And, of course, everything about talk radio here, we try to be as open-minded and into as much free speech as possible because without the speech, nothing happens. I mean, look at this conversation we've been having about the wildfire maps and everything else. But what happens if somebody prints a book and nobody's able to get it or get to it? It's an interesting thing which is happening, and this is why I've been concerned about the rise of the online book world. And even though I read tons of books, and a lot of them are digital books that I have, and I start wondering after a while, what do I really own?

Well, Clayton Butcher, like I mentioned, Cross Current Digital. Clayton, it's a pleasure having you on. Morning. It's good to be here. All right. Tell me about your experience in the online publishing world and the rise of censorship. I imagine it's probably more than just Amazon, or maybe it is just Amazon. Why don't you let me know?

Sure. So the biggest issue is Amazon, because Amazon is the largest retailer of pretty much everything. But even in the book world, I've seen numbers between 63% and 83% of all book sales in the U.S. go through Amazon. And so when they decide to not carry something, it's a big deal. Because, like you said, as we were talking off the air, most people, that's where they buy their books. Even Christians are conservatives, which is really concerning. Yeah. And if Amazon will not carry it or will not permit it, or I've also heard rumors that some books have been requested that they be edited before they are accepted. And the thought that the Jeff Bezos types are the ones that are going to be in control of the thought process moving forward, a little bit of a concern. I'm not a big fan of tech bros telling me what I'm allowed to see.

What about you? Yep. I definitely am concerned as well. It's just problematic, like you said, when just a handful of people get to decide what gets printed, what gets published. And when it's somebody as big as Amazon or an entity that large, if a publisher knows that they're not going to be able to sell to more than 30%, if you're assuming a 70 percent goes through Amazon, that book then doesn't get published. Editors won't accept books that are proposed. Agents won't represent books that are proposed. And then it goes all the way down.

Why would somebody spend a year, however long it takes to write a good book on a solidly biblical book, or at least with a biblical worldview, which is what conservative values come from. Now, by the way, you're a former pastor, right? No, I didn't take it. Now, you're a former pastor, right, Clayton? What did you do in the past? I was a leader, music pastor. Okay, all right, all right.

Not officially ordained. I do have to. That's okay. But yes, 13 years serving local church. That's all right. I don't think the Lord is concerned if you're officially ordained or not. But still, you're in the club, okay? That's all.

That's just checking. Let's just cut to the chase here. Is most of the censorship on the religious side of things or, or elsewhere? Where, where do we find most of the challenges? In fact, you, you, you've, uh, talked about, I guess, what was the, uh, what was Mandy Bell's book that was a sensor? Was that one of your copies or one of your, uh, one of your titles? Tell me about that. Yep, so that one, that book was, it's called, of course, I forget. No, I have it in front of me here. I have it in my notes here. About 200 books, yeah. Yeah, it's They Say We Are Infidels is the name of Mindy Bell's book. And I've not read this, I've not heard of this until now. Of course, there may be a reason why I haven't heard of it, and that's because it's been uh it was kicked off the amazon platform right this one actually was uh

was a different entity not amazon oh it wasn't okay yeah yeah and so uh um it was soundcloud which is a online um music uh they have widgets that you can put different places. So it's really common for voice actors. Yeah, music and podcasts. Yeah, music, podcasts, sure. Okay, yeah, some talk radio hosts use SoundCloud too. So she was kicked off for that. Why? Tell us why.

That book was removed, yes. They say that it was flagged as hate speech um which is interesting uh when it's literally recounting christians being slaughtered in the middle east by isis but it was it was uh removed for for hate speech what happens to someone like Mindy Bells then? You know, when you have something like this, which is actually telling factual information, which is uncomfortable for the tech pros?

That's a good question. So in this case, it was not removed from sale. It was just removed. We used that for SoundCloud in the past uh we may be moving to something else but uh use that for um sharing the samples of books on our website so that there's a player there um so it oh was this an audio book that was taken off soundcloud is that what that was yes okay now i. Now I understand this a little more clearly, Clayton. Okay.

