Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 01-17-25_FRIDAY_6AM

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

Morning news and calls on the issues and then the DC swamp update witih Rick Manning - interesting take on the confirmation hearings and who is in and or out.

The Bill Meyer 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 Meyer. Welcome to Friday. It is 10 minutes after 6 Friday, the 17th of January. Chile, Chile 31, at least here near the airport. And I was about 28 at my home this morning.

Not quite as slippery as it's been, even though it's pretty darn foggy. So just take it easy if you're out on the roads and watch it. Stopping distances are definitely, you know, trust me, the four-wheel drive. May have that Subaru, great car. Four-wheel drive doesn't help you stop. Just doesn't. Wish it did. But I remember when I was living in Fargo-Moorhead, North Dakota there for a couple of years.

And Fargo, well, Moorhead's Minnesota, but, you know, they're kind of twin cities. And they would always talk about, oh, all you people with four-wheel drive. The thing to do is to keep it in two-wheel drive all the time. And then when you finally get stuck, that's when you know that it's time to put it in four-wheel drive and get the heck out of there. You know, whatever the thing might be. I always liked that advice. I thought that was pretty good. Keeping it to most of the time gives you a false sense of security otherwise.

All right. Coming up this morning, we're going to have the swamp update. Rick Manning, probably a pre-inauguration look, see how things are going with the appointments and everything else going on with the Trump administration, incoming Trump administration. Rick Manning will have the details on that from Americans for Limited Government. Mr. Outdoors with the Outdoor Report. And I have a feeling he's going to have a thing or two to say about the fire map. Senator Jeff Golden will be joining the show after the 730 News.

And I'm looking forward to talking with him. I haven't talked with Jeff for a lot of years, and maybe I should have been talking with Jeff more often. I used to be involved in some groups with Senator Golden back in the day. I think it was Jack Lack was what we were doing. I think this is some 15, 16 years ago. Jackson County Local action committee. You know, we were trying to – it was one of these things in which we were trying – everyone's trying to reach across the aisle and find some common ground. And we were doing all that.

And I was concerned back then. It's just like, well, you know, Jeff's just going to take this group over. That's exactly what happened. You know? And it's kind of like – um and i'm not implying that senator golden is dirty that's not what i'm saying but it's sort of like when when there's conservatives and liberals in the room you know that sort of thing you know ultimately um the group is going to end up going more liberal or the liberals will end up kind of taking over because

you know liberals tend to be or progressives tend to be more believers in the process. And that's one of the challenges I think that conservatives have in dealing with them. Well, look at our state legislature. Look at our state legislature in which you have Republicans thinking that their job is to go in there and reach across the aisle and pass Democratic legislation. Well, they're going to have a lot of chances to do that from the sounds of it. Aye, aye, aye. But anyway, Jeff and I talked for a little bit last night.

He had a town hall meeting, and from all accounts, it did not go well. And it was in a small room at first, and there were like 150 people there, from what I understand. And Senator Golden was telling me that people were that that they actually got some threats had some threats some physical threats there from someone a physical threat maybe maybe more than one i don't know i didn't want to get too much i said well sad to hear that um sad to hear that and um jeff was telling me how he thinks that this is just all a big anti-government thing, and he is the government.

He represented the government. I said, yeah, tag your it, Jeff, I suppose. But I think what we're going to have to talk about, though, is that Senate Bill 762 that has everybody all hot and bothered. It's his baby. You know, to be surprised that there is this kind of vitriol. And he was talking about how nobody would let him talk and they would laugh and they would, you know, kind of shout him down. And that's not good. That's not good either, I have to say.

