Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 01-29-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

Morning news and opinion, a MAGA star is born as Press Secretary. Auto journalist Eric Peters is on, lots of listener calls, including a $4500 water pump repair? Yeah, buddy!

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. Happy Wheels Up Wednesday. Wednesday, January 29th, 2025. 23 degrees, frigid. Yeah, I'll tell you, it has just been cold.

My heat pump has been getting a workout these last few days. I'll bet yours has too. We are looking for some rain, though, possibly hitting in as soon as late tomorrow night, getting into Friday, maybe a little cloudier, could have some rainier conditions over the weekend there. But one way or the other, appreciate you being here. And it is just an amazing hissy fit. The hissy fit brigades are just out. It is really something.

Every day, every day, it's like another fire hose of Trump executive orders and executive actions and executive reactions to the reactions and this and that and the other. But out of everything that happened yesterday, I think the part that cheered me the most yesterday was Caroline Leavitt's first day, you know, the first press conference. And very young, 27, youngest press secretary ever, what I recall. And to me, this says everything that is good about the Trump administration, in which we had a mainstream media reporter asking about the immigration situation and the roundup going on. The 3,500 arrests ICE has made so far since President Trump came back into office. Can you just tell us the numbers? How many have a criminal record versus those who are just in the country illegally? All of them because they illegally broke our nation's laws and therefore they are criminals as far as this administration goes. I know the last administration

didn't see it that way. So it's a big culture shift in our nation to view someone who breaks our immigration laws as a criminal. But that's exactly what they are. They all have a criminal record. And welcome to the break. They broke our nation's laws. Yes, they are criminal. Yes. Thank you. On stripping. Yeah, imagine that. I'm just going to give it right there. That's all you're going to do. If they're here illegally, by definition, they have already broken laws, and hence they are criminal. They may not be a criminal on the record, if you want to be specific about it. But still, I just thought that was pretty darn good. It was just great to finally hear someone say it.

Kind of like, well, there's only two genders. You know, hearing that being discussed openly in Washington, D.C., is a very good thing. But there's another aspect of the Caroline Levitt's very good first day is the reestablishment of a whole bunch of people who were thrown out of the last administration as far as the press corps goes and how it's really being democratized.

It's being spread out. It's not just about who are the biggest mainstream, which means liberal, chill media networks. This White House believes strongly in the First Amendment. So it's why our team will work diligently to restore the press passes of the 440 journalists whose passes were wrongly revoked by the previous administration. We're also opening up this briefing room to new media voices who produce news-related content and whose outlet is not already represented by one of the seats in this room. We welcome independent journalists, podcasters, social media influencers, and content creators to apply for credentials to cover this White House.

And you can apply now on our new website, whitehouse.gov slash new media. Starting today, this seat in the front of the room, which is usually occupied by the press secretary's staff, will be called the new media seat. My team will review the applications and give credentials to new media applicants who meet our criteria and pass United States Secret Service requirements to enter the White House complex. So in light of these announcements, our first questions for today's briefing will go to these new media members whose outlets, despite being some of the most viewed news websites in the country, have not been given seats in this room. Wonderful to see. Wonderful to see this happening and that it's not just going to be the major TV networks.

The ones who repressed people, repressed the truth, and of course have been lying on behalf of the regime for quite some time. That'll be good. That's a good thing. thing spread it all around give everybody access to it i don't know what this means that alex jones will be in the press corps of course that'd be that'd be pretty interesting uh caroline could you uh comment on the uh you know the globalist seeding babies on some of the pizza gate flights i don't know i'm just having fun with you. If you're an Alex Jones fan, it's okay. But I remember that was always the time. You know something, Alex? A big claim needs some big evidence,

but we'll just kind of set that aside right now. But by the way, I would love to have someone ask the press secretary, could you comment on the globalists and the adenochrome and eating babies? But we'll set that aside for right now. It's a quarter after six. The other big thing here is the hissy fit going on in the deep state, the administrative state especially. Even Axios reporting. Axios is no friend of Trumpy, as you know. And a potential constitutional crisis erupted yesterday over the Trump administration's surprise federal funding freeze,

jolting Democrats into action after months of strategic paralysis. And why this matters, for the first time since President Trump won the election, the so-called resistance is showing signs of life. Yeah, you can show signs of life and yeah you're going to be blocked at every uh term they're they're going to keep throwing stuff up and that's all right i think uh i think trump is uh ready for them this particular time of course this uh surprise federal funding freeze and this is uh the executive order that you know the grant stream funding and all the rest of it and people are going nuts about this because there are some instances in which, you know,

doctors weren't getting paid in hospitals because the grant stream funding was immediately stopped. You know, all these kind of things going on, daycare, all this kind of stuff. But it also shows to you how corrupt American society has been corrupted by the GrantStream funding that if the federal government, for some reason, decides to not send the GrantStream funding, your local services are no longer provided. It's an interesting way of looking at it. How free of a people are you? How independent can you really be? We'll set that aside at the moment. But I think that when I thought about this more deeply yesterday, chances are all we're looking at here, and I know a federal judge ended up blocking the federal funding freeze that Trump had enacted.

