Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 02-19-26_THURSDAY_7AM

Episode Date: February 19, 2026

02-19-26_THURSDAY_7AM

This hour of the Bill Myers Show podcast is proudly sponsored by Klausur drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for more than 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausor drilling.com. Just got the word from Lauren and Eagle Point. That Eagle Point School District is also on a two-hour delay because of the frozen roads from the overnight. Not a whole ton of snow, at least in my neighborhood, but yeah, it's slippery. No doubt about that. And never described as a slippery character, but a defender of the second.

amendment and more. Kevin Sterrett rejoins the program here. Oregon Firearms Federation. Kevin, good to have you back. Welcome. Thank you, Bill. Now, Kevin, yesterday, you know, when you text message me, I was doing other things. I get this text message from you. Hey, the Republicans aren't on the floor. I'm thinking like, oh, come on. It's the rapture. You know, they got raptured up and we're all left behind here, you know. Well, you know, I question when the rapture comes exactly who's going to be missed. Yeah, I don't know. I'm just having fun with you when you did that, but actually ended up being real. I talked. I talked with Noah about that an hour ago and all seems to be about moving that. Well, it's also the gun bill too.

He said it does have to do with the gun bill. So I guess the push is to get the gun bill. Was it at 4145? Is that the number again? Yeah. Is to get this killed. And he's not being very specific. I mean, kind of cagey about it right now.

The negotiations are still on, but they definitely have denied quorum over on the Senate side. And he wouldn't say if they were going to be in there this morning or not. So it's kind of up in the air at the moment. Well, I mean, I don't know. I have no idea what the plan is. I have heard nothing that this involved with gun bill. That doesn't mean anything. I don't know what it accomplishes if they're back there today because the bill, you know, the tax referendum bill is on the schedule for today.

If they're there, they've got to not be there for that bill. And they've got to not be there for at least until I'm guessing the 20th. fifth for the timing. And, of course, there's, you know, always a possibility that somebody on the other side will come up with something. But, you know, I got a text from a house rep immediately. I just, you know, it kind of tuned into that at the exact moment they weren't showing up. And I got a text message from a house rep a few minutes later saying, well, they walked off the floor. I was like, okay, well, now what? And I don't know. I have no idea what's going to happen next. All right, but it's still interesting to see a little bit of fight because I've gotten used to just the daily humiliation ritual, ritual known as the...

Well, my inclination is to say, congratulations, go team. I want to see what happens next, of course, you know, because if they come back today, then the whole thing is pointless. But, you know, let's hope they have a plan. Yeah, I'm hoping so too. Now, if I understand correctly, one of the reasons why this is a key time to be denying quorum is that they would have to get the tax bill or the date moved. They'd had to get that bill done and signed by the governor within a week or so. And the longer that they stay out, the more that becomes impossible. And I asked Noah about that. And the senator says that he believes that if it got passed at all, they would find out. some way to corruptly change the rules or do something in order to make it happen, even if the Secretary of State says, well, you know, it has to be done within the next week. And it's like, okay, you know, come on, Tobias, you're going to, you're going to do this. You know, I saw that as well. I don't know if the deadline that the Secretary of State gave them is a result of some kind of rule or bureaucratic issue, or if it's a practical issue in terms of, getting ballots printed and out, you know, coordinating with all the county clerks.

So if it's a bureaucratic thing, then yes, they can just come in and change the rules. But, of course, all of these things require a certain amount of time that people want to file statements in the Voters Guide. And the changes that have been made, frankly, you know, this is not my issue, have been confusing enough that I don't really know what the deadlines would be. If, in fact, if they get it push, if they manage to pass it at a late enough date that people can't actually file voter pamphlet arguments, I think what that will provide them is another good argument when they get into court. Now, it's still Oregon courts with judges appointed by Oregon governors. Which makes it very dicey, right, yeah.

Exactly. Exactly. But I don't know what the reason for that deadline is. Speaking of Oregon judges and Oregon courts and all that kind of thing, I had a listener text message me yesterday and that there is another initiative petition being planned that would, and this listener was so excited, so excited to me, saying that it would repeal Measure 114. And all idea was I guess they're doing that right now. Are you familiar with that particular? move? Have you heard about that? Yeah, I mean, what the petition does is say that all gun laws, any laws dealing with firearms have to be done by ballot measure. And that's my objection to it. I think ballot measures are dangerous things because people don't know what they're voting on. I mean... Well, look at what they voted for measure 114 in the first place. They voted for measure 110.