But I would say, what are you expecting? You know, essentially you're putting a one-size-fits-all rating on millions of acres, tens of thousands of tax lots. And I know how they were talking about this fire map. Well, it's only about 6% of the tax lots in Oregon are covered in higher extreme. But guess what? Most, if not almost all of it is down here in southern oregon so we got the progs up in portland saying well you know this is a fine it's going to help them fight wildfire and this and that doesn't affect us yeah it doesn't affect them it affects us in in southern oregon and it's a bad thing. And people are having their insurance canceled. They're being told, in essence, at the same time that we're having –

and I even told this to Senator Golden. I said, you know, Jeff, we have all this crap going on. It seems like they don't want – it seems like the state doesn't want anybody living on um on rural lands or if they do they're going to make it very expensive and unduly uh high regulatory bar in order to do it and you know we got this climate and you're gonna just want to shove us all into the climate friendly equitable community kind of thing that uh you know the kate brown ended up talking about he says well there's there's there's nothing going on to do that and he may be right there's nothing about that that's going on directly saying hey we're going to force you into the climate friendly equitable communities into the stack and pack uh cities you but no it's that

you'll lose your ability to live out there and then you'll just have to leave and that i can't help but think that that might be not a bug but a feature of the program. And Jeff and I may disagree on that, but we'll talk about it. My big concern, biggest concern that I think I have in the whole thing is that they're not following the law. I would highly recommend that if you have your property, and you have your property under this, you know, you got your letter, and you're all teed off. And by the way, I guess people were going in there and talking about, oh, we need to log again. That's not going to affect.

It's just even, we can't even go to the timber industry at this point. This has been decades, decades of damage done to the situation. And ultimately, nothing about Senate Bill 762, rather, does anything to put out a fire on federal land. And that's where a lot of the risk comes from in our rural areas. A lot of it BLM and U.S. Forest Service. And by the way, it's not that the BLM and U.S. Forest Service people don't want to do a better job, but then you have the environmental community, which of course Jeff Golden has been associated with for a long, long time, making sure that even dead and dying trees can't be harvested or make it so difficult that by the time stuff comes around, you know, that trees are worthless,

then nobody will bid on it, and then off we go. Why are we surprised then that when there's finally a chance to talk to Senator Golden that a lot of people are lashing out? I think it's really what was going on. It's not just about government. It's about just about government. It's about Oregon's government. And Jeff Golden and Pam Marsh and a lot of the other people, they're some of the top people in the whole deal.

And Senate Bill 762 was their baby or is their baby. Doesn't want it repealed here. I wanted to share one email I got from an attendee. I did not attend the meeting because I wanted to study the law because I knew that I was going to be talking with Senator Golden this morning. And by the way, there's also going to be an ODF official also joining in on the call. And if you haven't read ORS 477.490, which is about the statewide map of wildfire risk, then you are going to be going into an appeal or trying to fight it without understanding it. You really need to read the law.

Mr. X is absolutely right. It's not a very long law. It's like, you know, two or three pages or something. You can get into it. But I even told Senator Golden yesterday, I said, this is not, you guys aren't really following the law. I want to talk with you about this tomorrow. And like I said, we'll talk more about this when Senator Golden comes on, but if you look at 477.490, you'll find out that this whole thing about, you know, you come in and you say you've hardened your property, and then the ODF guy, the ODF administrative judge says, well, it doesn't matter. Nothing changes.

That's not what the law says. The law says they're supposed to pay attention to this. I'll just go through some of the law here. Section 5 or 6B, the board shall adopt rules that provide opportunities for public input into the assignments, da-da-da-da-da, require the department to provide notice and information about how a Okay. Provide notice and information. That's what they've done with the letter. Section C. property owners and local governments to appeal the assignment of properties to the wildfire risk classes after the map is developed, after any updates to the map, and within a reasonable time after delivery of the notice.

Also, establishing a specific process for appeals through which a requested change in assignment is based on. Now remember, this is the law. Establish a specific process for appeals through which a requested change in assignment is assessed based on, A, whether the assignment is consistent with the criteria, any pertinent facts that may justify a change in the assignment. As an example, there's no trees and no grass and we've hardened everything here. And we have water everywhere. I mean, that would be an example of a good challenge, right? Also, any error in the data the department used to determine the assignment. Now, here's how the map is supposed to be designed. The map that

we're all sitting around here and hyperventilating about. Hyperventilating for good reason if you're a rural property owner, okay? The map must be based on the wildfire risk classes yeah they're doing that be sufficiently detailed to allow the assessment of wildfire risk at the property ownership level that wildfire map fails, absolutely fails that test. You can't zoom in. I mean, you can zoom in on the property, but it doesn't give you any information. All it does is just say you're in high, right? That's all it does.