So that's not going to happen right now. I think what's really going on is that it probably wasn't specific enough. It just needs to be withdrawn perhaps and then reworked and adding some more specific spending language as to not let some things happen. But, of course, the hissy fits go because the hissy fit is about the Democrats and the state apparatchiks. You're not supposed to cut anything. Nothing's ever supposed to be cut. Ever, ever, ever. No, never.

That's nuts, of course, but this is expected. So I would figure that Trump is probably just going to have to withdraw this executive order, rework it a little bit, get a little more specific, throw it in again and then if there's a and if there are more court challenges fine you deal with that they have plenty of lawyers to uh to work this but i also think that the reason why trump is going so much at throwing at the spending side of things right now is not something that he would admit or the administration would admit but it is the reality that despite the talk from doge despite the talk from speaker mike johnson and despite

the uh the talk from all the republicans that are like yes we're going to be supportive of uh supporting spending cuts no they're they're not really going to be supportive of spending cuts because every spending cut is affecting someone in someone's congressional district. And we all know the number one job of any Congress critter is to get reelected. And having the money go away because it's for a good cause of helping save the country and the budget, that doesn't fly when it comes to election time. It's all about how much grease did you bring home? That's how we the people have been corrupted.

So I see that President Trump is going to have to throw everything in the kitchen sink he can at getting what spending cuts he can get in. And if that means, well, once again, the buyouts. Tossing out the buyouts, which, hey, will give you essentially eight months of severance. If you don't want to come back in and work in your office any longer, it's all right. Just respond to the email we're going to send out and say resign, and we'll get you out of the system within a little while, and we'll continue to pay you and your benefits through the end of September. And, of course, oh, my gosh, the hissy fits coming from the people in charge of the federal agents.

Oh, you can't do this. There are more people than ever needing government services. They need these. Hey, that's all right, though. Most of these people are hardcore Democrats, the people of the Beltway that are not going into their offices. That's just the way they hate Trump. They hate everything about him.

Great, you hate him so much, go ahead and quit. We'll even pay you for the opportunity to quit. It's even better than any deal that the Providence nurses might want to get as they argue with their bosses too. That's how I see this. I see this as, you know, in spite of what Doge is saying, in spite of what all the people in Congress, yes, we've got to rein in spending. Nobody really wants to rein in spending or nobody can rein in spending,

so it's going to have to be done kind kind of by force and and where president trump trump can do it i wish it weren't that way but you have what uh two republicans in the in the majority that's it two a majority of two which is not real it's not a governing majority it's kind of a deadlock government and when you have that deadlock government thing going on, the status quo of everybody gets their free pony continues to roll. And everybody will say, hey, you know, we need restoration. You know, Cliff could be on there and saying we need more restoration for the Klamath River. There's all sorts of things you can see coming then. And every spending, bit of spending there has a constituency and has a Congress critter that is ready to

help make it happen. And it's considered necessary in that particular district. That is the reality. This is the challenge where we find ourselves. So I think between the buyouts and the other things, trying to stop the grant stream funding, that's more of an admission that cutting the budget is going to be a lot harder than they think. But Trump's got smart people on this, and I think it was just a great, great thing that

he did. I love the buyout. The buyout is my favorite aspect of it. You know, bribe them to go away. Bribe the Democrats within the ideologically biased federal system to go away. And then maybe we can be replaced with people that do some jobs. Now, the funny thing is that I know some people at work. I don't know many federal workers, but I know a handful.

One of them I know works within the system, built a home office to do the work that he performs, and they homeschool their young child, and they set up a secure office space within the home because the federal job is kind of like an online job. And so they had to make sure that the office is locked and not accessible by all the other people because there were government security requirements for this. And so they've done that.

I don't know if people like that are going to have to be coming back into the office because it's worked out pretty well for this one particular federal worker I know because they are able to not have to get child care and homeschool their young child for a few hours a day outside of the work hours, and then they don't have to go with daycare, which, of course, is a much better life for this child, and the work still gets done. I imagine there will still be some specific, and I do think even in the executive orders, there are some specifics because not everybody, not everyone who is staying home as a federal employee is not doing the job,

especially the ones that can be directly monitored like this one that I happen to know personally. We'll see where this ends up going. But still, if you end up having a bunch of leftists quitting because they just can't handle working for the Trumpster any longer, good riddance. That's kind of the way I'm looking at it. This is the Bill Myers Show, and you're on kmed 99.3 kb xg if your home computer has issues hi i'm riley with rotary drilling company and i'm on kmed 625 oh more calvin i always need that 7705633 before we get to the phones here, looking at the Oregon Capital Chronicle this morning,

Oregon needs to build 29,500 more homes each year, according to the chief economist. More of these homes, mostly in the Portland region in Willamette Valley, of course. Of course, right? To emerge from a housing shortage years in the making. I don't know. This is actually less than what Governor Tina Kotek wants to build. She wants to build 36,000 a year. So the economist says 29,000, 29,500.

