Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 01-27-25_MONDAY_6AM

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

Morning news, Is DeepSeek from China about to eat US company AI? Joey Chester from Americans For Limited Government talks Trump good immigration news, schooling the Columbian president like a boss, etc.

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 Monday, January 27th. We may end up calling this Black Swan Monday. The markets are roiled. They haven't even opened yet, but boy, it looks like they're just going to be taking it in the shorts.

We'll talk a little bit about why here in just a moment. And one of my favorite financial bloggers, I think, did a pretty good job of establishing what is really going on. In other news, though, of course, nationally, the big news, President Trump schooling the Colombian president like a boss over the weekend. You know, he was returning a bunch of illegal aliens to Colombia. schooling the Colombian president like a boss over the weekend. He was returning a bunch of illegal aliens to Colombia, and they had been approved, and they were on a military flight. And then we have the president, Gustav Petro, ended up refusing to let the illegal aliens come back home,

wouldn't let them back in. He said that they were being treated like criminals being on a military flight. He would have been fined if they were on a commercial flight, etc., etc. And so he refused. And then President Trump immediately said, well, I'm going to impose 25% tariff on Colombian imports, coffee, things like that. And that would cause him a lot of heartburn down there. And then Gustav ended up saying, well, that's okay. I'm going to put a 50% tariff on your stuff.

It was just kind of like back and forth. And then Colombia is now already caving to Donald Trump after he threatened steep economic and diplomatic sanctions when they refused to accept the flight. So President Trump has schooled him like the boss he is. It seems to be just the way it is. Very interesting. So interesting story over the weekend.

Pete Hexeth also got confirmed. It was razor thin, of course, as expected. No, I think you're, no, no, don't even think about Merkley and Wyden having voted for him. I doubt they did that. I didn't check the vote count, but it was 50-50. And then Vice President J.D. Vance ended up breaking the tie. Kristi Noem also confirmed as DHS Secretary, and she's been sworn into office. Meanwhile, we have Department of Homeland Security in FEMA actually

under attack over the hurricane response. Trump is talking about maybe even eliminating FEMA, just what do they call it, dispersing it to the states or spreading it out to the states instead. Okay, now this is the story which I think is going to be the big story for today. It's going to overshadow a lot of the other normal political stuff. Markets are looking – we're looking at the futures down this morning on the tech-heavy NASDAQ of about 700, 750 points. This is a serious, serious big drop. And it has to do with DeepSeek. DeepSeek, a piece of Chinese software which was released last week.

It's actually a series of software suites that is released for free. And it is about a less expensive, very affordable version of AI that people can use on their regular computers and on their cell phones and all the rest of it. And Charles Hugh Smith, one of my favorite financial bloggers, along with Mike Shedlock. Mike Shedlock's another guy that I like to read a lot. And also Sean Ring from the The Root Awakening. Those are three I always consider must-read guys that put out a lot of stuff. But Charles Hugh Smith has a sub stackstack, and I was reading his yesterday, and he says, is Deep Seek a Sputnik moment? Let's break this down.

Now, maybe you're old enough or vintage enough to remember the Soviet Union's October 1957 launch when they launched Sputnik 1, and it stunned the United States, which thought that it had a commanding lead in the space race. So you had this geopolitical rival reverse engineering advances and leapfrogging the United States, and it shocked America into a multi-decade response. To the moon, you know, of course, I remember that as a kid. Well, what Charles Hugh Smith is writing, the shockwaves generated by the Chinese company's release of a suite of AI tools called DeepSeek last week may well rival the Sputnik shock.

The DeepSeek AI tools appear to meet the same benchmarks as AI tools such as those by OpenAI and other companies, but they require a lot less from your computer. So you don't have to have big, expensive processors. This whole idea that you have to go down to the computer store at a Costco or wherever it is, Walmart, and get the latest Microsoft Windows with co-pilot AI capability, all that sort of stuff, that would appear to be done. Now, Charles Hugh Smith writes, DeepSeek achieves its capabilities not from expensive hardware,

like processors, but from advances in software that can be used on smartphones. What's embedded in DeepSeek have profound financial implications for the companies that manufacture these expensive processors needed by conventional AI data centers. NVIDIA is the dominant chip maker in this market. And NVIDIA has just had this insane run in the stock market over the last couple of years because it was all assumed that AI was going to really be powered in the consumer world with NVIDIA trips. trips what deep seek does it gets rid of the need for super energy hungry super expensive processors

that and it also gets rid of the need for vast quantities of electricity and the market for paid subscription ai tools remember last week the tech bros were all there with president trump and they were talking about their big Stargate deal, the half trillion dollar investment they were going to be putting into AI. It was going to be building the companies next to the power companies and building more power plants in order to feed this. It would seem to get rid of the need to do this, what the deep seek would do. Charles says, in effect, the AI hardware monopoly and quasi-monopoly of AI software has been broken, and like Humpty Dumpty, it can never be put back together again. He says he was skeptical of deep seek, but a correspondent sent him an article that changed my mind.