Also includes a layer that geospatially displays the locations of socially and economically vulnerable communities. Oh, my gosh, there's the DEI part of the map. But anyway, it's not detailed. The process for appeal is supposed to be paid attention to. It's not supposed to be this thing. The law actually says it's, this is not one of these things where the administrative law judge just says, well,

I know you hardened everything. I know there's nothing to treat, no trees here, but still, I'm sorry. You know, heads, we win,

tails, you lose, peon. That's not the law. It just isn't. Mr. X, glad you're here. How are you doing? Hello, Mr. X.

I can still hear you talking on the radio over there. Are we on air? Yeah. Yeah, we're on the air. How are you doing, sir? Okay. Very good. I saw you calling, and you and I were talking about this last night so i'm glad right it checked in what do you think the thing that i want people to relate to and what you just said that uh i think it was 7b and when you look at reality uh last night i heard jeff say several

times that well you know the administrator you can be you can do all the stuff you want to your property, but it can still fall in the red classification or the extreme danger. And that was said several times. And what I just want to make sure that he understands, I don't know what he had to do with this 477 section, but it all has to do with this wildfire things. And in particular, the law is stating. Now, so people can relate to this, that to me, if you are wanting a solution, he said he wanted solutions. He wanted to talk to people about solutions and to amend 762 to make it work. Yeah, well, the solutions are pretty simple.

Follow the law. There you go. How about that? You know, the example of this is now if you did do this, now you would have a map that would indicate where the problems are, and the problems are most likely BLM or Forest Service, you know, wherever your property backs up to or whatever you're stuck in the middle of. But to just simply blanket the whole area and then hold you in basic liability for fires, this is an absurdity in that regard.

So if you follow the law, there's peace within the law. They've actually addressed it. You know, when you read this and you understand it. Now, bear in mind, folks, the Oregon Constitution requires that all laws that are written be able to be understood by the common man. And I'm not saying don't hire an attorney. I'm not saying this, but an attorney. I'm not saying this, but I'm asking. Well, Jeff said that hiring an attorney would be a waste of money. That's what

he said. That's what I was told. He said that last night. And that's exactly right. And I personally, if the attorney is hired, he needs to be hired to file an injunction against the state to stop this travesty as it is right now if if indeed you want it to work then you have to address it because the the section you're reading from that particular law 477 uh was it dot 490 490 yeah 490 so that section right underneath the definition of it, it gives the title of Oregon 4774 and statewide map of wildfire risk. And it's under rules. Yeah. These are the rules that the administrative law judge is supposed to be following. Correct. Thank you. Now, who controls the administrative rules in the state of Oregon. It's the Secretary of State. That's right. So if anything, the Secretary of State should be busting the chops of the administrative law judge, right? That's exactly right. And if the

administrative law judge doesn't want to follow the law, well, that's unconstitutional. And it is thus considered an invalid rule, according to Oregon statute. So, you know, the reality to it is, is that this has to be addressed. You know, and Jeff has to get involved in this with the secretary of state because the law, you know, this 762 was his thing. Now, he says there's some good things in it. OK, there's disbursement of funds for treatments. I don't agree with the idea of burning everything okay i've i've made that clear when i when i was talking with the senator when i was talking with the senator last night though i was telling him jeff you know i don't think you could put enough fire

on the land here with how far this has gone you know well let's see just realistically burning everything is ridiculous it's an absolute absurd You know, let's look at the truth. OK, the actual truth. Historically, Phoenix and Talent, they're now fire adapted communities. But what did it take to get there? The basic destruction of both of them. Los Angeles County right now. okay, all of the fires down there, those are now fire-adapted communities. Because in order to come back, they have to build according to what they want to do as new fireproof structures and all of these things that they want to put in. You don't destroy society to put forth an ideal that's actually fundamentally flawed because they claim that the Native American Indians burnt for land management. And the reality to that is that's an absurd, absurd thing because they're a resource-based culture. Yeah, the last thing you'd want to do is to burn your hunting ground, okay? Exactly.