Maybe we should wait a little bit and see how many illegal aliens get vacuumed out of the state of Oregon. And then maybe we won't need 29 and a half thousand. Maybe we'll only need 15,000. I don't know. You know, I don't know what the number is. But of course, as Caroline Levitt said, they're all criminals because they broke our laws. They broke our laws to get here. But that could see nobody thinks about the housing crisis or the school crisis is uh crises rather based on that let me go to the deplorable patrick how you doing dp good morning well i'm doing okay yay for me to get to be first in line and uh well you

were the inaugural of uh the bill meyer uh caller hall of fame we did that unofficially yesterday might have to well make this official. I'm trying not to strut around too bad. But this Caroline Levitz, don't be fooled by her. You know, the fact that she's so good should tip you off. She's AI generated. You know, you know, it's true because our guiding light liberals tell us Trump doesn't want strong, intelligent women around him. Yeah, you're right about that. So she's a fake job then. There's got to be.

Well, you know what it is? He's such good friends with Elon Musk. He already has one of those neural links, you know, the brain implant, the IP, you know, the link to the internet is already plugged into her, and that's what's doing it. You could be right about that. And it's not even Conspiracy Theory Thursday. We're getting a rolling start. Thanks for the call.

I love that. Dave, they still have an unlocked Lakeview Drive around the house that you're trying to get put back in place in the Iron Gate? Yeah. Are you serious? Yeah. I you serious? Yeah. I'm serious. It's still locked down.

Can't go that way. Someone told me that if they wanted to come and try to help you there around the Iron Gate. I'm looking for volunteers. Well, now, you're telling me, though, is it true that it takes a 20-mile detour to get to your house because of that? It's more like 25 or 30. Oh, okay. What could be the wrong?

So what are you looking for? I'm looking for volunteers that are willing to be defiant and remove a chain-link fence at the bridge, then drive up and remove a barrier, and then cut the lock off of our gate that they put on our gate. Now, I'm going to ask a really dumb question, and I'm hoping you have a smart answer for me, okay? Under whose authority is that road locked? Well, I don't exactly know. Why don't you find out before you start calling for volunteers to? I've talked to the sheriff, and he that uh it's a private road it's a

private matter and so if it's a private road or private matter if we remove it we can't be arrested and uh he won't get involved oh okay so in line being a dust up between what is this the the klamath uh uh the klamath uh river renewal corporation is that what this is all about okay well i guess then you're willing to go toe-to-toe with him okay i don't have the money for lawyers okay well then that means you're a judgment proof all right good luck on that let me go to line three hi good morning who's this yeah good morning bill this is terry hi terry what are you thinking hey i agree you know president trump Trump's press woman's amazing. But, you know, and I wish, and they used to do this a lot, too, but I wish more recently

they would use the analogy to that one lady that pressed her on illegals. I wish they'd say, well, if she came home one day and found somebody sitting on her couch watching TV that's not supposed to be there, and they also wanted her to pay for, you know, their dental and all this other stuff, what would they do? Would they be all right with that? Yeah, that is a pretty good analogy to use on something like that. And also, oh, by the way, don't forget the educational costs, too, of the family brought along, right?

Yeah, I mean, what could they say to that? I mean, they would look ridiculous. Well, it's not about—I don't think they really care much about looking ridiculous. Have you noticed what happened over the last three, four years, Terry? Well, you're right. Well, they don't care, but, you know, maybe that explains it to some of the people that don't totally get it a little bit better and put it, you know, in a better place for them to look at it. I do appreciate them actually saying, though, that if you are here illegally, you've already broken the law. And it's like, thank you.

It's been a self-evident truth to anyone with half a brain for a long time. But the fact that they're actually willing to say it is very nice. It's helpful, I think, at this point. But some people don't see that or they don't get that. Do you understand what I mean? They don't put two and two together with that. They don't think that. They don't realize that's breaking the law yeah well i think go ahead and try to try and overstay your visa if you go to paris and visit oh exactly or mexico

yeah or any or anywhere else they'll come and round your butt up thanks terry let me grab one more call before news hi good morning who's. Who's this? Welcome. Bill, it's Herman. Herman, how you doing? Good. So I just wanted to ask you a question. Okay. When was the last time the U.S. budget was balanced? Well, I don't even think it was balanced back in the Bill Clinton administration.