I read the theoretical risk section carefully and concluded that what the DeepSeek developers did, this is how they did it. The DeepSeek developers took the loss of precision performed at the end of conventional AI via compression, and they moved it into the learning reward process where it did the work with less precision. So it did the work with less precision so it did the work with less precision so maybe a little bit less precise but with 40 times less cpu that's your processor and memory and cost 45 times less in cost wow now you might ask how or why did the Chinese software people come up with this amazing development? They were forced to. Charles continues, necessity is the mother of invention. They weren't able to get NVIDIA chips in big numbers.

I think there were some sanctions put on them, too, weren't there? Maybe it was just too expensive. So the Chinese programmers were forced to innovate in software, very much like what the programmers on the deep space missions like Voyager 1 had to do last year when the computer broke and they ended up having to move some code around and they're very expensive or that very, very expensive but very, very small computer brain that was sent up many, many years ago, right, in that spacecraft. So anyway, he says, some of the clever software techniques used by DeepSeek reminded me of the workarounds deployed by the Voyager team last year when the spacecraft stopped responding. And then he goes into that. But here we go.

The real money question this morning charles says i was also skeptical of the possibilities suggested to me by adam taggart the host of thoughtful money that deep sea could conceivably prove to be the black swan that pops the ai bubble this now strikes me as less of a possibility and more of an inevitability. There is simply no longer enough advantage created by super energy consuming, very expensive computer chips in terms of generating a product that is worth paying for when equivalent tools are available for free. And this is the other thing about it. They can run offline or on freestanding devices. They don't have to be hooked to the net all the time,

which means there can't be any backdoor stealthy calling home by the software. And given that the magnificent seven stocks, most of which are heavily invested in AI, are almost 40% of the entire U.S. stock market worth, and the global concentration of equity wealth in the United States, then the AI bubble popping will pop the entire global stock market bubble. And with that reduced to rubble, the entire global everything bubble is risk-on in assets. Very interesting.

So that's what's leading to what's going on this morning with the futures way, way, way, way down in the stock market. I was just thinking about, remember he was talking about the need for the expensive services or the expensive subscription fees. Well, I had just mentioned to you just briefly last week that I got a notice from microsoft that the cost of my one drive i have a one drive account which is where i store i store files in the cloud and then i'm able to share them amongst my phone and my other computers and i'm able to kind of keep it i can't keep it there as a backup right so as part of that they give you you Microsoft Word and a few other things. You know, it's like, it was like a $69 a month, a $69 a year fee. It was well worth it. You know, something off, off premises. If something happened to my computers, I still had, you know, access to it.

That's the way I looked at it. And so I've had that for a number of years, and then they just raised the price to $100 a year, or it's going to be quite a bit more per month if you're going to pay for it per month but i've been doing it by year and they say it's gonna be a hundred bucks a year because we're giving you all of this ai capability and then you have the chinese this chinese firm deep seek coming out and by the way you can go download the app right now you can download the app right now and uh and start playing with it i downloaded it i haven't started playing with it yet. I have to create an account. I'm curious to see what that can do because this could be the real game changer.

In many ways, though, it would be the democratizing of the AI revolution in which it's not just all the tech bros doing stuff to you. You have a little bit more control of that yourself on stuff that you yourself have without having to spend a lot of money. So this is going to be a very, very interesting day. We'll probably be looking back at this day for a long time as, oh, remember Black Swan Monday? Deep Seek, Deep Sweep, Deep Seek Black Swan Monday.

Yeah, that could be what's going on. I don't really have a dog in this particular fight. I only have a baby 401K. Most of that I've had into Energy and a few other various stocks. And I've been kind of watching them. I imagine they'll get hit a bit here, too. We'll see. We'll see.