So it's based upon a lie. The people that go in and argue for this, okay, I can understand that. Sure, things come back after fun. Okay, that's fine. But you don't burn out our ability to exist here or burn entire communities to sit down and say you've satisfied a point. There has to be another way, and that way is manual thinning, manual control. Now, they're supposed to be using all of this stuff. I've studied this for 10 years or more, Bill, on every level. The Healthy Forest Restoration Act, they're supposed to be giving the nonprofit groups money, okay, the collaboratives. Yeah, the thing is, is that the collaboratives want to burn when really what's needed is physical removal well they don't want to physically work

to remove the fuel well i know that's just it because it it takes more work to physically remove the fuel they want to they want to burn they want to burn it in place is what they want to do every time it sounds it all sounds good but it doesn't work because you know well that you pollute our airshed is what you're doing is what you're doing all the time exactly right you know think back to 20 that what is it 2018 2019 we had all of the smoke in the valley for three months at a time in the summer you couldn't breathe you had you know this is a joke i mean this is you know and it's a joke against humanity you you got to look at the repercussions you look at all of the things that focused on the the los angeles fires that are coming out right

now and it's like okay dei all oh the big focus let's put our money in diversity equity and inclusion you've got to be kidding me. Well, I'm glad to know that the Senate Bill 762 fire map is able to show the oppressed communities in there. That's one of the part of it. Hey, I'm going to run a little bit behind on this point here, Ed, but point well taken. And the law is pretty clear, but I would venture a guess that most people who are really upset about it haven't even read it, and they need to. Okay? Well, they need to.

And, you know, Bill, the other thing that, you know, to make clear to Jeff, you know, the reality is if you're a landowner and you've addressed fire on your property and you've hardened your property against fire, you shouldn't be penalized by some administrative selection that, you know, some judge that comes in and calls himself a judge that's not paying attention to the law. Yeah, yeah. We can't, this cannot be tolerated. And maybe this is the solution that Jeff is looking for, whether he realizes it or not. Thank you, Ed. I appreciate that. Let me go to next line here. Morning. Hi. Who's this?

Hi, Bill. This is Vicki from the Applegate. Yeah, Vicki. How are you doing? Good. How are you this morning? Okay, good. Well, I had a couple of questions.

So I rent on Sterling Creek, and on my side of the road, it's a lot more fields and not as many trees you could cross the street on the other side and it's all forest and there is so many dead standing trees and what i'm seeing and noticing is that when they come out to manage the forest, they're basically clearing all the underbrush, and then they stack these humongous piles with diesel or whatever. Yeah, slash piles, and they burn the slash piles. Yeah. And they burn it, well, partly at the wrong time of the year. But my question is, because we rent and we're out here in the Applegate, I'm not sure, I haven't heard from the landlady, but how do they compare this side to that side?

That's a really good question, and there's not enough information on the map to be able to make that decision. It's like they just give you the rating. There's really not enough information on how they arrive to that. So I don't have an answer. And that's one of the other issues I have with the fire map. And I'm going to talk to the senator about it because I don't think they're following the law. All right.

Appreciate the call. This is the Bill Myers Show. You're on KMED and KBXG. Senator Golden, about an hour from now. The purchase of another gutter manufacturing machine has spurred speculation at the offices of Fontana Roofing. It's a month. Make the switch. You simply dial pound 250, say the keyword, save now. Save an additional 50% off your first month. Pure Talk, America's wireless company.

The Bill Myers Show on 106.3 KMED. 638, Rick's here. This is the craziest party that could ever be. Don't turn on the lights because I don't want to see. I'm not tall, let's go. The D.C. Swamp Update. It is the craziest party we've ever seen indeed. Is the celebration already starting at this point?

Rick Manning from Americans for Limited Government, DailyTorch.com. How are you doing this morning? Welcome back. I'm doing great. And the answer is in some quarters, but by and large, D.C. doesn't do well with cold weather. It doesn't. And we are going to have, today's supposed to be up to 40, which is good, but we have snow on the ground from a week ago still, and more to come over the weekend. And it's supposed to be really, really cold on Inauguration Day, not to mention the evening.

Plus, they're predicting Antifa rioters. Oh, they are? Okay. Yeah. So, all in all, I was at the inauguration 2016, and we had Antifa rioters as special guests, and they're more sophisticated now

and more determined now, and so I suspect that the 20th, there'll be a lot of people who dress up very nice, huddle together to do the, to go to the balls and do all that kind of stuff.

