Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 01-31-25_FRIDAY_6AM

Episode Date: February 1, 2025

Morning news, Jo County meeting on SB762 fire risk map is BIG, Crazy Coffee news as Dutch Bros caves to PETA, Rick Manning with the DC swamp update from Daily Torch dot com, noodling through Trump orders and more.

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clouserdrilling.com. Here's Bill Myers. Good morning. The final day of January, at least in 2025, January 31st, 39 degrees, bit of rain here in Southern Oregon. Actually kind of nice to see the rain. It's been really dry for a while and dry is not going to be the weather word for the next couple of days or so. Rain through most of today, probably tonight through tomorrow morning. Then showers off and on over the weekend. Chance of that decreasing.

And then we'll get some more of that next week. And, of course, possibility of high-pass snow, that sort of thing. So definitely stay in touch with that kind of news. Okay? Join in at 770-563-3770-KMED. My email is bill at billmyershow.com. Wow. If you were on my Facebook page last night, I saw an amazing picture from the Josephine County Fairgrounds, a picture Holly Morton ended up taking. Of course, she's the chair of the Republican Party. I would have to say at least 1,000, maybe more people showing up at that big, big fairgrounds. It was just packed.

Standing room only by the time it was ending. And this having to do with Senate Bill 762, the wildfire map, getting to get her talking about ways to respond to it. And I'm going to reach out to Josephine County Commissioner Ron Smith. Of course, I ended up talking about the fact that this meeting was coming up. You want to talk about a We the People moment. And now that these fire map letters have been going out to rural property owners. Now, I did not get one of those letters because I'm within the city. I'm on the edge of the city.

I'm considered moderate in my particular home. But a lot of people, you know, once you're into the high hazard, boom, you're getting those letters and you're given the opportunity to appeal by March. And I'm sure there was a lot of good conversation on that. And apparently there has been a workup of a cease and desist on Senate Bill 762. I don't have time to go through the entire legal verbiage, but it's been like other cease and desist that we've used in other attempts to, and in fact successful attempts in some cases, to stop some of these intrusions. And I don't, I guess several hundred copies of it were put out there. And, you know, essentially Senate Bill 762 is an unconstitutional intrusion on our property rights. I mean, I don't think there's any doubt about that.

But what I do find interesting is that there's a little nugget that I think is quite important. Let me see if I can find it. I'm going to read a little bit from this cease and desist. It is noteworthy to address your communication to private property owners by consideration of your – this is like being sent to the ODF and other state agencies. It is noteworthy to address your communication to private property owners by consideration of your statements under applicable law, where it states that the Oregon Board of Forestry is charged with supervising all matters of forest policy and management under the jurisdiction of the state. And then they have an ORS number three clearly states to direct the improvement and protection of forest land owned by the state of Oregon. Now, I don't want to get too much in the weeds about this, but it would appear that in the

writing of Senate Bill 762, they referenced the authority to do this, you know, for the ODF, except that in this law, or in this law, in the code, it says that ODF's job is to direct the improvement and protection of forest land owned by the state of Oregon. They're not doing this in Senate Bill 762. They are seeming to, I don't know, establish a magic authority for the Oregon Department of Forestry to control and manage private land. Isn't that interesting? Reading law is very helpful at times, isn't it?

Now, perhaps there are other magic pieces of authority. Maybe the magic piece of authority is that Senator Jeff Golden and State Representative Pam Marsh just want it to be so. It doesn't matter if ODF has the authority. We're going to say it has the authority and we'll reference the law and maybe hope that nobody reads the law. Maybe that's what they're hoping. I don't know. But to me, that's kind of, this could be quite an interesting linchpin. It's like, all right, you have hundreds of property owners here in southern Oregon sending out cease and desist to the state of Oregon.

And then you're referencing a law of Oregon Department of Forestry that they have the right to protect forest land owned by the state of Oregon. And conflating that with it has the ability to control and manage private property. Right? See what I'm getting at here? Very interesting. This is going to be something to watch. Maybe I'll have to get in touch with Commissioner Ron Smith of Joe County. But I'm going to have to post this.