It's going to be an interesting time but i wanted you to understand a bit and if you want to find out more actually read the article you could just go to substack.com and then search out charles hugh smith he has a really really good substack i've been a big fan of his for quite some time tried to get him on the show but for some reason maybe i'm just you know too little of a fish to persuade him to get up early he lives in hawaii so he'd have to get up really early to have a talk with us we'll see i'm still going to try to get him in at some point 22 minutes after six i hope you're doing well this morning 7705633 and hopefully you haven't put your entire fortune into nvidia it might be

taking a rather big hit this morning we'll keep you up on that though this is the bill myers show on kmed looking for durable and custom fellas at union avenue and grants pass hi i'm duane barkley with american rancher garage and i'm on kmed duane by the way doing good work over there i just wanted to make sure and mention that you've done good work for me. It's 25 minutes after 6. Join in at 770-5633-770-KMED. This is kind of funny. I was just watching on Fox.

I have Fox News running in front of me on a TV on the crawl, just so it's always there in case the world comes to an end. I can at least give you a warning that the world's coming to an end. You know, that kind of thing. Senator Tom Cotton is saying that he thinks that China needs to pay for uh having released covet having released covet well uh they we got paid all right because last week like i mentioned deep seek is the free ai app runs free cheap runs on cheap smartphones cheap computers you don't need expensive stuff you don't need big internet connections for everything and it is really just uh knocking

a hole in the stock market this morning we're looking in the talk in the tech heavy world which has just been all about ai and very expensive chips and very expensive server farms and very expensive energy and all this kind of stuff. It looks like it's just knocking them for a loop this morning. So Tom Cotton says, you're going to have to pay us for COVID. Okay, here. Here it is. Here's a free AI app that means that everybody can have AI cheap. Oh, wow. What do you think about them? What do you think about them, Apple? So let me go to Dave. Hello, Dave. How are you doing this morning? Actually,

a good Monday for you, even though it could be a black swan Monday. What are you thinking? Well, you know, since I don't have any money in the stock market for AI, I'm looking pretty good. Yeah. Well, in this case, and even if you have the cheapest, dumbest smartphone, you'll be able to use what seems to be a pretty decent AI tool for free. Well, that's pretty interesting. You know, it's because they had the need to do that. Need creates innovation. Well, yeah, they had to work around it. That's what Charles Hugh Smith was writing.

China couldn't get or didn't have the money for the NVIDIA chips that are used in all the other AI systems in America. And the thing is, they used a program that doesn't use a lot of electricity. That's key. I know. That's what makes you cheap. I know. That's absolutely huge. Hey, I understand you're getting your house back today, though, huh? Isn't that right? Well, we're meeting up with my brother, and we're going to see what it takes to get me back in it with electric. He's got a friend that's going to look at my trailer to see what we need to do to get it operational for me. Good luck. I'm hoping that works out for you.

I know when your trailer burned down late last year, that was a rough time for you there, Dave. Glad to hear that things are starting to firm up a bit, okay? Thanks for that. 28 minutes after 6, Tom Centalon. Hey, Tom, how are you doing this morning? Welcome. Oh, doing fine. Thanks for making Deep Seek very clear. There was an article on that in Lew Rockwell on Friday. Oh, it was?

Okay. Must have missed that somehow. Yeah, if you go to the bottom of lewrockwell.com and then hit at the very bottom, you can go backwards. There's a little arrow, and you hit that. Oh, wait a minute. Wasn't that Charles? I think that was Charles Hugh Smith's article, wasn't it? Well, let's see. Because I get his sub stack. Well, it doesn't matter. It was actually by Mike Whitney from the Unce Review. Oh, okay. All right. All right. So we're getting a lot of people that are coming out, though. But basically, it does it cheaply on inexpensive computers and does not require big, expensive chips and all the rest of it.

It's like, I got to tell you, this is breaking a lot of rice bowls. You understand that, don't you, Tom? The title of that article, it says that China's deep-seeked bombshell rocked Trump's 500 billion AI boondoggle. Yeah, all of a sudden, Stargate's not looking all that big of a deal. By the way, it wasn't even really Trump. I know that they had a photo op with Trump. That was something that those tech pros had actually agreed to do several months ago. Yeah, you know, they're talking about a falling out between Musk and several of the other techies and Trump and so forth and so on. So there's a lot of shakeup going on in that whole world. So I think rocky times are here.

Yeah, get the popcorn, my friend. Watching the stock market today is going to be really interesting. And by the way, I'm not happy that a lot of rice bowls are being broken. But the thing is, though, everybody is looking for faster, cheaper, better. And so if that's faster, cheaper, better, and better is free, you know, or very inexpensive, you know, that kind of thing. This idea that you're going to be paying everybody $10, $20, $30, $40, $50 a month for all your AI tools doesn't look like that's going to pan out for the tech pros. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so, well, we're here now. Yeah.