And then on the other side of large barriers, there will be a bunch of people who are wearing all black, who are trying to throw things over the barriers and creating havoc. And quite honestly, it's not different than the last month the last month of the Trump administration in 2020, when they did the same thing. So all in all, it's a little bit back to the future. And last piece of it, D.C. doesn't like Trump. People in the real world like Trump. Right. D.C. itself doesn't like Trump. So there's less euphoria inside the beltway than there is around the country that rightfully believe that they have a chance to restore some of the common principles in America. You know, there are some people who I've respected out there and enjoyed watching or reading their writings over the years. You're probably familiar with Paul Craig Roberts.

Don't know if you ever read his stuff. I'm familiar with him, but I don't read him. No, I don't read him. Oh, you don't read him. Okay. Some people say he's crazy. Maybe he is. But he and some other people, of course, maybe after being chewed up and spit out by the

swamp, you go a little bit crazy. I'll try to just let you go. But a former Treasury Secretary guy, and he was talking about and others have been talking about how they're getting concerned that they're seeing some of Trump's appointments being tamed. In other words, if you're going to get through the appointment process, you're going to have to be tamed. And so instead of fighting Trump, it's just about taming the Trump administration, like getting Tulsi Gabbard as an example to say, yeah, I know for years I was saying horrible things about the Section 702 of the FISA code, right? You know, all that kind of stuff. And of course, I was right back then. But now I know we need it.

You know, that kind of thing. And she's going for uh for dni i'm going to take you i'm going to take you back eight years ago whenever it was uh when trump won the first trump administration when i was in the transition then and we had a we had a cabinet nominee who we were trying to get through a narrow Senate Republican majority, not dissimilar to now. And the fact of the matter is, this person would have been a phenomenal Labor Secretary, really extraordinarily good.

Didn't make it through the process because some things that had happened in his past and the likes that blew him up for the three women, Republican women on the committee that had to vote for him. But the process of trying to get these guys confirmed is, A, you tell them nothing about what the plans are, the actual concrete plans. They know nothing about them. You can sit there and you can create four years' worth of work, and your nominee cannot be – who's going to have to implement it the day they're nominated or the day they're confirmed knows nothing of any of it. And the reason for that is they want them to be able to say, I don't know that.

I don't have that information and it's kind of like when bondy was being asked uh will you investigate liz cheney right i've not been asked to investigate liz cheney that kind of thing right exactly correct so so it's basically a see no evil hear no evil kind of answer Q&A session. Secondly, you have a pretty sophisticated communications strategy related to deflecting and not answering things are uncomfortable. And you saw Pam Bondi use that. She had probably the most effective hearing this past week, by the way. But from a – but there is. Well, you know, you can see, though, why she was so effective, though.

I think that prosecutorial experience helped a lot. Exactly right. And she, you know, if you're just, you know, if you're not used to that kind of confrontation and deflection, it's, you know, you have to be taught it in a big hurry. And the single best way to teach it is to have the cabinet secretary know nothing about what the plans are, except for what's in the public, what's in the press, and then you can say. So even when you have Schiff head, Adam Schiff, you know, they're saying, well, President Trump has announced that, you know, he wants to prosecute Liz Cheney.

And what do you think about this? I'm paraphrasing. I'm going to follow the law. Yeah. I will follow the law. I will follow the law. Yeah, okay. I thought, okay, that's a reasonable answer.

I'll follow the law. Okay, what's the law say? And ultimately, if we find out that Liz broke the law, well, it's a different story, right? Well, and Adam Schiff would be unfamiliar with that concept. That's true. So it would totally befuddle him. But from a – but that's – essentially the inside scoop on that is the nominees are trained to basically be hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. Their objective is to be as milquetoast as possible, to not offend anybody,

to get confirmed. That's their job. And so the job of the opposition is to try to dig up as much dirt as possible, make them mad, create a confrontation. Create something which gives the, in this case, in most of these cases, three women members and Mitch McConnell an excuse to say no. That's the plan for the Democrats. All right. And it's just a game. It's just a rhetorical game. Now, some did better. Some did worse. It's a, you know, game. Now, some did better, some did worse.