They always talked about it, but it was kind of a financial sleight of hand i don't know it's been a long time hasn't it well it was it was it was during the clinton administration and and he actually he got it he did a pretty good job when i gotta take my hat off okay he also offered back then the federal employees buyouts just like trump is doing this is nothing new boy i mean he probably kind of forgot about that huh no institutional memory oh right and you know for all these people and that's the problem and i've been saying it in josephine county we have a group of people that want all these services and we have another group of people don't want to pay for them

and if you look at the national debt right now, it's $36,412,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, blah, blah, blah. But what that equates to is $326,000 for every taxpayer. Huh. So I'm on the hook for that we can no longer keep going that way. But can you also agree with me that there's no real congressional support to do the kind of cuts that are probably needed? Well, I think I think there is and there isn't. I think publicly there is not because it's not that's not very popular for a Congress person to say, you know. Well, I'm really sorry. I know that you were looking for a new firehouse. But after all, we are thirty six trillion dollars in debt. So we had to say, OK, to not getting a new firehouse, right?

That kind of thing in your community. Well, you know, that's the, the U.S. national debt, that's just the money we've borrowed. The money that we also owe, and this is what is never talked about. The total U.S. debt is $101 trillion, $572 billion. So if I was to use your math you were talking about each of us is on the hook for about a million dollars then right um you know i don't have that statistic in front um no i don't have that statistic in front of me okay well well think about that get back to me we'll take it though we'll take it if you if you said that uh we're

each on the hook for about three hundred thousand000 for $36 trillion, if we're over $100-something trillion, then I'd figure it had to be three times that, right? Yeah, yeah, something like that. Okay, it's a lot of money. But you know, there's another way of looking at this, too, though, is that a debt that large is never going to be paid back. No, but we're still on the hook for it. So it's going to affect our economy. If you go back into like 1980, the debt ratio per gross domestic product was only 34, 34.5%. Today it's 123%. That is in the neighborhood of what they call the death spiral, in which the more you go into debt, you're not goosing the economy anymore. In fact, you're sliding backwards is where we are right now.

And so, you know, Elon Musk is right. You know, and he kind of laughed. Yeah. We're on our way to bankruptcy. Oh, I know. You do it this way. But all I'm getting at, though, is that, you know, Trump is doing a lot of this between the buyouts and trying to do the freezing. And I think one of the reasons he's doing that is because the reality is that there aren't going to be the cuts needed out of Congress, at least this year.

And I don't know if you're going to get it in the second year either. I'm just talking about the realistic. The votes aren't likely there. Would you agree with me on that but but trump has the the power of the pen to stop the trajectory okay and that's about and that's what this is about that's what this is about yeah this is not correcting what has happened this is stopping from making it worse yeah exactly That's what he's trying to do right now. Agreed. And people are going to cry. Oh, they're already crying.

They're already in hissy fit panic. They're already in hissy fit panic because it, but it still shows how corrupted we, the people have allowed ourselves to become that we are so dependent on that federal money spigot, that borrowed federal money spigot. And it's, it's going to be, well, it's a rude awakening, right? Why don't we just leave it at that, okay, Herman? It's no different at the personal level when you max out your credit card

and the bank says no more. That's what's going on right now. And they call the loan. Thanks for the call, Herman, as always. Wheels Up Wednesday continues. This time we'll switch it over to the automotive side with Eric Peters after news. Latest news brought to you by locally owned and operated

financing on approved credit through Ford Credit. This is News Talk 106.3 KMED, and you're waking up with the Bill Myers Show. Hey, everybody! Let's have fun! Yeah! You only live once, and when you're dead, you're done.

You better let the good times roll, baby. Let the good times roll, baby. EP Autos, Eric Peters, Wheels Up Wednesday. Get your stuff together, let the good times roll. The reason why he had to pull that out of the chest, that's from Ray Charles. I love that song, Let the Good Times Roll. That's also the theme of Kawasaki, isn't that their big marketing brand name there?

Eric, welcome back to the show. Well, yeah, and I'm feeling a little bit green around the gills today, Bill, and it's not because I ate some bad chicken. I'm a longtime Kawasaki guy, owned for as long as I've been riding, pretty much.

And per my article today, oh no, the cancer has spread and Kawasaki has decided it's a fine idea to build a hybrid electric motorcycle. Now, stupid question. Why would you want to build a hybrid electric motorcycle? Because motorcycles are already pretty economical as they are, but I could be wrong about that. Well, not just economical, but also very clean, if only by dint of the fact that they don't burn much gas, and so ipso facto, they don't emit very much gas.

Even carbon dioxide. Yeah, but that's the key to understanding this, because it only makes sense in that context. Of course, motorcycle riders don't want one of these things. It costs twice as much as an otherwise comparable middleweight sport bike. So what's the upside here? You're going to spend about $7,000 more so that you can ride on electric battery power for 12 whole miles and up to about 42 miles per hour. That's a really big sell, isn't it?

Oh, okay. Most people I know who ride motorcycles are not looking at that as a huge advantage or a huge selling point, but seriously, it costs more than twice as much. More than twice as much. But here's the punchline. The reason they're doing this has nothing to do with market demand. It wasn't as if people who buy Kawasaki's are writing letters to Kawasaki corporate saying, please, oh, please, make your next motorcycle hybridized. Make it battery-powered. Eliminate the manual transmission, which, by the way, is another fun thing about this bike. It's got an automated manual transmission, which means you just push buttons.