I appreciate the call. Thank you for that, Tom. Hi there. Good morning. This is Bill. Who's this? Good morning, Bill. This is David DeSimpleton in Phoenix.

How are you? I'm well, David. What's on your mind today? Well, there's too many spot fires, and I can only have one thought between my two synapses at a time. Hey, I have the same problem. Some mornings it's kind of like you go ADD. You've got this shiny object, and here comes another one. But what's the shiniest object for you? More like the disco ball. It's just too much. Anyways, can we roll the clock back just for about 30 seconds?

Sure. What do you think? Okay. So I'm going to say a month ago, maybe something like that, there was some concern voiced about how come with the man, you'll see where I'm going with this. I'll do it as fast as I can. The mandatory reporters like nurses, doctors, you know, school bus drivers, anybody do with anything with kids and whatever. If there was a crime or something, they had to report it. Remember talking about stuff like that? Yeah, I do. I do recall. Okay. So here's where I'm going is that, and then we would find out that maybe something happened. A mother would call in and talk about something would happen to her daughter or somebody call

about their son. And you'd find out that the school district was doing what was called an internal investigation okay yep all right so and i'm wondering well okay if i something happens at my house and they call the police the police come and say well we i didn't call the police right and the police come and say, well, I didn't call the police. Right now I'm doing an internal investigation, and if we can't handle it, then we'll do something. That is such a perfect analogy to what schools do. You're absolutely right. Okay, so here's where I'm going. Later on down the road, these are actual, I found out that these people aren't security guards.

When you have what they call a school resource officer, they're actual real, live, not pretend, not volunteer or something like that. No, they're actually sworn police officers. They're real live police officers. Yeah, but now I'm short on time, so if you could give me kind of a major point here, that would be helpful. Okay, the major point is, one, I really think that they should have their own security guards, and they should call the police so this guy can be out on the streets. But if not, we have this police officer. He's doing what I understood was a good job, but he went something against the district and they replaced him. OK, apparently the member of the school board, we elect the school board people, the same guy from last week that I called you about, went down and this whole thing has gotten

lost about him and and a pruning tool and all that stuff. So that all got lost about how is it that mandatory reporters aren't being hooked up in handcuffs? And how is it that they get away with internal investigation and don't have to call the cops? That's where my problem is. They never talked about the policeman who got replaced. That seems to have gotten completely lost, and now it's all about a guy who prunes plants and stuff. Yeah, that's an interesting little sleight of hand, you think, then, in the narrative?

A little sleight of hand. Don't look at what the right hand's doing. Look at what the left one did. Well, I still don't know about the police officer that's just kind of that's what well you're i don't know if you're going to get much answer about it uh now city of medford uh city of medford cops are saying that this was a uh that what happened is that this is a routine reassignment and things like that can happen i don't believe that that That's just my opinion.

It just feels a little too convenient. But there was a real difference of opinion, I think, between security and the way things were going on in the school district and what the district wanted. And the district and the board ends up being kind of a rubber stamp for what the superintendent wants most of the time. And I think you have to look at that relationship to find out more, really. But if the law says you're a mandatory reporter,

and where... Well, we don't know that if there was a... We don't know there was a mandatory reporting issue. Do you? I'm not aware of one. You've told me we had... Let's go back several months. No, no, no. I'm talking about this particular issue. No, no. I understand that, no. I'm talking about this particular issue.

No, no, I understand that. I understand, but the guy went down and it got... It had to do with a difference of opinion of kids being allowed back in school. There was no talk in any story that I ever saw here about a mandatory reporter not reporting. Okay, okay, well, kids being... Whatever the issue was but it was it was a it was about the potential the and all we were doing was all we could do was conjecture okay um we don't we don't know okay well then well then let's skip the current thing and just answer me this question, okay? Okay. If the law says you're a mandatory reporter, where does any school district – how come they don't call the cops? They're not investigators.

Well, we don't know that they don't call the cops. You've had mothers call on before and talk about what happened to their kids. They weren't talking about Medford 549C with the officer there. I don't recall them doing that. Do you? Okay, Bill. No, I'm sorry. Listen, I know there's a problem.