I'm going to have to post the cease and desist. I think I'll do that on KMED.com if you didn't get a copy of it. But I do have it. A copy has been forwarded to me. Also, the addresses where it needs to go, including Department of Forestry, Oregon Secretary of State, Oregon Attorney General. And frankly, you got to send it to the U.S. Department of Justice, because one of the biggest challenges, in my opinion, fighting the state of Oregon is that the state of Oregon is corrupt. It is corrupt. It is held sway by unconstitutional consensus processes rather than law. And that's the way they tend to work. And so maybe it's time to bring in the U.S. Department of Justice to bust the chops of the state of Oregon.

Very corrupt, in my opinion. So we will see. Ed, good morning. Good to have you on. Bill, how are you? I'm fine. Could you turn your radio down there in just a second? Yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't expect you to answer that quickly. Okay. Sometimes I do. I see you. I know your number. So it's like, all right. It's just like I know when Minor i see you i know your number so it's like

all right it's just like i know when minor dave calls i know his number too i see it on the caller id i get to say okay it's fine you know so anyway it's good to have you on what are you thinking well the interesting thing about what you were just talking about is the you know seven senate bill 762 was put forth and signed and and then they had to have laws, additional laws, that were implemented to put it into effect and control it, right? Right. Well, when you look at that, the one that you just talked about, but you go back to the wildfire mapping law and the law. Now, did I characterize that? Did I characterize it correctly that the state referenced in Senate Bill 762, they referenced the authority to Oregon Department of Forestry to a law that doesn't give them authority over private property?

Is that about right? That's right. And they did that in the communication to the private property owners. Now, when you go back to the wildfire mapping itself, that was controlled by law. And that's in ORS Section 477, and I believe it's 490. And when you look at that, and it states very clearly that the map was to be done on a private, you know, to separate private properties out. Okay? Yes. Now you go to the administrative rule that was adopted, and it's totally contrary to the law. So we have the left side not talking to the right, or the left hand not talking to the right hand, and they're in conflict there.

Push me, pull you, in in essence in the law right well that's that's the problem with the whole thing because in the administrative rule it's contrary to that one where it says it's to be done on a landscape basis which would mean zones right kind of like everything being a zone right and i gotta i gotta phrase that correctly okay it's It's landscape restoration, okay? I think is the wording. Now, the reality to this is Los Angeles is now a restored landscape. Now, there's already talk about the mayor wanting to redevelop in a more equitable way. Yeah, yeah, LA 2.0.

Yeah, we know about that. I want to focus back on it. I mean, I'm agreeing with you here, Ed. I'm not going to disagree. The point being, though, is that it would appear, just looking at the law here, that the Oregon Department of Forestry doesn't have the authority to do what they're being asked to do or what they're trying to do or trying to enforce. Is that the bottom line? I'm trying to focus. Because remember, talk radio. We don't have time to parse every legal argument. I understand that, Bill.

And I'm trying to be as tight as I can with this. But you have to consider a movie. I think, what was it, Jack, Tom Cruise. A Few Good Men. Tom Cruise and a few good men. Your body's right in check or you're right in check because your body can't catch. Oh, OK. All right. And that's something of the quote that was in it. But that's the truth here. They're taking latitudes.

They're taking moves that they don't have the right to do. Now, you look at the Chevron decision. The Chevron decision was about removing these things away from the administrative state. And this is an example of Oregon a clean environment. Well, the reality to that, that already exists. Yeah, well, by the way, I want a constitutional amendment that we all get a pony. Can we get a pony, too, while we're at it? Can we get that from Jeff Golden?

I would like, you know, I would like... I want free Netflix. Can we have a constitutional amendment? Because that would make... I'm just kidding, but you know what I'm getting at here? The nonsense that we get out of our leftists in this state. It is. That's it. You just said the key word, Bill. Nonsense.

And illegal nonsense is the adjective that I would do. Are you then implying that Senate Bill 762 is illegal nonsense here? Well, what I'm implying and what I'm saying is the truth, and the truth shall set you free. 762 in concept might help if they approached it in a real-world scenario instead of following the guidelines of sustainable development on redevelopment. Sustainable development was put in place for developing nations.

Now, their quandary is we're already a developed nation. What they want to do is redevelop us, and they first have to conduct acts of war to destroy us. And, of course, Senate Bill 762, taken to its logical conclusion then, is a war on the rural people. On the people. Yeah. That's right. we have to do if we're going to remain alive and your future generations, your families, your sons, your daughters, your grandsons, your daughters, these people have to have a future. And these people are bent on destroying that future and putting it under state control.