You don't shift or you don't work a clutch. Oh, so the motorcycle riders can then become as ignorant about how to drive a stick shift as most car drivers can, right? Exactly. Exactly. So here's the punchline. The punchline is that the cancer has spread to the world of motorcycling. We were wondering for a long time how long it would take. And we've been talking about this for years because motorcycles were almost the last bastion of road freedom left in America as far as very little.

Affordable road freedom. As I mentioned in the end line of my article, you can still buy, a teenager could still buy a brand new motorcycle as opposed to even a used car because they're so inexpensive. Well, that's going to change just the way it's been changing with regard to cars. There's a reason why about a third of the cars on the market right now are hybrids, and that's going to end up being probably two-thirds unless the new transportation secretary and orange man dial back the regs. And this brings us to why. The reason why is that Kawasaki, Honda, all of them are now under the same pressure that has beset the car industry to find a way to figure out how to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

The only way you can do that is by shutting off the engine. So, short of going to a fully electric bike, which is a complete non-starter, look at what happened to Harley and their LiveWire, which is a pretty dead wire. Yeah, what happened to the, you know, Southern Oregon manufactures an electric bike from what I, I forget the name of it off the… Zero, I think. Is that what it is? Okay. Yeah, well, Zero is one of the other brands. And Harley, of course, is a conventional motorcycle brand that was thinking it was going to start selling electric bikes. And that has gone over about as well as Hindenburg did. Nobody wants to buy a Harley that isn't a device. They just don't. If you're in that market,

that's just the way this goes. Now, I'm kind of curious what the reaction for this may be from other manufacturers, because the one thing I can't help but notice is the rise of relatively inexpensive two-stroke scooters, even up to about 250 cc's. You know, you'll see them on the online portals, the Ebays and the Amazons. And I'm wondering if these will end up kind of becoming the new motorcycles rather than the mainstream Kawasaki's and Honda's because if you're talking $14,000 for a motorcycle, then why? One that, of course, is much higher maintenance,

much more complicated, something that has to be taken to the dealer for anything but the most very basic routine service. And I would imagine that because of the batteries, this motorcycle would have to be relatively heavy compared to the other ones. Yeah, it's a middleweight bike that weighs more than my full-sized leader bike sport bike that I have. Really?

It weighs 500 and something pounds, which is ridiculous for a middleweight. One of the reasons people buy those smaller bikes is because they're so easy to move around. The thing has to have a reverse because it's so heavy because most people are going to have difficulty walking it backwards using their feet. Oh, okay. So the article is called The Last Thing Anyone Who Rides Needs, and it's about the Kawasaki. Now, do they call it an electric ninja? What's the actual name of the model?

They call it the Ninja 7H. You know, they always come up with these kind of multi-syllabic names for these devices, which make them sound more like the next microwave oven or cell phone, which is appropriate. Now, is the engine on this smaller than the standard Ninja? You know, how I'm wondering that, you know, so many times we've been talking about how what's been going on in the car world is that everything is now a two-liter, triple-turbocharged, four-cylinder, you know, that kind of thing. Well, you know, bikes are a little different than cars. Kawasaki makes Ninjas with engines ranging from 250 cc's all the way up to 1,000 cc's and then some. This one is kind of a

downsized version of the two-cylinder 500 cc engine that is in the normal non-hybrid Ninja 500. Now, these are all four-cycle, two cycles long gone, right? Oh, yeah, not for street bikes. Yeah, they definitely can't pass emissions. But this isn't even about emissions. This is, again, it's about carbon dioxide, which is ridiculous to talk of in terms of emissions, because emissions are things that are associated with pollution, and carbon dioxide doesn't cause pollution. It's claimed that it causes the climate to change, but I mean, it's just beyond stupid. Even if it were true, motorcycles constitute about 3% of all the vehicles that are on the road. And the idea that by, you know, fractionally reducing the amount of CO2 that a handful of motorcycles are emitting, somehow that's going to stop the

climate from changing? Doubtful, especially as China continues to build coal plant after coal plant after coal plant after coal plant. It's kind of funny nobody says anything about that. I think the saddest aspect of it, though, if this continues, is that motorcycling is going to become unaffordable, particularly for young people. It's going to be exactly the same as what happened with cars after Cash for Clunkers,

which threw away all of the, you know, the inexpensive but generally serviceable cars that used to be abundantly available. You know, now if you're 17 or 18 years old, good luck buying your first new car unless mom and dad help you out with it, and it's going to be the same with motorcycles. I wonder if this is going to be leading to the increase in the price of used motorcycles once again, as used cars have become more expensive because people start looking back at some of the older models and thinking, you know, I can actually fix this older model. It's something which I can still get parts for, et cetera. Just curious. Oh, absolutely. I think that that's an inevitability.