If there's truly mandatory reporting that's not being done, yeah, then you have them by crime. But I haven't had anybody report to me that they haven't been reporting sexual abuse and things like that as a mandatory reporter. There was that mother on Grant's path that called in, and her daughter, and this had happened, and then they didn't report it, and she couldn't get her kid and all that. We've had lots of—God, I don't—I can't—my brain doesn't work like a VCR, so I can't record everything. Yeah, well, mine isn't either right now, so you're catching me a little flat-footed. I have to look back on this because that was a long long time ago, a little talk. But it's still the

same principle. Well, yeah, but the principle doesn't necessarily connect to what's going on at 549C. That's all I'm getting at, David. That's all I'm getting at right now, okay? That's fair enough, but there's just something exhausting about this. Yeah, well, there is something exhausting about it, which I think comes from the bureaucracy of the public school system in general, which is why I've been a big fan. I don't think it can be reformed from inside because this is, I think, is what you get. Appreciate the call there, David. And like I said, I'm sorry, it's very frustrating, okay?

Something that wasn't so frustrating, though, watching President Trump school the Colombian president like a boss. We'll talk a bit about that after news. Crater Lake Medford Mazda 8173547. The Bill Myers Show is on. News Talk 1063 KMED. Joey Chester. He's the communications manager, one of the officials at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, FairUS.org.

And I've been talking to Joey and others for for i don't know could it be the last 15 years maybe 20 years i don't know joey i don't know if i've ever been able to talk with anybody involved with the immigration issue and be able to discuss some good news you're the first one how you doing this morning welcome good to have you have you back. Well, it feels really good. I can't believe we're only a week into it and we've seen such a massive change. I mean, I was just looking this morning and yesterday ICE was up to a thousand arrests across the United States. And it sounds like their goal is to get that up to about 1500 arrests per day. And Bill, you can start to think just how much of an impact that can 1,500 arrests per day. And Bill, you can start to

think just how much of an impact that can have in some of these communities. I mean, it doesn't take that many dangerous illegal aliens to do a lot of damage to a community. I mean, think about Jocelyn Nungery and Lakin Riley and Rachel Morin. And so they're already making incredible progress in rounding up these dangerous criminals. Yeah, and that's just it. The focus on this, the emphasis has been going for the low-hanging fruit of criminal aliens, aliens that are violent and causing trouble wherever they happen to be. Is that pretty much what we're looking at right now?

Yeah, and that is what Tom Holman has said. That's what the administration has said. They're really focusing on these dangerous people, the public safety threats, you know, the folks who came in over the last four years with very poor vetting or no vetting whatsoever. I mean, I was just looking through this morning, the White House posted, you know, they arrested someone with suspected ties to ISIS, someone convicted of child rape. So these are absolutely the worst of the worst. I think another key here that's a huge change and refreshing over the previous administration is transparency. They're telling us who they're arresting, how many they're arresting, where they're arresting them. And that is just something that we did not get with the last

administration. And it's something which we never get here in the state of Oregon. In fact, you know, we're a sanctuary state still. And of course, I don't know how much longer that is going to be holding sway. Oh, the federal government will have to see about this. But I can't tell you how many times we've had some drug grove bust or some kind of criminal ring. There's a bust. And then a whole bunch of illegal aliens were working within the facility or the farm or whatever the case might be and they were always cut loose they were always cut loose never any charges nothing like that just boom out the door they went and this is not what and by the way you also never knew who they were right you never would find out right i guess they would go to another forum or another criminal enterprise, whatever.

And that's not happened with Holman from the sounds of it. Right now we're knowing everything that's going on. We are, and I think that's an incredible change. I think it's exactly what the American people voted for. It's the mandate that the administration was given, and they're very clearly carrying out this mandate early. It appears to me that immigration is the number one priority. You look at the border numbers already that are coming out. The last I saw that the southwest border was down to under 500 encounters per day. And that's down from in the thousands in the final days of the Biden administration. So it shows you just how quickly these things can be done and that the executive really does have quite a lot of power to secure our border and that it was simply Joe Biden did not have the political will. He did not have the interest. He was fully for open borders and

President Trump got it fixed in days. Now, there's the work the Congress has to do, but it shows you that we can get a handle on this sort of thing very quickly. It doesn't have to be the way it was the last four years. Birthright citizenship, is there – how do you think that's going to go? I know I'm just asking for analysis on your particular deal. It's conjecture. I'm trying to figure out what's going to happen with the Supreme Court can always be a bit of a challenge. And any thoughts on that over at FAIR, what the official line there is? Well, you know, I think the Trump administration, I think his executive order on birthright citizenship was very purposeful.