That is communism defined. So what we have to do is understand that every person wants a clean environment. You know, we can't exist without it. But it's protected already through the Constitution of the United States, which the Constitution of Oregon is subordinate to. And that's true that the agencies, the leading agency of the Environmental Protection Agency, these are adjuncts. These are intrusions into that. An adjunct is an unnecessary presence. But until you voice your opposition to it, it's going to stay there. It's going to stay present.

Ed, I appreciate your call. Ed, I appreciate the call. And I'm thinking this cease and desist may be pretty good news. A tool in the toolbox here. All right. All right, Bill. Yeah, could you hang on here just a minute? I'll get back to you in just a second.

Hang on. Let me go to next line here. Hi, this is Bill. Good morning. Who's this? This is my name, Dave. You know that it's me because you can see your color ID. Yeah, I didn't look at it this time.

Go ahead. Yeah, so I have a question for Rick Manning since he's going to be on today yeah uh my understanding there's two classes of federal employees there's a civil servants the regular uh federal workers and then there's uh senior executive services which are management. Right. And my question is, how do we get rid of Senior Executive Services? I will ask you that, Dave. All right. That's a good question. And we'll touch on that.

All right? All right. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. And thank you for listening. 625 on KMED. Stephen Westfall, Inc. is thrilled to announce the...

I'm saving big. Hi, this is Mark from Jay Austin, and I'm on KMED. They've got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil Ring-a-ding-ding, baby It's 627 You know, we've had so much serious news the last couple of days We need to get some silly coffee news Because coffee is in the news and there are just There are, in fact, local coffee news I don't know how we managed to not notice This little story that got lost in the shuffle.

This is from PETA, and it's about our local Dutch Bros. The headline, Victory! Dutch Bros ends vegan milk upcharge after PETA pressure. Hi, Bill. This is from David Pearl, who is the Media Division Senior Manager of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Bill, after PETA urged the top brass at Dutch Bros to end their unfair

vegan milk upcharge that penalized consumers for making a healthy, eco, and cow-friendly choice, the locally headquartered coffee chain has stripped charging more for dairy-free milk. Dutch Bros knows how to perk up kind coffee lovers. Following pressure from PETA, Dutch Bros has ended the upcharge on vegan milk. Vegan milk, by the way, is fake milk.

It's not real. It's that, well, it's more soy boy kind of based stuff. But anyway, I continue here from David's email. A move that helps leave mother cows and their calves in peace reduces the company's greenhouse gas emissions. You know something about cows and greenhouse gas emissions? Cows don't emit greenhouse gases. They're just part of the carbon cycle like everything else on the planet, but I digress.

But anyway, they're going to leave the mother cows and their calves in peace, reducing the company's greenhouse gas emissions, earning a whole latte love from PETA and conscientious consumers, and sets an example for holdouts like Dunkin's and Pete's to follow. PETA notes that the dairy industry is a major producer of the greenhouse gases fueling the climate catastrophe and causing the natural... I can't handle these people. My head's starting to hurt. Okay. But anyway, it's causing the natural disasters that come with it,

including the wildfires raging in California. Oh, so it's the dairy industry and it's causing the natural disasters that come with it, including the wildfires raging in California. Oh, so it's the dairy industry and it's greenhouse gases that led to the incompetency of running California. Good to know that, David Pearl from PETA. Oh, my gosh. But Dutch Bros. joins several other chains, including Starbucks Blue, Bottle Coffee, Panera Bread, Pret-A-Manager, and Stumptown Coffeeasters, and offering dairy-free milk at no extra charge. PETA is calling on Duncan and Pete's Coffee to join in.

Please let me know if you have any questions. So there you go. That's the story from PETA. So Dutch Bros caved. Dutch Bros caved, and they were upcharging. They were charging more for the vegan milk. You know why they were charging more for the vegan milk you know why they were charging more for the vegan milk because it's more expensive yes so in other words you having cow milk or dairy products at dutch bros are now subsidizing the communists from pita isn't that great news thank you very much uh david pearl so there we go. That's a serious one.

Meanwhile, speaking of communists into coffee, Starbucks is going to cut its menu by a third. Chairman and CEO Brian Nicole said today, Starbucks is planning to cut its food and beverage offerings by 30% to simplify operations and speed services. They're also going to add digital menus. And I'm still not going there, but at least I wanted to let you know about coffee news, and then we're going to... Well...