It's a, you know, but ultimately, you knew Pete Hexeth was going to be a bloodbath. But Pete Hexeth ends up picking up votes because of the way they handled it more than the way he handled it. But he ends up picking up votes. Joni Ernst says, you know, yeah, I'm'm going to vote i'm voting for him now joni ernst was not a supporter from what i understand up to that point right cynical cynical people and and somebody who is made former colonel in the um in the military um a person who's been very very very outspoken and done a lot about uh sexual harassment in the military and the like. And so a lot of the issue sets that were attacking Hexathon were ones that she would, that played to her.

And she announced she was voting for him. Well, cynics in Washington, D.C., and this is the other piece of this puzzle, because people in Washington, D.C. are cynical for good reason. They say that her vote is because she doesn't think he's going to last or even make it. And as a result, she wants to be chosen as his successor. Oh, really? So there's all these different – there's all these games within games. And I'm not saying that's true.

I'm saying that cynics say that. Yeah, but in other words, there are bigger games in play than what we're aware of as we're watching these. There are always, in Washington, D.C., everybody has their own agenda, and the key to winning is figuring out what somebody's agenda is and putting a pathway for them to achieve that that mirrors what you're trying to achieve. All right. So back then to Tulsi Gabbard, what kind of pathway do you have?

Because I noticed that both Tulsi and RFK Jr. have been delayed. Their confirmation hearings have been delayed for some reason rfk jr has an easier pathway than tulsi really um yeah so so in other words uh reforming the deep state is way more of a problem because you know dni essentially would be uh the person who is able to call bs on the crap coming out of the CIA, right? Well, just understand, tell CSI, Robert Kennedy Jr. wants to do stuff that a lot of the Democrats want to do. Okay?

So just understand, you know, in terms of the things he's talking about, you know, he's going to get votes from Democrats because he's the best we're ever going to get in this position for a Republican. And so he's going to get some votes there. Some Republicans, he might be a little bit shy about it, but Trump will round up enough Republicans to get the votes. And as long as RFK Jr. stays in his lane that Trump wants him to stay in his lane, things are fine. If he doesn't, he gets the boot. Okay.

And what's more, I think they've legitimately made a friendship. They travel around together a lot. So I think they've legitimately made a friendship. So there's as much as you have a friendship in the world of politics or business, from what I can tell. Now, Tulsi Gabbard has a different problem. She's a traitor to the Democrats. She's viewed as being an outright traitor to the Democrats. She was the number two person in the Democratic National Committee.

She quit over Hillary Clinton stealing the primary from Bernie Sanders. That's right. We're remember that. She was, they suspect that she's got some information on some things you're not allowed to talk about these days in terms of the Democratic National Committee computer and things like that. And she would be in a position to actually find out what actually happened related to that. If something untoward did happen, which many suspect did. So you have a, and so she's not, she's not benign to them.

She is somebody who to them is very, very dangerous because she knows she's been inside their wall. She's been inside their inner circle. She knows their corruption, in other words. Right. And she knows how things got manipulated or at least suspected as much. And was enough of an honest individual to say, this isn't what I signed up for. These people are horrific and they're anti-American and I'm getting out. And she spoke out about it.

So she's not going to get Democrat votes. On the Republican side, she has the pro-defense, no matter what the civil liberties cost Republicans, are... Who are frankly a problem in this world. Not disagreeing, but they are a significant obstacle in a world where you can only lose four in the Senate. And because, you know, remember, those are the same people who didn't have any problems with, they left the FISA, they didn't change the FISA warrants system. They didn't make any, you know, there was the fight we ended up tying in the House in that fight, the FISA warrant reform, but the fact is it wasn't a great uprising in the Senate. There are very few senators who aren't actually kind of okay with what's going on.

So it's a, although burst out and say something when it's, when it moves them, but, and Tulsi Gabbard's not them. So Tulsi Gabbard is a woman without a country, so to speak, politically, is what you're saying. She is a woman without a country. The fact is, I think her country is between, like, from Idaho to West Virginia. Unfortunately, those states – I'm not specifically talking about the senators from Idaho or West Virginia. Right. The senators who represent all the states in between don't necessarily reflect the same civil liberty concerns and the kind of leave-me-alone view of what they want the federal government to do, and that those states may represent, and it's a problem for her.