There's also a bill in Congress to back up that executive order. And it does seem indeed that it was purposeful, purposeful most likely in attracting a court challenge. It was kind of like they knew that there was going to be a court challenge and they probably weren't going to be able to move forward with this. But it was about actually getting it settled once and for all, I guess, is really what they're trying to do with this. Yes, that is my prediction. They want to get it in front of the Supreme Court and they want to get that line in the amendment that says subject to the jurisdiction thereof interpreted the correct way. And I don't think that illegal aliens were ever meant to be included in that.

This whole idea that you can step foot on American soil, have a kid, and that kid is a citizen, and then can later sponsor even more family members to come into the United States. That wasn't what it was intended for. Citizenship has to mean something. And so when you allow that to happen, you really lessen the value and meaning of citizenship in the United States. Joey, what do you think this weekend with President Trump schooling the Colombian president over the immigration flights, returning the immigrations? What happened there for people who just woke up, maybe didn't know, and how did he react to it? It's quite interesting. Yeah, it was incredible. We saw yesterday some news came out. It all happened very quickly. The United States sent some deportation flights of Colombians back to

Colombia, and the president refused those flights for a couple of reasons. One, he said that he didn't like his citizens coming in handcuffs back to Colombia. Like, well, if you don't like that, then don't send your criminals to the United States in the first place. Well, yeah, because they actually were those criminals that you were talking about. These were criminal aliens that had real problems with them. And that's why we were more than happy to return to senders, so to speak, that kind of

thing. Yeah, exactly. And so President Trump immediately took action. I think this is one of the starkest differences between him and Joe Biden. And he said, OK, well, that's fine. If you want to do that, we're going to slap these 25 percent tariffs on Columbia. We're going to suspend visas. There's going to be these extra CBP inspections on any Colombian nationals coming into the United States until you guys accept deportation flights. very quickly changed his tune and was even retweeting the official White House press secretary account using our narrative about the situation. So it just shows you how quickly he caved. And so I think what this shows is political willpower by Donald Trump. He is not going to put up with world leaders acting this way and trying to take advantage of the United States. He's putting America first, just like he said he would. And he is getting these dangerous people

out of the country. And he has a lot of power to do that. And you just have to be willing to use that power. And Donald Trump is. And so I think any other countries that try to do this, you're going to see these sort of actions by the president to get countries to accept their citizens. I certainly see why – or I could understand then why Colombia wouldn't want to take them back. It's not exactly like Colombia has a shortage of criminals in its native population right now. Right. But look, the truth of the matter is these are these are citizens of your country. They are your people. And, you know, I never quite understand these these meltdowns from open borders folks about deporting people, like it's some sort of horrible punishment. Really, at the end of the day, you're just

sending people back to their home country, the place that they know where they came from. And so that's really what it is at the end of the day. And we should have no expectation to keep criminals in our country, people who broke the law to come here in our country. We're sending them home. You know, as Tom Holman said, if you're here illegally in America, you should not feel comfortable right now. Where do you think it's going to come down to once most of the low-hanging fruit are deported and are deposited back in their home? As an example, President Trump essentially helping make Columbia great again. I don't know. I know I'm kind of teasing with you this morning. But in all seriousness, there is an issue in certain industries in which they talk about how people are not showing up for construction work even right now, implying that there's a lot of illegal immigration in the construction world going on right now that is actually running that. from FAIR and finding out what we really need and where a smart policy may go forward because,

you know, you don't want to kill your economy completely either for some of your labor needs. What are you thinking about that? Well, what has happened for too long is justifying illegal immigration on economic grounds, which I think is a very morally bankrupt thing. And I agree with you, but it's also a very common concern that, you know, you don't want to kill yourself while you're trying to rid at the male labor force participation rate over the last, I think it's like 40 years, you've seen a massive decline in men leaving the workforce. And so when you think about things like construction jobs, that's a great place. We have workers. But what's going to happen is these companies that are employing people are going to have to pay a fair wage and Americans will work. There aren't any jobs out there that Americans won't do. That's the truth of it. But well, heck, Mike Rowe showed that when he would do that TV

show, Dirty Jobs, right? All sorts of all sorts of dirty, nasty jobs that people would do every day. But I don't know. Maybe it's a different person today or different people today. Yeah. So I think that's part of it. You're going to have to see employers are going to have to figure out their business models to pay workers more. I think you will automatically see wages start to rise. You also see an ease in housing as there's less pressure from all the extra people in the United States. And so that helps the cost of living. So I do think in the end, the country is economically off better with