We'll be back with Rick Manning, President of Americans for a Limited Government, the Daily Torch update in D.C. Swamp and all the rest of it. I'm going to have my black coffee. No animal products in it. Just black coffee. That's it. it. Yeah, just black coffee. That's it.

That's it. As a business owner, you likely do a lot. News Talk 1063 KMED. This is the Bill Myers Show. 634, the DC Swamp Update Time. This is the craziest party that could ever be. Don't turn on the lights because I don't want to see. I'm not talking, let's go. Rick Manning on the road, but he's in the passenger seat this morning,

and he's checking in from Americans for Limited Government, DailyTorch.com. Great organization working out there. And I don't know, maybe government's getting a little limited bit by bit. I mean, it's baby steps, but it's something, right? Rick, welcome back to the show. Oh, thanks for having me. And, yeah, I mean, listen, this is the most movement towards limited government that I've seen in my lifetime. So while it may seem baby steps, it is, in D.C. terms, it's an earthquake. How many times, though, Rick, how many times have I been telling you over the years, joking with you, that Americans for Limited Government, Rick Manning is the loneliest man in Washington, D.C., right?

Because nobody wants you, right? Well, I think that may be a personal problem. But no, it's a hard – since Reagan, there hasn't been a lot of appetite for limited government on Republican or Democrat side. What's happening right now is you're getting some limited government under the guise of the more efficient government. And I didn't say it remains to be seen if we're going to actually get limited government, because there's a difference. And limited government is, you know, should the examining should the government do this efficient government is how can the government do this better?

And so it's a matter of perspective. And I think under the Trump administration, that perspective is going to be in the limited side. But the discussions can all be on the efficiency end of things. And so my job is to try to make certain focus stays on limiting government and not just making it better at abusing people. Yeah, exactly. You know, an efficient tyranny is still a tyranny, I guess, is where you're coming from in this particular case. You know, I wanted to touch on, and minor Dave, a listener of mine, just called a few minutes ago. He wanted to ask you, and I think it's a pretty good question. And there's all this talk about what to be doing with the returning federal office workers and the buyout offer emails that went out there. And what he was wondering about is what can you do because there's two different types of

of employees or two different classes and there's the the senior manager how can you how can you clear that out or can you or can you not what are what are the methodologies of getting the uh you know the real fount of communism coming out you know a lot of the lifers up on top. What do you think? Well, this has some of that effect in that it tells them they don't have to, they can get paid for until the end of the fiscal year and have their retirement continue to accrue and they don't have to work. So some people will take that. If you're near retirement age, you know, you're going to take that and you're going to basically cash the check. The thing that I had recommended that be done and hasn't been yet is for Congress to pass legislation that would provide a retirement, basically leave now and we'll give you two more years of retirement on your retirement to try to entice those long-time careers.

Yeah, kind of like what happens in the corporate world when they're trying to downsize. They try to downsize, and then they go to the older employees and say, hey, you've got a couple years left, and we'll pad your pension or your retirement 401k, this and that and the other. And then you can take off earlier. And a lot of them are going, hell, great, happy to do it. Right. And then – Yeah, that's exactly right. It's kind of an offer they can't refuse.

The current what's on the table is unlikely to have that kind of effect with the senior executive service, the more those who have been there who are now kind of in charge of running the government. Well, the ones that tend to laugh at whatever president's coming in because I'm going to be here long after you, right? That's exactly right. And the reason for that is they're not the ones who were not coming into work. They were working from the office. They weren't working from home.

And so this come-to-work executive order, starting on Monday, is going to have an effect on people who are middle managers and kind of on the clerical side of things, and less so on the upper managers who are coming into the office anyway. Okay. I'm reading here in hot air and some other places that the federal employees are very upset with this kind of a combination of panic and disbelief, and the panic seems to stem from the fact that those who stay may have no guarantee that their jobs won't be cut a few months later, right? So they're kind of making that evaluation at this time? Well, that is the evaluation that they're making.

But I think most of the panic is based on people saying, I'm going to now have to, I've been used to not driving into work, and now I'm going to have to do an hour commute. And Monday is going to be just, it's going to be Carmageddon here in D.C. It's going to be a disaster on the roads. Even on a good day, it's a disaster going into the Beltway. It just is. This will be multiplied by a lot.