I'm expecting, I've got a bunch of old bikes myself, and not that I'm interested in selling them, but I have no doubt that their value has gone up over the last couple of years for exactly that reason. But you will never sell the Widowmaker, will you? I will not sell any of them, no. They'll have to pry them out of my cold, dead hand, per Charlton Heston. Now, wasn't the Widowmaker the little stinkers, what you call it? Oh, it's the mini Widowmaker. I've got the small 250cc version of the infamous Kawasaki three-cylinder triple.

The 750 was the one that was known as the Widowmaker. But that little 250 will surprise you if you're not ready for it, too. Because they say that, I guess, the power curve on the two-stroke is like, you know, you have it floored, right? And you're thinking everything's fine, and then all of a sudden the power just ramps up so rapidly people would flip backwards, right? They just get thrown backwards. Yeah, it's not linear. It's ballistic. You know, it goes from nothing.

You know, you rotate the right grip all the way, and you're like, oh, God, nothing's happening. Wow, this thing's slow. And then, boom, you're looking at the sky. Yeah, crazy stuff. And great article on epautos.com. 770-5633-770-KMED. A couple of other articles I wanted to talk with you about. Oh, by the way, before we break for this, and people can also call and ask questions of Eric about maybe vehicles they're looking at or any other comments.

Why don't I ask you, is Trump's EPA or transportation people going to be open to reducing or even rolling back some of the regulations at this point? Do we know? Sean Duffy, who's the new guy, has already said that they want to, at least with regard to heavy trucks, meaning anything that's above a $1,500 to $2,500 and stuff, they want to dial back the CAFE requirements, the gas mileage requirements. And I'm hoping that they're going to apply that as well, that doctrine to all vehicles. And in fact, get the government out of this business of decreeing fuel standards for anything. Let the market decide. Let people buy what they want and what they're willing to pay for. Nobody's forcing anybody to buy a gas guzzler. We've only had those rules since what, early 70s, I think? Yeah, since about 1975, I think. 74, 75 is when it came into effect.

Gee, how did we ever live before then? Okay. Eric Peters, epautos.com, right back on KMED. Here at American Rent Your Garage, we respect and support those individuals who... This is the Bill Myers Show on 1063 KMED. Got something on your mind? Give Bill a shout at 541-770-5633. 770 KMED. I wanted to play more Rage Charles. I like that song.

Haven't heard that song in years. We'll keep it going. Let the good times roll, baby. Unless you want that Kawasaki hybrid. And we continue on taking your calls. And let's go to line two. You're on with Eric Peters. Good morning. And we continue on taking your calls. And let's go to line two. You're on with Eric Peters. Good morning.

Hi. Who's this? Welcome. Good morning, gentlemen. Jeff and Thelma. Hi, Jeff. Good morning. Hey, Eric, I didn't know Kawasaki made a 250 triple.

Oh, back in the day, yeah. It's a rare iteration of their series of much better-known 50750cc two-stroke triples. I had a 350 triple. Yes, and they made a 450. They made a whole line of these things. Mine is technically the S1250C. Well, back when I got my driver's license, I was 4'10", and I had that 350 triple. When it hit $6,000, it was like flipping a switch.

There you go. And it went from six grand and it redlined at nine five. So in the, in back in that day, the, the Norton 650s and Triumph 650s were the bike to beat. 650s and 750s. And if I had you in third gear, I had you. Yep. So if, if, if we're right side by side and I got into third gear, I had you. Yep. So if we're right side by side and I got into third gear, I was probably going to walk away from you. That is amazing. My bike is the only 250 that I've ever wheelied without having to clutch it. It's a 250 that will wheelie. Oh, one of the first lessons I learned was never open the throttle in first gear. Yep. Ever. Totally. Yeah, because you're not, you can't, I couldn't get my feet up on the foot pegs. Great story about that, Jeff.

And so you were 4'10", so you obviously grew a bit afterwards, right? My mom worked in the license bureau there in Ohio, so she put 4'11 on there just to make it look good. All right. Appreciate the call, Jeff. Let me go to the next line. You're on with Eric Peters. Hi, good morning who's this welcome hey morning bill and tony hey tony you're on with eric hey uh i heard you guys talking about electric motorcycle manufacturers in southern oregon are you talking about the brahma brahma that's what i was thinking yeah

bramo bramo right or bramo yeah yeah cummins the cummins the diesel engine manufacturer had dipped their toes into the world of electric bikes. They bought the old Walmart talent. And I think they found there was no market for those stupid things, so it's gone now. They're out of business. Oh, they're not doing it anymore. Yeah, nobody wants an electric motorcycle. They're silly.

There's an old dictum about knowing your market, and this business of trying to make electric bikes or hybrid bikes is kind of like McDonald's trying to sell soy meatless hamburgers. It's not what you go to McDonald's for. Yeah, exactly. Appreciate the call, Tony. Hi, good morning. You're on with Eric Peters on KMED. Who's this? Hey, Bill.