less illegal aliens in the country. You think about the tax burden on top of it, too. But I do think that there are Americans out there who are willing to go into these jobs that some illegal aliens certainly are going to stop doing because they're going to be out of the country. Joey Chester is with the Federation for American Immigration Reform, FairUS.org. And like I said, it's great to be talking about some good news here recently. You know, over the Christmas holiday, Joey, there a lot of uh tech bro kind of infighting and uh vivek ramasam wami ended up you know leaving the the doge group with uh with elon musk elon musk defending the h1bs i think or maybe it was a viviac uh defending the h1bs i'm a little concerned that that's kind of getting swept under the rug right now, because I

think it was you that told me for the first time that I didn't realize that they're always talking about H-1Bs as if you're always getting the best and the brightest about it. But then once you get over that cap of what is it, 85,000 H-1B immigrants a year coming through, then it's just done by a lottery. And this lottery essentially has brought India to the West Coast states. Any thoughts on that? The whole thing is a lottery. It is not merit-based. It is not merit-based.

You see, that's just it because the tech bros will always say, we need these best and the brightest in the H-1Bs, and there's no specifying that in the H-1B, you're saying. Exactly. And so that's why you can have, theoretically, we are not against legal immigration, but we think that the first thing you should do is have to try to hire an American to do that job. That should be the first step.

You should have exhausted every possibility to hire an American, and if you can't, then you should go and you should hire the best and the brightest for that position, and it should not be replacing an American worker. Because you always hear the stories about, oh, whatever company laid off employees, and then they hired a bunch of H-1B workers. Yeah, and then the existing workers had to train them in order to get their severance package, right? That kind of thing. Yes, exactly. And so I think it is a concern with people like Elon Musk that very much have influence over Donald Trump. They've clearly established a very good relationship. I think Elon is a bright guy.

I do believe that his companies are big benefiters of the H-1B visa. And so he's got that personal connection to it. I did see that the White House chief of staff has tried to maybe move Elon a bit away from President Trump. But I also think Elon is a very smart guy. And he's the type where if you presented the right kind of argument to him, he may very well change his mind on it. Okay, I hope so. I appreciate that. Hey, Joey, always good talking with you at Federation for American Immigration Reform,

fairus.org. The news is good. You've got a lot of stories up there detailing a lot of these successes over the last week. And anything else coming up that we should know about? Well, I think it's going to be a big next few weeks. I think we're going to see even more good news. We're going to have some reports coming out in the next couple of months. So stay tuned for those, too. Now, do you think that FAIR is ever going to have to have another hold their feet to the fire kind of event? I used to go to those for years, years ago, in which it was always about jumping down on Congress. Is Congress going to be going to acquiesce to the Trump administration and actually move some stuff into legislation or not? What do you think? There's hope, Bill. I think our biggest challenge is the 60-vote majority in the Senate. So, like, obviously the Lake and Riley Act was bipartisan.

I think we'll see a couple of those single-issue bills that are bipartisan. The big one, like an H.R. 2-type bill, I see being much more partisan with just Republican votes. So it might be hard to get over that 60-vote threshold. Do you see a deal being cut for the Dreamers? And the Dreamers, I mean, I get someone who was brought here as a kid, you couldn't get it, and this is the only country you've known. I can see why sending someone back to Russia or Mexico or whatever it is might not necessarily work all that well. Do you think it might be a deal where Trump cuts a deal for the Dreamers in exchange for some real hard reform? Based on what he said, it does sound like that that's a possibility. And, you know, I know for me personally, that will be something

I have to see. You know, the devil's always in the detail. Right. What exactly those those reforms are like, because at the end of the day, we need something that stops the next open borders administration from being able to carry out the same agenda that Joe Biden did. We have to have those reforms codified into law. Joey, good talk, and I appreciate you checking in from Federation for American Immigration Reform. I'll get all your information up. We'll have you back, okay? You take care. Have a good day. Great. Take care, Bill. 657 at KMED 99.3 KBXG. When you choose a contractor, how do you know you're getting the best? You're waking up with the Bill Myers Show.