And it's just true that when the government had no employees coming in during COVID, then let a lot of them work from home, or do kind of almost come in two days a week and somebody else came in two days a week. Now they're all going to be in, you know, together. When they were doing that, they had less than the amount of space they had. They had less than the number of phones they had, less than the number of individual desks they had. They shrunk their overall capacity to house 2 million employees. And because of that,

they're now going to have people showing up to work on Monday, and there's no way in heck they've got that all put back together. They broke Humpty Dumpty, right? They broke the Humpty Dumpty office. So there's no way in heck they're going to be able to put it all back together in time government doesn't move that fast are there any exceptions into this because uh you know i have a relative who uh and i don't want to say uh what what part she works at but she works in the fed for the feds in a uh social services context and everything about her job is an online deal and it's totally trackable and they built an office inside their home and uh and they homeschool their child too so it ends up being uh both ways and so they they did

the whole thing and uh but i guess her you know her job was actually written to be kind of at home someone like that is most likely going to be all right and still allowed to do that work right if i understand it correctly if i understand the way this is set up, or is this just people who, you know, everyone's got to go to the office no matter what? Initially, everybody has to go to the office no matter what. That's the way it appears to be. However, you have to, people are going to then say. Now I'm talking about someone who's living in this area.

They're not in D.C. Well, they're going to make recommendations. Managers can make recommendations for jobs that should specifically be allowed and that were built that way. And they're going to make determinations based on circumstances. The challenge on this is that on other things... I'll give you a State

Department example. This is about coming to work. This is about depending upon the bureaucracy to actually follow the spirit of the law and giving them leeway. On the order not to put out grants to the State Department, just put a hold on grants, Secretary of State Rubio said, you know, present waivers, you know, things that you think should be done, because it directly affects people's ability to have food and, you know, and the like. And he got 200 waivers for grants within a day and they're all for oh we've got this DEI training going on in Africa we've got this there's a basically was a bunch of just do my grant it doesn't it had no

relevance to whether or not it was fit specific exemption. And given that example that we saw at the State Department, it may take the Senior Executive Service a moment or two to try to figure out what to actually make a plausible case for why people should be working outside of the office. I know there are agencies in the Department of Labor where I work that they are virtually entirely outside the office, and it was designed that way so they'd be close to the people who they were serving. And within a month, they'll get all that figured out. It's going to be a maelstrom of complaints and demands on inefficiency.

We've got workers sitting there with no place to sit, no phone. You're going to hear all those stories about the Department of Government Efficiency. In other words, what you're saying is gird your loins for the whiny cry sessions in the media, right? Yeah, we're going to have a—they're going to try to subject us to a struggle session. The fact of the matter is, those who don't want to work anymore, those who don't want to work in the system, will find their way out of the system. And those who want to will work. And, you know, the managers will, and politicals in place, will be putting restructuring government as they do this.

And there's no way, the simple thing people have to understand, there is no way to restructure government without having dislocation and people complaining and the like, and those people who are complaining will have the most powerful media outlets in the world saying they're doing the complaining alongside them, and anxious to use this as an example of trying to take down Donald Trump. All right. So just get ready. It's going to come, and I already see it. I've got a lot of friends who, many who voted for Trump, were like, I never thought this would happen, and they're really kind of worried about it, looking for jobs, online jobs that they can do. And it's like, no, you have to go to work.

And it really is a lifestyle change. Going to work is different than staying at home. It's just different. And you used to staying at home. It's just different. And you used to stay at home, and even if you work really hard at home, going back to work, it shifts everything, as you mentioned with your relative. It shifts everything. Yeah, yeah, D.C. for a number of years, from what I understand, because of this. And I'm just wondering, is there anything left for them to go back to? There are some.