You think so? I just want to ask, I don't know if you could count the vote or not. Senator Ron Wyden, for all of his flaws, and they are legion, okay, as far as I'm concerned, in the state of Oregon. He's usually been pretty good on protecting civil liberties. Do you think that he might be a vote for Tulsi Gabbard? I think she might pull a couple of votes on the Democratic side. Because of the traitor kind of piece of this that may not. I mean, this is kind of unique. She she she really is a person without a country on this. And but it's possible if he's voting strictly on these on civil liberties, when you get

the bottom of what's going, what happened. And, you know, in terms of the entirety of the civil liberties mess that she wants to get to the bottom. If he actually wants to get to the bottom, he actually wants to make certain that you don't have, you know, 17 agencies all telling the same story to the president with no diversity of thought, because they're all trained by the same people and they don't have any ability to look at something and say, that doesn't seem right to me because they've been basically inculcating a system that's corrupt. If you want to avoid that, if you want actually a president to get different points of view from different perspectives on intelligence,

you'd really want Tulsi Gabbard in there. But that scares a lot of people. Yeah. Because groupthink is how you manipulate. And if you don't have groupthink driven through the Washington Post and the New York Times, if you don't have that groupthink and you have people who are inside saying, that's not right right and challenging it, that gives Trump information to operate on that's different than they want to feed him. That sounds so conspiratorial.

Well, no, no. The reason I ask you, though. It's an observable fact. This is the reason I ask you this kind of a question, because I know that you have swung, you have been been swimming among these sharks for a long long time as a lobbyist and various other things so you kind of you know you know people and you know things you know things you know people i know someone who knows somebody who knows somebody rick manning you know stop hopefully i'm hopefully closer to it than that but yeah it's the six degrees of separation for Rick Manning, and you kind of eventually get to – I know somebody who knew somebody. I'm the ultimate LinkedIn guy, I guess.

Oh, yeah. But anyway. No, it's serious. So anyway, Tulsi is going to be the tough one. RFK Jr., oddly enough, probably an easier fit. I believe that's true. Okay, all right. So we'll see how that ends up working. Now, I'm kind of curious.

Is there a consensus on getting the budget cut and actually trying to reduce spending? I mean, for real? Because the markets and the bond markets, everything seems to be saying that Trump, especially if Trump does tariffs and various other things, it's going to be inflation city, is what the markets seem to be saying right now. What do you think? I think that the – I do think there is a determination to use the budget reconciliation process to get both tax cuts and real spending reduction. Significant changes.

Okay. I don't know how much spending reduction they're going to succeed in doing, but if they just don't have increases, that would be a win. Yeah. The only reason is when you're talking about rebuilding the military and throwing a lot at the mic you know that's uh that would naturally be inflationary i would think let's put it this way they it's really easy to say that you're going to balance the budget and it's really hard to do that when you if you aren't willing to, if you want to spend more money on everything. Yeah.

Those two things are not reconcilable. Now, the truth of the matter is, Bill, the piece of this puzzle that I can't discount is, you know, the tariffs. He is going to raise tariffs. He's going to raise tariffs. He's going to attempt to bring more money in based on the raising of tariffs. And then the other countries that are going to be affected by the tariffs say, hey, guess what? We're going to tariff you, too. Okay.

Well, that's interesting. But tariffs have two purposes. Okay. And we've kind of forgotten the two purposes. One is to raise money. That was how we funded our government for 150 years before the 1913 disaster called the income tax. So tariffs were how we used to fund the country. And it was a pretty fundamentally a way to raise the prices on steel. So there's more domestic steel or raise the prices on different things.

Since. We have trade agreements with Mexico and Canada, and they have to do some special things to raise tariffs on them because those trade agreements, the places are most likely to be hurt by tariffs arch is china in particular and that matters for a very very specific reason china their entire economy is based upon a predatory if they're not exporting their people are hurting in other words they're not exporting their debt yeah are hurting, in other words. If they're not exporting, they're dead. Yeah. That's it. And they have tied their currency to the U.S. currency so that if we, when the Fed moves and tries to make the dollar tighter, more expensive, the Chinese act accordingly.