Shade before 7 o'clock. This is KMED and KMED HD1, Eagle Point, Medford. David, one of our mechanic friends and buddies out there, how are you doing this morning, David? Hey, Bill, I'm doing well. I had two little points. One is, you know, a lot of times after the news story about a drug bust,

the indictments come down several days later. There's no press release. I know for a fact that people that had the 250 pounds of fentanyl, we talked about it months ago on I-5, they were indicted a few days later, and there was no press release about it. I know for a fact illegal immigrants are indicted. But the second thing I want to say is the guy you just had on was saying that the construction companies are going – Before you move on from that, though, hang on. But the second thing I want to say is the guy you just had on was saying that the construction companies are going – Before you move on from that, though, hang on. What I was talking about is the – when they would do a drug bust on the farms usually.

Usually it's on the pot grow farms, right, is what would happen. And they would cut loose all of the individuals. They would not arrest them. They wouldn't even take them in. They just cut them loose is what they would do a lot of times uh well i think the people at the top are absolutely held and indicted i think they're just in the press release and so you know so unless you're checking the docket all the time you're not really going to know about what charters are being filed okay all right well i can assure you that the illegal aliens that melted away from the pot

grows in jackson and josephine county were not being sought out by Jackson County Sheriff's later. That's true. That's true. In math, they were like, no, that's true. The people on the ground level and that I think that's true for a lot of things. But but the other thing that the guy was saying was, you know, these construction companies and such are going to have to figure out how to pay a working wage. And I don't really care too much one way or the other, but I will say that in other labor competition discussions and discussions about minimum wage, we understand that the corporations are going to have to charge us a lot more, and we also understand that it isn't really our place to dictate

what the fair rate for our service is. That's why we don't like minimum wage laws. But also what we're talking about is an increase in inflation in the labor costs, right? Ultimately? I don't know. I'm not an economist. What I know is that it seems that the logic gets to be applied unfairly across the discussion when you're talking about labor, because none of us want to see a minimum wage because we know, well, it's ridiculous. My hamburger is going to go up to $12, $14. But with the house, which is arguably more important than a hamburger, we're okay saying, well, these companies just got to figure out how to pay more.

That's not really how free market economics work as far as I know it. Well, you do know that you haven't really lived in a free market economy. I know that, but I've had to reconcile with myself the discussion around immigration and say, okay, well, look, there's a cost to immigration, but there's a benefit to immigration too. I can't get anyone else to mow my yard with their own power equipment, not for a rate I can afford. So there's a cost and a benefit to it. So if you're going to say, you know, it seems to me very simple. If you're going to say, hey, these construction companies got to figure out how to do this. And just like saying this homeowner needs to find a way to mow his own lawn is what they're saying, right?

Oh, maybe. And you can build your own house, too. But personally, I don't know that there's zero benefit to that cheap labor, especially when you pointed it out. It seems that nobody born here or very few people born here really want to get up and work anymore. And what causes that, do you think? Well, that's just existential apathy and, you know, cultural problems, which I'm working on, Bill.

You know I'm working on it. Oh, no, no, no. But I think there's also another aspect of this in which things were fat for a long time, and I think that um there have been enough benefits let me put it this way maybe the best way of describing our immigration issue is that you could almost put up and have an open border if you didn't have a welfare state that went with it and i know the libertarians have talked about that for a long time that you know you can't have open borders in a welfare state. It's just not, it's just not working. And

frankly, and frankly, even the government school system is a welfare state program of sorts, right? You know, you show up and boom, you're in there. It doesn't matter. You, you don't have to produce anything, but you're in there, right? That kind of thing. Sure. Yeah, I absolutely, I agree with you. Yeah. I don't like the welfare state, but you're right. I guess the safe is the best way of putting it is like, if you let things exist in a natural cycle, there wouldn't be this conversation. But at the same time, people just don't see the immediate benefit of the cheap labor. But I'm telling you, there is a tangible – as much as I don't like lawlessness at the border, there is a tangible benefit in the price of your food and the price of your house. So you're going to have the conversation about labor and say, oh, well, the businesses, what he said was these corporations just need to figure out how to pay a better wage.

I would agree with you. There is no pain-free way, I think, to restore the rule of law on the border. I can't say there's not going to be pain. There can't be. What he said, though, I just wanted to say, he would not be allowed to say that in a minimum wage conversation on your show. He would not. He'd be called out for it.

Okay. You know? All right. Hey, I appreciate your call, okay? Thank you, David. Hey, by the way, David, I was going to ask you for some advice. Do you mind if I pick your brain on something else? Oh, now that he abused my radio station for all these minutes now, I want to ask him a question about mechanics.

Then he hangs up. Thanks, David. Anyway, let's catch up on the rest of the news. Mr. Outdoors will join me. We'll see how things are working. I guess some rain later this week, probably. We'll see.