A lot of the small mom-and-pop shops are gone. The little people, the people who had the little hot dog carts and stuff, they haven't been there for a while. The food trucks haven't been around because there aren't many people. And the mayor of D.C. has been advocating for a couple of years that the federal government bring the workers back because it's destroyed downtown D.C.'s business. The entire ecosystem of feeding and serving, you know, those working groups just collapsed and died, crashed and burned, really. Yep. The expensive restaurants survived because, you know, congressmen have to eat too. But the ones that you just go to,

that you go down and pick up a sandwich or something, those things have been by and large gone. I have a guy I was in Bible study with who had four Korean food restaurants that were at metro stations, and they're all gone. Yeah. Do you know if the Dubliner is still open down there over on Massachusetts Avenue? Just curious. I think it is. You think it is? Okay. Yeah, I suspect it's one of those ones. It's close enough to Capitol Hill. Yeah, that's where I was wondering, because that's where I would go when I was going to the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

You know, you and I ate there a couple of times. We sure did. So, yeah, it was a—but, yeah, so it's just—DC is dramatically different. They've changed the—they've even changed some of the roadways coming into DC from sort of the prominent bridges to make it more. Hey, Ricky, did we lose you, Rick? I discovered that a lot of cars are going to be backed up for 20 miles on the coming of our bridge because of their attempt to make things walker-friendly. But it's overall, on Monday, the news story coming out of D.C. is everything's broken and it's Trump's fault.

Okay. All right. So just be prepared and understand and have a little smile and laugh and understand that, yes, this too will pass. Okay. There we go. It's a month of – it'll take it a month to two months. And by the end of it, you'll have a leaner government and hopefully a reorganized government. And the fact is, you're going to be paying people, the taxpayers are going to be paying people until September 30th, who then, once they're not being paid anymore, they're off. You're not going to pay them ever again.

So, yeah, so you have to spend some more money at the moment and not getting any work out of them under the guise of the fact that we save money long term. And that's good. So, Rick, I wanted to shift gears on something else here, if you don't mind. Is all the focus on trying to cut the grant stream funding and all the other permutations – and by the way, I'm supportive of it. I am, all right? But part of me wonders if part of this, if there is, if this is almost an indicator that it's going to be a lot harder to truly rein in the budget long term through the budgeting process right now. Or is it just kind of the initial salvos over there? I'm just kind of wondering. Because, you know, there's not much of a governing majority.

You know that. We've talked about this before well the fact of the matter is um every grant has a constituent yep so it's uh very difficult to deal with a grant the grant situations because you know they don't just give grants they give grants to people who you know have some kind of people who are with power who say, hey, we want to do this. So, yeah, it's hard. And you have all the Congress critters and every grant that they have doled out that's going back to hometown. You know, that's something, hey, look what I brought home, right? That's just the reality. It's the human part of this. It doesn't matter if you're a Republican or Democrat.

Everyone does that, right? That is correct. But that doesn't mean that there won't be significant, I think, significant review of the grants and of the recipients of those grants. Because a lot of the recipients of the grants are hard left groups that then use the grants know, policies that are being put in place. And so it's a – so I don't think – I think the grant reviews are necessary. I think that any short-term disruption that occurs are needed. And quite honestly, our government – we talk about the 2 million employees and plus Pentagon and elsewhere, Postal Service and the like. But as many employees as we have, a lot of the money that we spend is just sending out grant money. And we have to, and the grant money is sent to non-government organizations, largely, to then implement policies that the government wants to implement.

And by giving somebody a three-year grant in, let's say, 2024, you've effectively given them a continuation of a policy that might be ending in 2025, but they've got a grant to continue that policy. And we have to make certain the grants are in alignment with policies of the U.S. government. And quite honestly, that they're not being spent for in a wash, rinse, repeat situation where a politician gets grant for company, money gets put back into the politician's party or campaign or consultant. And then that goes back and the politician then says, okay, cha-ching, 10% went to me, boom, we're going to do it again. We have to break the cycle of how these grants work and make certain that they're being used for what they're supposed to

be used for. And most importantly, make sure they're being used for something that's actually the job of the federal government and meets with the policies for President Trump. Very good. Now, Rick Manning's president of Americans for Limited Government, DailyTorch.com. And to find out more, great site, go there all the time. I wanted to kind of shift it over to the plane crash, the helicopter plane collision the other day. You know, it seems pretty clear there's a problem with the helicopter, whether it's an issue with the FAA, the air traffic controllers or whatever it is. I did think that it was a little early to throw it under the bus of DEI, although there has been evidence in other places that there have been problems with air traffic controllers from DEI. Was Trump okay doing that?

Or it almost struck me as a little premature, maybe wait a day or two and get a little more information. What do you think? Well, the one thing that we know is he got information before anybody else. Okay. So just because it hadn't leaked to the Washington Post and then had a day to kind of marinate didn't mean that he didn't know what he was talking about. But he's also been quite forthcoming. I mean, this administration's been pretty quick at getting the information out. I really have to give them kudos.