It's David. Hi, David. Hey, I had a customer with a nine-year-old ford vehicle with a 3.5 v6 and i had to call him yesterday and tell him it was going to be 4400 to change their water pump oh yeah and then i happened to be talking to another customer a shop owner yesterday and just kind of talking and and i said wow you know it's really kind of crazy that these cars need 4400 water pumps which is you know we've always understood a water pump to be in this day and age about a hundred thousand mile item. So that's a lot of money. And he said, oh yeah. And when that motor's in the Lincoln model vehicles, he goes, it has a

few extra parts in there. That bill comes to $5,600, you know? And I just feel like telling people when some of these manufacturers do these things that are basically like, you know, sticking a knife in your back, essentially, you know, with this time bomb where this car is going to need – I mean that's not an engine. That's not a transmission. That's just a cooling system repair, right? One repair. Which should have been a $50 part plus labor. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. They buried it in the motor, and it's like – I just feel like calling you every week and telling you some of these manufacturers and what – I mean it's crushing. That's three months of rent for people. sure but you know it's deliberate you know the majority of people who buy for example a lincoln or any other luxury brand vehicle they lease it and it's under warranty during the period that they have it and so after three years they change into another vehicle and then it's the next guy the guy who actually buys it that winds up in the bag hey david i want to ask you uh that uh that water pump, and it's a 4.5, you said? Is that what it is? It's a 3.5. It's a 3.5 V6. It's about an eight-year-old car. I

don't want to give the exact model, but yeah, it's a 3.5 liter engine. Now, is it an electric water pump, something which is buried in there, or how is it designed? No, it's behind the timing chain, but to get the timing chain off, the components, they have to be replaced when you pull them out. And the components are very expensive. And even the valve covers in the motor are plastic, and they cannot be reinstalled. Wow. They have to be ripped. The whole assembly has to be replaced, you know.

And you can't, you know, and some people, I think when they bring the car to one place, they go, well, we need the old $700 to take it apart. And then they're going to tell you after it's apart, of course, you know, oh, well, we just saw your timing chains worn out. Well, I don't do that to people. I tell them up front, you know, I'm not putting any of that stuff back in there. It doesn't make any sense. I'm not going to do it. So I tell them up front. So, you know, they have a big round number.

And that thing is $4,400. And that water pump is a 80 to 100, I think the car is 108,000 miles on it right now, but that's something you've got to pay for, you know, multiple times through the ownership of that vehicle. But that's like an engine replacement cost for a lot of cars, isn't it? Oh, no, well, not really. I mean, that used to be what it cost to get a whole motor put in your Dodge truck

was, you know, $4,500. That used to be that way. But, you know, nowadays, if you take a Chevy Suburban to the dealership for a transmission, unless the company gives you what they call a relief, which is where they pay for half of it because they know that you're onto them, that's about $9,000 now. So everything you knew about what cars used to cost, between the stuff they're making and the inflation, it's crazy. But this is just a water pump. And I feel like I should call you every week and tell you some of these things I see because I have a hard time telling people, and I'm cheap, Bill. I know. I know. You're very economical.

I work out of my driveway, basically. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. $4,500 for a water pump because they're – okay. It's obscene, and people do need to know about it. It's all part of this insurfment process because, as he says, you present somebody who wasn't expecting it with a $4,500 bill. Who has that kind of cash? Very few. So what are they going to do?

They're going to put it on their credit card and are probably going to be slapped with 25% monthly compounding interest on that. And it's not viable. So, you know, really, as crazy as it sounds, it might be a better solution to just go out and get a new vehicle, because at least you can spread the interest out over six or seven years. Yeah. I'm thinking about how easy it is to change the water pump in my 82 van, you know, the Volkswagen diesel, because, you know, it's about an hour. It's a pain in the butt. But, you know, it's a fan belt or a belt and about 10 millimeter screws and some gaskets. And you clean it up and everything else. And you're back on the road. I just can't. Yeah.

Sure. The same with my Nissan. You know, it's right there at the front of the engine. So you pull the radiator out, which is easy. And then you loosen the belt, take them off, and there it is. There's your pump. I forget how many bolts it is, but it's probably like six or eight bolts or whatever. You take it out, and you clean up the gasket surface, put a new one in, boom, put it all back together.

That's it. It's almost like they're designing everything not to be serviced. It just strikes me as that way. There's no reason for it. Other examples include alternators that are buried deep within the V of a V6 engine. And so, again, you have to disassemble pretty much the top half of the entire engine to do something that used to be literally a 15-minute job. You know, it kind of stands to reason that if you're purchasing a vehicle or even a new-to-you vehicle, a used vehicle, it might not be a bad idea to talk to some of the mechanics about which ones have these sort of time bombs hidden in them

that basic maintenance items can bankrupt you. Oh, absolutely. And, you know, touching on this as well, extended warranties can actually be very sound policy in this case for just that reason, because the repair costs are that high. You know, even for routine things like a water pump, which inevitably, if you keep a vehicle long enough, you're going to have to put a water pump in the thing. Normally, you've not been a fan of those extended warranties, but now you can see some of the value,

I guess. Okay. Yeah, well, I mean, it's what are you going to do? I mean, they really do have us between a rock and a hard place. So you pay $2,500 for the extended warranty to avoid having to spend $4,500 for a water pump. All right, very good. Let me grab another call or two here with Eric. epautos.com. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Yeah, it's Joel from the Arringate.