So are we at the point now where we're just going to need to have to, you know, conservative or Christian online platforms for digital books? Are you just going to have to leave the tech bros domain somehow and build? You know, I've been talking for years here about building parallel societies in some cases. I mean, President Trump is coming in here, but President Trump's not going to fix everything. You know, he's not going to fix, you know, this probably, especially with the tech bros giving him millions of dollars right now. Who knows? But I digress. What do you think? Where do we go on this yeah that's something that i actually um give a little bit of a of a presentation on it some of the homeschool

conventions that we go to and exhibit at for cross current so on the parallel economy and So I completely agree that it may not be necessary this moment, but as soon as – yeah, Trump's not going to fix everything. We understand that. Or if the election had gone the other way, that would have been really concerning because there's banks that have deplatformed. There's Shopify, PayPal. All of these have deplatformed Christians the app stores removed, completely removed their content. Their entire business was gone overnight. And so it's certainly necessary now to begin to build and to strengthen what is building. We actually launched CrossCurrent over four years ago, about four years ago. Was it in response to what you saw happening there, the rise of this?

Yeah, as an audiobook publisher first, we had three different audiobook publishing companies, small ones, published about 200 books in total. But one of those was When Harry Became Salary by Ryan T. Anderson. I remember that. I remember that. So that's our book. Not through CrossCurrent, but through Black Hills Audiobooks. And that was why we believe God gave us this calling, if you will. It certainly was not my idea, but that's how it initiated, was censorship from

Amazon. And if we don't build it. I'm speaking once again. Yeah, if you don't build it, I think what you do is that you look at President Trump here, and believe me, I'm not a doom and gloomer. I'm not that. But a trend in motion tends to stay in motion for a long time before there's a pullback. And I know that President Trump's election has been a reaction to the leftist and the woke revolution, which has been taking over schools, academia, corporate world and things like that. Now, there have been some victories and I'm glad to see this but still the trend is for more uh for more uh repression would you agree with me on that first off here clayton uh yes i would i do believe that we've we currently have a bit of a reprieve um i think that's why you see uh like facebook and walmart

walking back dei and and well yeah they're trying to buddy up to the new boss at the moment. You know, at the moment. Okay. Yes. But you see, they would do that no matter who was president, though. Honestly, I think. They're looking at the bottom line. My concern, though, is that conservatives and Christians will go to sleep over the next

three, four years because they're thinking, oh, well, Trump's here. Trump's going to fix everything. And well, you know, Trump is a process. And what's what we're fighting right now is deeply embedded in our culture right now, whether and we don't probably want to admit that. Right. We just don't want to think about it, that it's that deep and dark right now. Sure.

Yep, that's that's true um so we should be using the time then while trump is president and and hopefully maybe people that are similar to him will continue on i mean hey we can always hope right fella can dream and pray right but there you go yeah but still you should be preparing right now and getting these robust platforms ready right now at this time, right? That's kind of where you're going and warning people about this, right? Yep, that's correct. All right. CrossCurrent Digital, what is your website then?

Where can people go to find you? CrossCurrentDigital.com. CrossCurrentDigital.com. Crosscurrentdigital.com. As you mentioned, we have over 10,000 books, and we make sure that it's safe for families and that nothing goes against biblical values because there's no other platform out there that is Christian and or conservative-owned. So we, as of this moment,

we're the only platform where you can buy digital books that is owned by Christians. Even Christian Book is no longer owned by Christians. Really? Yep, yep. What's it owned by? Larry Fink over BlackRock or something like that? Who owns it? I'm just curious. It's like Larry Fink is trying to buy everything else, and maybe he'd buy the Christian online portals too.

Who knows, right? Yeah, I don't remember exactly, but it was sold a couple years ago after we started. And Christian Audio, again, that was sold maybe 12, 15 years ago now, is not Christian-owned. So we are the only existing, current existing platform that is owned and caters to and serves the church. So you've had to face with, like you said, you've talked about facing censorship right in, you've been right in the teeth of the maw of this, okay?

What about the whole challenge of the digital book in general? Do you ever think about that? Because there's a part of me, as much as I enjoy the convenience of my digital books, I get a little concerned that whatever is digital can, A, be single point of failure controlled by, you know, whoever's controlling the Internet. And even if you buy digital books, every digital book platform usually requires some communication to the net and or various servers in order to be able to view and keep up with your so-called, I'm putting your in scary air quotes, your content. And are we kind of being foolish to go down the digital book world? What do you think? That's a good question. I think it's a valid point. But especially with other platforms that certainly do not hold biblical values

and promote values that go against what we believe. So I certainly understand that. And then you have the issue with publishers and authors that have the copyrights. I mean, I know printing on paper is expensive. It's more expensive. The digital thing is cheap. Boy, you can get paid more easily. But when you have the paper, no one's going to edit your paper.