They're trying to do that. The thing that kind of got me was, at least in some of the local press, was that, oh, this is Trump's fault. Oh, I know. They were already trying to spin it. I was reading some site. It was amazing. It's like, okay, all right. So he didn't staff the tower that night with two people, right?

Well, Trump was made aware. Here's the gist of the story. Trump was briefed that there was a personnel problem that might be to cause difficulties in terms of tower staffing. Now, I'm sure he said, he said, well, how do we fix it? He didn't have an FAA administrator in place. He appointed somebody yesterday to be the head of the FAA, who has actually appointed them to be the deputy head of the FAA, who's now taking the job of being acting FAA administrator acting FAA administrator is what it's called.

But he didn't have any of his people in place, let alone the policies. But you sit there and you say, OK, so there's a Biden policy that was put in effect for whatever reason. And I don't know, not my every expertise. I don't know. There's a policy put in effect, though, by somebody in the FAA that this was a safe way of trying to manage helicopter and aircraft flights in the same airspace. And somebody brought an alert, supposedly told somebody at the White House, oh, this really isn't that safe. And then you have the crash. Well, I don't know what you're supposed to do about it. Five minutes into your presidency, you're told something,

and you've got 10,000 other things you're being told at the same time that are messed up. And, oh, well, we have a disaster here. The disaster, in fairness, I do not know what caused it and i know what the president said i do not know what caused it and i and we have dead people who are in families and real tragedy and i don't know i don't know what caused it it's odd okay and yet we know we do have problems with DEI programs within the FAA. It's well known that they were reaching out for, you know, essentially mentally disabled people in some cases to be joining the system. And becoming an air traffic controller is extremely rigorous. It really is extremely rigorous to become an air traffic controller.

And there have been some problematic hires. There's an air traffic controller of fame in Austin that has been reported quite thoroughly, just really not emotionally equipped for the job. And it's like, you and I may be smart people, maybe smart people listening and things like that. But, you know, that's a different level of spatial reality and mathematics and all the rest of it. I mean, they do have to be the best of the best people like he was talking about.

My father-in-law was an air traffic controller. Oh, yeah? He retired as an air traffic controller. He worked in Fresno for quite a while. And the fact of the matter is, it is a very, very stressful job. It's a very hard job. Now, he grew up during the Korean War and learned to be air traffic control during the Korean War, and a lot of the modern equipment is significantly better. But the fact is, you have to be able to juggle a lot of problems at the same time. And no matter how smart you are, you may not be equipped to do this. This is something which is more about the capacity to juggle multiple problems. And stay cool. And stay cool.

Yeah. And get the answer right every single time. The machines help, but ultimately you have to be able to do that. And every air traffic controller's nightmare is that something goes wrong, and they just get it wrong. And that is every air traffic controller's nightmare. I wouldn't want to be the air traffic controller who was trying to handle that situation. And from what I've read subsequently, which is not official, but what I've read in the press, is that they're asking the person to operate on two separate systems, one that dealt with military helicopters and the other that dealt

with commercial aircraft. And in dealing with the two separate systems, wires got crossed. And that there really are normally supposed to be two people, one person on each of those, right? And the planes and the helicopter couldn't communicate because they're on different systems. So that is what I've read, and take anything you read in the media on anything like this, and cut it in half, and then cut it in half again, and you probably get near the truth. But that sounds like a plausible problem, and it was because of some changes they'd made at the FAA to deal with that. And it's uniquely, some unique problems that exist in airports that have a lot of military traffic. So as National does. So that's the, that's what we're looking at.

It's a hard, it's a hard situation. And I do not know who's culpable. I know people died. I know that it was a horrible, horrible accident. And if a system was broken, if the system's broken, the system will get fixed. But, you know, I'm not – but I don't know if I'm putting it off on DEI or anything like that. I'm just, truthfully, I don't know that. That's kind of what I was thinking, too.

I mean, I think we know that there's a problem within there, but we can't necessarily go there yet, I thought. Well, there's a problem throughout. You know, we had United Airlines sitting there and going and saying, well, we've got too many white pilots. And so we're now going to try to make sure we get more black, Hispanic, various other Asian pilots to meet. And I don't really care if the pilots are white. But I really do care if they're incompetent or not. I care if they know how to fly the plane and land it. I need them to be 100% accurate on taking off and landing.