They voted for measure 113. Arguably. horrible bills. So 114, they may not even have voted for that. You know, it was so close and Fagan declared it passed before all the votes were counted. So when the power to count the votes is in the hands of your enemy, that's a dangerous thing. But 110 and 113 have both been catastrophes because people did not understand what they were voting on. I mean, the drug legalization measure, I had friends who I consider intelligent, engaged, conservative, people who actually thought that they were voting for something that would have gotten rehabilitation for drug addicts. And of course, that's never what it was about. And with 113, people were told,

we've got to make these guys go back to work. But the same people who, I mean, that passed, even in rural counties with conservative legislators. But the same people who were punished by that measure were reelected by those same people. walked out previously, right? And of course, the Republicans at the time convinced that, oh, we're going to have a red wave, didn't bother putting a single argument in the voters got against it. And so if you're not paying attention, and look, you know, I hear from people all the time almost every day asking me, has 114 passed? What's in 114? What is 114? I mean, people are frequently pretty disengaged. So if you're, you're you're not paying attention to what's going on, and suddenly you get a ballot measure where the only thing you're being told is, our legislators have to go to work. Well, okay, you vote for that. Well, yeah, because, well, I have to go to work, right? In order to get my money. You wind up screwing the very people whose elections you support.

Hey, those crafty Democrats, you know, they understand what rings the bells of a conservative, especially a conservative doesn't look at the ballot measures all that closely. But the whole ballot measure process is not in our hands. I mean, there's a committee that gets formed to create the ballot measure title, and those people are, you know, in the 114, the deck was totally stacked there. There's supposed to be two in favor, two opposed, one neutral. The deck was completely stacked on that committee. The neutral party in that case was a retired lesbian judge who clearly was anti-gun. the people opposing measure 114 were both picked by the state.

And so then the vote gets counted by an anti-gun secretary of state. And no part of this process is really in the hands of the people who are trying to do something. And, you know, this tax measure was very successful, but it was successful because they had so many people respond that they couldn't really mess with the vote. That's right. But also because you have a situation, and frankly, you know, I don't think Oregon's a particularly pro-gun state. I don't want to hand over all control of legislation to people who are going to be influenced primarily by the folks who have the most money. Remember, 114 was failing miserably. And then a couple of million dollars suddenly show up from a Seattle millionaire.

And the anti-gun side has a lot of money. ballot measures frequently go to the people with the most bucks. And furthermore, you know, it's mob rule. It's not how we're supposed to legislate. If you have really bad legislation, which admittedly we get a lot of, that is the responsibility of people we can name and identify. You know, here's who voted for the bill. Here's who sponsored the bill. When a ballot measure goes before the people, if it's a terrible result, there's nobody to hold accountable.

And I want to have that ability. Whether we can ever get responsible, courageous Republicans into office is, I don't know. But at least it's theoretically possible. If every measure goes before people who are deluge with so many ballot measures don't have the information are being swayed by ballot measure arguments that are just probably untrue but paid for, I just don't think that's a good way to govern. And, you know, the person who's sponsoring that ballot measure is not happy with me at all because I won't support it. You know, so now I'm anti-gun in his mind. No, well, to me, what it means, though, is that it just sucks more energy away to something which is most likely a losing issue. Now, what I've often wondered about if we were wise people, and I know that's funny to say that, if we were a wiser people, that perhaps the citizen initiative or the ballot measure could be used only to repeal legislation. What would you think about that? In other words, your legislators do bad stuff, and then

it's your chance to weigh in on something, you know? I could certainly understand the impulse to have ballot measures, because let's face it, the legislature is doing really bad things quite regularly, and that is why we had this tax referendum, and that's why I think it was successful. But by and large, that whole process is really not what we're supposed, how we're supposed to be doing things. And here's the situation now. We have bad legislators in the majority. The only possible way to respond is by referendums, ballot measures, which are costly,

they're time-consuming. They typically don't work. And then if you're successful, as they have been in this case, you still have a legislature that can come in and screw with. And now you've got a lawsuit you've got to pay for. When you consider that there's thousands of bills every legislative session, so there's hundreds of opportunities, and there's a lot of really bad stuff happening, it's just impossible to respond to every one of these bills that cost the Democrats nothing with a costly

referendum that requires people standing out in the rain. And then even if they're successful having to fund a lawsuit, where the other side doesn't have to pay anything, you get to pay for their lawyers to. You know, the system, in other words, is just completely captured. That's the way it is in Oregon right now. That's what you're saying, Kevin. Absolutely is captured. And the answer to that is still, in my estimation, to demand more of the people we elect to represent.

That's what we hired them for. You know, I mean, if you take your child to a pediatrician and your pediatrician does something you don't agree with, you get rid of them, right? You just cast them with things that they're supposed to be. their expertise, but if they say, no, I really want to, I want to mutilate your children's genitals, you go, no, I'm replacing them. But you still, you still don't, you still don't treat your child medically yourself if you're not a doctor. We hired people to go there and listen to arguments on both sides and then make an informed decision after having had intelligent people theoretically provide information. That doesn't happen in valid measures. They're all, they're all emotional.