And when our dollar becomes worth less, the Chinese act accordingly. So the normal currency trade that should create a – balance out the trade deficit to some extent, China artificially negates. What China did in – we've talked about this before, and I went and looked at the steel charts so I could answer that question. What China did with steel was they subsidized their steel industry so they could continue to export steel to the United States in spite of the tariffs. They also exported more steel to places like Canada and Mexico and then stamped it Mexican steel and sold it across the border from Mexico or from Canada. So the net effect of that, which we thought was going to make it so a company like New Core Steel, which is one of the biggest steel companies in America, if not the biggest, would then have more, the price point would be higher. They'd be expanding their operations, hiring more steel workers and all that. That didn't really happen. It was a little, about three-month bump of higher steel prices until China caught up and then sat there. And by the time six months was over,

the steel price was back to the same place it was on the U.S. market as it was before he started, before the tariff. All right. So you're not too concerned about the tariffs then. Let me ask you this, though. I'm not concerned about inflation in the tariff. Okay. All right.

Got that. The other thing I was going to ask you about, clearly, would you have let the U.S. steel sale to Nippon go through if you were running it? My guts are no. Really? Yeah? My guts are no. Really? Yeah, my guts are no. Because my gut was yes, and I was wondering why, because I just looked at them.

I think of Japan as a friendly country and as an ally, and they were going to invest billions, and it looks to me like we're going to just carve up U.S. into that corrupt bunch of Cleveland Steel people that have been working this hard. I mean, that's a good question. I did not spend a lot of time looking at it because, truthfully, I had no influence on the Biden administration on it. So I try to focus on things I can influence, but it's a, but my, kind of my guts on it, based on watching what's happened with some other hard metal operations, aluminum plants being bought

by various people around the world, and it's very easy to take a big steel plant or an aluminum plant and effectively shut its doors, strip every bit of technology, every bit of machinery that's useful out of it, ship those things overseas, and set up a similar, the same exact operation in another place. The cheapest part of this, the cheapest part of what you're buying in terms of you're buying a big steel company or something like that

is the actual stuff on the floor. Boy, that's true, especially because U.S. Steel's been bleeding for a long time, really. So you have what you can. So I was concerned in terms of just thinking about it. Is this just a strip them out operation and eliminating a competitor out of the marketplace to create an opportunity for a foreign entity? And to really make it harder for us to reestablish our domestic steel industry.

It's a heck of a lot harder to build a company from scratch than it is to take something that exists, that has a footprint, and to build off that footprint, even if you have to take everything off the floor. So that was my concern, because ultimately, if we don't rebuild our steel and aluminum manufacturing, particularly high tensile steel, the strongest steel and not just kind of pot metal, we've got to rebuild our high-end steel industry and our high-end aluminum industry. Because if we don't, we can't be a manufacturing power. We can't be an industrial power. And we'll just leave it at that. We can't be a military power. And let's just leave it at that.

I appreciate the take on this, Rick. And I know that you have some great commentary up on DailyTorch.com. And this is something I'm sure that you'll be evaluating. Also, along with kind of, you're going to do like a synopsis of the various hearings, too. That'll be good. Yeah, we're going to take a look at a few of the hearings and just kind of, I haven't quite decided. I may grade them. I don't know. I'm going to have to

sit down and figure that out. But my thinking is I may just grade how different people did. Okay. And that would be fun. Yeah, I think so, too. I don't think you'll have too much trouble grading Bondi. I think she did a pretty good job on that one. Yeah, I think she killed it. And basically, they shouldn't be afraid of Kash Patel. They should be afraid of Pam Bondi.

Okay, fair enough. Hey, Rick, we'll talk next week. Enjoy the inauguration on Monday, okay? Take care. Burr, it's going to be cold. You betcha. Bundle up. This is KMED, KMED HD1, Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG, Grants Pass. You're on the Bill Myers Show. Town Hall News next. Stephen Westfall, Inc. is thrilled to announce the winner of their second metal roof giveaway for a well-