Do you ever get concerned that we're going to get to the point where the government and or other corporate forces will get to the point where they say, hey, you have to edit this book or else we're going to edit this book for you and we're going to change the language? Because the language that was used in what we've already seen this happening already with tom sawyer the adventures of tom sawyer remember people were talking about the editions of it coming out that uh that took out words that are considered unsavory for today's consumption you know that kind of thing also happened with goosebumps theories that's happened with um uh Seuss. So yes, that is certainly a concern. And think about that with history books. Think about this with a government-edited version of the Bible, you know, at some point, if you go to that point. I mean, you could go down a rabbit hole on this one, couldn't you, Clayton?

You certainly can, yes. So we're trying to be, hopefully, at least part of that solution. And that's why we're a purchase platform and not just rental. We want books that people purchase to be for them to be able to continue to access them and not just, oh, I'm going to rent this now. And then not if the rights revert, we can no longer sell that. But if somebody has purchased it and then the rights revert to the author, to the publisher, then that content cannot be changed. All right. So overall, you're working to help the situation. I appreciate that. And anybody who is a warrior for free speech and try to keep good information in the hands of the people, I'm happy to mention here. Cross Current Digital, I'll put your information up there. And if anything else goes on there, you know, and if you get to the point where – are you on Amazon Web Services?

Just curious. Just about everybody is, it seems. Just about everybody is. We've been bootstrapping this whole thing, my wife and I. It's really hard to take on Amazon by yourself. And when we started this, again, almost four years ago, we had no other options to get out. Because all you have to do is see what happened with Parler once again. Amazon Web Services, they yank you.

Boom, you're done. It's like you're a website without a host. Nobody can hear you or see you or anything else. And this is dangerous territory, these single points, these choke points that have been set up in the tech world. So, yeah, if there's a way that you can own your own servers and your own, uh, and your own, you know, connections, that would probably be a good thing for you long-term. Yep. Absolutely. That is, uh, that is certainly the plan. All right, Clayton. Wherever we have been able to, credit card processing is another one. Oh yeah. Well, we can talk another hour on that, but sure.

So, uh, so we've insulated whatever we're able to all right from uh from big tech thank you very much for the uh for the details it's a really uh important story that people need to keep an eye on clayton butcher president of cross current digital we'll have you back you be well okay take care thank you 658 this is kmed 99.3 kbxg hi this is duane barkley with american renter garage wishing you a happy new year This is KMED 99.3 KBXG. American Rancher Garage, your night in service. Hi, this is Dwayne Barkley with American Rancher Garage, wishing you a happy new year. Start 2025 right with saving 25 for 25. That's right, save 25% on all lube oil filter services and BG branded services,

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News Talk 1063. KMED. You're waking up with the Bill Myers Show. 7 o'clock. KMED. KMED HD1. Eagle Point, Medford. KBXG Grants Passes where you are.

It is Conspiracy Theory Thursday. You know, going back on the digital book issue here, like I said, I read lots of books. I'd like to be able to read more. Sometimes I wish I could do a little bit more of that and not get sucked into the computer screen all the time. But, you know, most of my books are digital, but I have a library in my office where I try to keep as many paper books that are going on. And I wish that there was a way maybe we can come to an understanding when it comes to the digital rights world that, okay, I have a digital copy of a book. That means that that should be hashed or somehow assigned to me that I keep it and I can open it no matter whether there's an internet or not.

Also, I should be able to print one copy of it. One copy. I don't know how the tech could be used to accomplish this, but I should be able to print one copy of the book for my own personal use. You know, that kind of thing. Because I've always been concerned that some of the most important, most informational books here, no internet, no access to it, no ability to renew it. I know my son, even when it comes to the ownership of music, yeah, I've got CDs, a lot of CDs, things like that, but I've ripped most of

that into digital copies. And so I've got those three old school iPods, the old school iPods that are not connected to the online world. You just put them on there and there they are. And my son, Will, will say, Dad, why are you using that thing? It's old school, things like that. Everyone's using Spotify. They get music on TikTok or, you know, whatever the case might be. I said, son, I have it. It's mine. You know, as long as I can keep the devices working i've got it you know i don't have to worry about having my uh my soundcloud or my spotify account or having to pay apple music 13.99 a month or whatever they're charging now for unlimited music right you know that kind of

thing the the mulcting the death of a thousand cuts in our budget with stuff that you used to just have in your hands. I don't know. Maybe we can talk about that and various other things. But it is open phones right now. We'll certainly hit that. Had a great experience at a store yesterday. Wanted to share a little bit about that and maybe question JPR's approach to coincidences.

We'll kick around that and so much more. Maybe you have a call on the fire map issue, too. Happy to take those coming up.