And in this case, God bless Ed Dealey, he did a great job on this. But look, even liberals don't want to pay more gas tax. I don't think we're going to be that successful. I mean, they tried a ballot measure for constitutional carry, which I think was a charade to begin with. But it went absolutely nowhere. And I think that, you know, I understand why people want this process when they're frustrated with the legislature. Yeah, and it's also the same sort of thing. Well, can we get together and file a lawsuit?

And it's like, yeah, once again, the leftist-controlled judiciary. that has been put in place by the leftist governors over the last few decades. Well, they control the governor, they control the judges, and you're also now required to fund the lawyers who are opposing you. And I just think there's a better way to do things. All right. Kevin Starr at Oregon Firearms Federation. I wanted to talk about the gun bill,

and there was some social media gadfly. I forget who it was that you're telling me about, who was kind of going in there and talking about one of the state legislators being berated and or beaten up over the first being a no vote on the gun bill in the state legislature. What really happened with that as far as you can tell? Well, look, here's the thing about this. This has gotten all this attention. I mean, Lars did a column about it.

It's been in the news saying, this is what happened. Nobody knows what happened, okay? Okay. Jason Kropp, who's the chair of Judiciary Committee, got a no vote from a left-wing legislator, Vietnamese woman named Tran, and stopped the proceedings, had a recess. They left the room. When they came back, she switched her vote from no to yes. In other words, she had a talking to, right?

She had a talking to. He twisted her arm. I mean, you know, I don't know what happened in that room. Nobody knows what happened in that room. whether she was offered something or threatened. I don't know, but she has stated that he created a hostile work environment for her. But she switched to vote. Hold on. Hostile work environment in the legislature. Politics is a hostile work environment here, Kevin. And this is the thing that, the way this has been sold by everybody. I mean, so one person files a complaint claiming that she was verbally abused. Well, how do you mean?

know if she was verbally abused, or nobody was there. And even if she was, so what? Well, exactly. So what? So here's the thing. Supposedly, and this is like one person makes this comment, and everybody picks it up as though it's gospel. I mean, even Tony Iello, God bless Tony, the attorney who's done such a good job on the statewide measure 114 lawsuit is creating these memes where he said that this upper crest white guy attacked a woman of color. Oh, please. Look, that woman of color is an elected representative who is a lieutenant colonel in the National Guard, okay? If she is that easily intimidated by a soy boy like Krupp, we need better military, man.

And Krupp will never be the man that Tina is. Let me tell you. All right. Thank you. I think, well, I'm going to take that because I know I heard Lars talking about it and other people were sending me stuff about it. Something didn't feel right about the way it was being characterized, I guess, within the media. But thank you for that, okay, Kevin. Yeah, I mean, I wasn't in the room.

Nobody was in the room. So she switched her vote. It's her responsibility. Go beat her up there. Send her candy for crying out loud. She screwed the people she said she was going to support. And so she gets a card and candy. It's not I just don't understand it.

Yeah. All right. Well, this is the circus known as the state legislative session here. So, well, I guess we'll find out what happens if the senators stay out. It's a good thing, but the senators need to stay out and really stay out. Noah is saying, and I would agree with him, he says, I don't really, he doesn't care about being able to run for re-election. And frankly, those are the kind of people we need in office right now, because the only tool that Republicans have to stop the worst of stuff is just to throw a monkey wrench in it. That's just the way it is, isn't it?

Obviously. I mean, they get bulldozed all the time. You know, they get humiliated. They don't have the power to pass or stop anything unless that's what the Democrats want. And it's okay, if it was just the minor disagreements, well, you know, the majority's got the majority. But what's happening is so extreme in so many cases, it's a danger to your children. It's a danger to your bank account. And it's really, really bad stuff.

And if you care more about your office and you care about the future of Oregonians, then I don't want you there. That's the way I look at it too. Kevin Stair at Oregon Firearms Federation. Sign up for the alerts, Oregonfirearms.org. I appreciate the talk. Thank you very much, Kevin. Thank you, Bill. Take care.

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delaying action on the Democrats' plan to move the referendum on the transportation tax from November to the lower turnout May election. Dems assert the move is to get an answer sooner from the voters. Republicans say it's more about not having voters reminded in the general election that the Democrats voted for those big taxes and fees last year. Democrats only have a week to get the bill passed and on the governor's desk before they run out of time to move the election vote to May. This morning at 9, the temporary board of elected officials in Josephine County meets

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Tell us about Investors Observer first. Website, everything about it, and what, well, of course, obviously about investing, but what is your mission there? Yeah, we're a financial publication. Our goal is to simplify everything about the financial markets to our readers. Everything on our website is free. We have research reports that look at things like inflation, housing, affordability, trying to make things make sense in a way that people will understand as opposed to some of the woo that you hear on Wall Street. Okay. In other words, people that will be on CNBC and saying, buy, bull, mar, honking horns, things like that, right? That kind of thing? Yeah, exactly.