Hey, Joel, what's up? The electric bike, I think it's over 10 years ago, they were from Ashland, and now they're made at the old Walmart in Talent, and they're called Bronco. Yeah, no, it's Bram-O, isn't it? Wasn't it Bram-O? Bram-O. Bram-O. Bram-O called Bronco, and they're... Yeah. No, it's Brammo, isn't it? Wasn't it Brammo? Brammo.

Brammo. Brammo. Brammo, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, but are they still working there? I haven't driven by that plant for a while. Are they still doing it?

Yeah, I haven't either. Okay. All right. Do you know, Eric, if that's still working or not? All I know is nobody's making money on this. Anybody that's dived into this, any company that's dived into it is cratering and losing money. By the way, KTM and Husqvarna are on the cusp of going out of business while we're talking about bikes. Really? Yeah. Because of, you know, people are feeling the pinch and, you know, motorcycles for most people are a toy.

They're a discretionary purchase. And KTMs and Husqvarna are kind of higher end bikes. And people just can't afford it. Polaris, their profitability is down about 60%, according to what I read the other day. Now, is Polaris the one that's like the, has the two wheels in the front, that one? You know, the ATVs, that's what they specialize in. Oh, the side-by-sides, okay, yeah. Those are really cool, but boy, they are pricey, aren't they?

Yeah, I mean, they're like $12,000, $13,000, and you know, for a toy, how many people can afford to just spend $12,000 or $13,000 on a toy? Yeah. Let me grab another line or two. Hi, you're on with Eric. Good morning. Who's this? Hey, good morning, guys. Keith out of Cave Junction. I have a request of the government. Maybe you guys can tell me, are we on the verge of hearing a government official say that CO2 is not a pollutant? Yes. Yes.

Trump has already... Publicly! Publicly! Publicly. No, he's said words to that effect. You know, I just think he's not somebody who's best equipped to articulate it. There are people, though, within the administration who are capable of doing so. And I think my bet would be that they're going to do that because it's the linchpin of everything.

In order for them to attack this bureaucratic apparat, all the regs and everything, that issue has to be addressed. You can't cede any ground on that. That has to be discussed. You have to stick the – well, you've got to stick the wooden stake in its heart, really. Yep. All right. We'll grab one more. Thank you, Keith.

One more call. Hi. Good morning. Who's this? Good morning. Steve in stake in its heart, really. Yep. All right. We'll grab one more. Thank you, Keith. One more call. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Good morning. Steve in Sunny Valley. Hi, Steve. I just want to say water pumps started to be a pain in the butt back with the 84 Chevy Citation. You had to undo the motor mounts and jack the motor up to get to it.

I mean, I was fine with taking off the radiator and all the guards and stuff, but when you have to undo the motor mounts and jack up the engine, that's just bad design. Well, you know, inherently, transverse, i.e. sideways-mounted engines, which is typical in front-wheel-drive-type vehicles, front-wheel-drive and all-wheel-drive, it's more difficult to work on them, particularly if they're, say, a V6, because you've got half of the engine really snubbed up against the firewall, so that even changing spark plugs, for example, is just a horrendous chore. I appreciate the call. Thanks for that, Steve.

Hey, Eric, before we take off, I wanted to make sure people check out your article on the Volvo XC60 T8 Polestar. Did you like that? I did. I thought that was great because you're essentially going to get Porsche-like performance for a lot less money. And in a Volvo-looking vehicle, that's the ticket. You know, I like sleepers. I think you like sleepers, too.

You bet. Because you can actually use them. You know, if I'm driving a Porsche Macan, which is something that's fundamentally very similar to this Volvo, every cop in the world is going to look at me, and if I'm doing 57 in a 55, he's probably going to pull me over. But I can whip past that same cop doing 70 in this Volvo because, hey, it's a Volvo crossover. Who would have thunk it?

But this thing has 455 horsepower, if you can imagine, and 500-and-something foot-pounds of torque, and it will almost get air under the front wheels if it weren't for all-wheel drive. It's a hoot to drive this thing. And very refreshing to see Volvo making a car like that. Yeah, watch the review there. It's great stuff on epautos.com. And who are you going to, or what are you going to review next week, you think? Oh, well, I'm getting another Ram 1500.

Oh, okay. That'll let us talk about what's going on with Ram and whether they're potentially going to bring the V8 back before RAM ends up sleeping with the fishes, too. Very good. Hey, Eric, thanks so much. Always good talking with you. epautos.com, great site. Please check it out. We do every day. This is the Bill Meyer Show. Thanks, Eric.