That's what I need. I don't really care if they've got great banter over the microphone. But they've really made a concerted effort and announced effort that they were going to try to create more quote-unquote, inclusion in their airline pilots. And one of the reasons the airline pilots tend to be majority white is because where do you get them from? You get them from the Navy flyers and you get them from the Air Force flyers.

They're the ones that tend to become airline pilots. So what are they? And just that is so often the last defense secretary when he was head of the Air Force was really discriminating against whites to try to get more more black flying planes. Now, I don't know that they were being disqualified for any reason. I don't know any of that. What I know is that was a priority that he had, and it was a priority he had as defense secretary. Hey, listen, I know how this game works. I experienced it back in 1989.

We're talking a long time ago in my radio career, when my old job in Seattle opened up, and I reapplied for it, and the boss at the radio station said, Bill, no, I'm sorry. We're we're going to be hiring a minority. You know, and that's just it. Nope. You are more than qualified. But we just wanted to tell you, don't waste your time.

All right. And now I do find it interesting that if I had been black and I called up, they would have never said such a thing. But I but that's kind of where the United States has been going, and it's not been just the last few years. Do you agree on that? No. No, absolutely. I mean, if you look back to about the same time frame you're talking about, you had the Bakke decision at the Supreme Court where they said that colleges couldn't—Bakke was a guy who supplied for law school, University of Michigan Law School, Michigan, and he ended

up being denied, and he could prove that he was a far who's applied for law school, University of Michigan Law School, Michigan, and he ended up being denied. And he could prove that he was a far more qualified applicant than others who got accepted. And they just told him, well, you're white. You don't get in. We got quotas. And even back then, the Bakke decision said, no, you can't do that. You can't engage in racial hiring. It's still going on, though. It's been going on since then.

It's going on right now. It was just amped up, and it appears that President Trump is looking to put a thumb to— in racial hiring. It's still going on, though. It's been going on since then. It's going on right now. It was just amped up, and it appears that President Trump is looking to put a thumb to... He's attempting to... Balance the scales. You know, he... Bottom line with all this is

this is about merit. If you're capable of doing the job and doing the job well, you know, that's the only thing that should matter. It shouldn't matter, you know, anything else. You know, I don't really care what my airline pilot looks like. I care that my airline pilot knows how to fly the plane. And I care that my airline pilot is one of the best of the best to be able to do the gig.

The best of the best, absolutely. Those are the key things. And that's what the key consideration should be. And if we're in a job like air traffic control, I think we're going to learn a lot about air traffic control over the next couple of weeks. And this is essentially one of President Trump's goal is to make America competent again. And that really is something that needs to be stressed here over the coming weeks. But just be aware that there will – with the back-to-work stuff, you're going to have a lot of people complaining. And we'll come back to this. And they'll say, okay, we've got a shortage of people, confident people to do X, Y, or Z because they chose not to come back to work. So there's going to be a reshuffling of reshuffling in the government. So prepare for the hissy fit brigade on the mainstream media, right? And they will use this.

They will undoubtedly get around to using this crash and say, this is what could happen all over the nation because of Trump's policies. And the fact of the matter is, that's not true. But it's going to be, we're going to go through the empire strikes back. You don't punch the swamp. I expect the swamp not to punch back. And that's what we're going to see for a while. And the question will be, will the Congress stand up and say, you know, no, we're going to continue with this? Or are they going to, there's going to be a lot of pressure. Or will they cave? Or will they cave? Yeah. All right. Well, they cave And that will all happen in the funding bills, the funding bill in particular that comes up in March. There will be a lot of attempts to cave on this and rescind the policies and all this.

And Republicans have a one or two vote majority, so it's going to be tough to hold. But that will be – we'll see all that play out politically over the next month and a half. So be ready. All right. We'll be ready. And Rick Manning will help you through it too. DailyTorch.com, Rick Manning, President of Americans for Limited Government, DailyTorch.com. And thank you so much. And well, like I said, it's a firehose of news every day, and we'll talk more about that next Friday, Rick, okay? Absolutely. Take care. Take care. This is KMED and KMED HD1, Eagle Point, Medford. KPXG, Grants Pass. We need a beignet break, some coffee, and maybe some good stuff from Artisan.