All right, fair enough. Hey, wanted to ask you about a story, you know, if there's one common story that I've seen in the financial world for a while, now I am a young boomer. I'm one of the last of the boomers, 1961. I actually consider myself Generation Jones, okay, that you're not really a boomer, but still, if I watch, if I see one more story about how the boomers have destroyed everybody who came after them, I'm kind of scratching my head, you know, over this kind of stuff. Where has this come from? And what's the reality? Because we keep hearing that young Americans can't afford what their parents had. And it's true. You know, a lot of that's true. Especially when it comes to buying a home, getting cars, paying for college. I mean, I'll agree.

But is it all the boomers? What say you, huh? Yeah, well, you know, I'm a millennial. So I grew up in the shadow of boomers. And I had a pretty good growing up, you know, so our boomer parents, you know, took good care of us. I think what you're seeing is there's a lot of frustration today about the cost of living. Everything is more expensive. Also, the death of manufacturing has led to a lot of not so good jobs left in the economy.

So a lot of people my age and younger aren't able to find jobs. They're not able to start families. Housing has gone out of control. So life in general is more expensive. Now, everybody needs to scapegoat, right? And the scapegoat has been the baby boomers. But it's not that simple. What we've seen is that based on our study, we try to look at how things have gotten more expensive in dollar terms versus gold terms.

And we found that really over the last 100 years or so, everything is more expensive by about 133 times. That goes back even before the boomer era. But if you price things in gold, things are about 42% cheaper. And I'm talking about things like an average home, cars, college tuition. So everything is not boomer's fault. There's a lot of things that are at play. We have inflation. We have monetary policy and government spending, things like supply and demand.

Also, colleges decided to, you know, take, you know, guaranteed student loans, which is, you know, meant to help people access college, and they use that to jack up prices since the 1980s. So lots of things are at play, and they're not just our parents' fault in this case. That's interesting. You know, because I remember when I entered the workforce as an adult in 1980, right? And 1980, I got to tell you, I was poor for years. I mean, it was tough. I mean, I went into a position of, and it was into a recession at that time, Ronald Reagan's situation.

And I'm kind of scratching my head because I'm hearing this. And, you know, the first house that I bought had a 10.9% interest rate. And I felt lucky to be able to get it. You know, I'm getting here, Sam, and just kind of worked our tail off. But what your research is showing that it's not the boomers, it's really the dollar, right? Isn't that the real culprit of what is causing so many troubles for younger generation folks right now? That is absolutely correct. You can think of the dollar as, you know, like an ice cube that's slowly melting.

You know, you take the ice cube out of the freezer and it melts very, very slowly. That's the purchasing power of the dollar. And there are many reasons why the dollar's purchasing power has been in decline. It's not just unique to the dollar, by the way. It's unique to all, basically all national currencies. And, you know, really since the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed have found a way to, you know, try to smooth out volatility by printing money and by doing what's called quantitative easing and, you know, by, you know, the Treasury, you know, issuing bonds and then the central bank buying them. You know, those things have stabilized financial market conditions, but they've also contributed to inflation over the past, you know, decade, decade and a half.

And, you know, inflation has been slowly eroding people's purchasing power. And in that kind of environment, what do you need to do as a person? You have to seek out investments. You have to put your money in investments because we're no longer incentivized to save money in bank accounts because of inflation. So you put money into active investments like real estate, stocks, et cetera. All those assets have been very, very well because we need places to park our money to grow our money. Has that then because of the momentum of just the money flooding into those sectors? That sort of the explanation, Sam?

Is that simple as that? Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. And also because, you know, you put your money in a savings account, you're not going to really get anything out of it, right? And if the money keeps sitting, you're going to lose purchasing power. So what we're told, you know, we're told to put our money to work, invest our money. And some of the young people, my generation and younger, have gotten the hint and contributing more to their 401Ks. So that's positive. You take a look at 401K preparation. Actually, the younger people are more prepared than the baby boomers were.

So you really can't play in boomers there. I mean, there's a lot more opportunity now to save for retirement. So it's not that simple. You know, we shouldn't scapegoat anything. The economy is far more complex, and we have to recognize that. You were mentioning, and in this analysis piece that you have, which is excellent, you're comparing the difference like peak cost in gold. Why are you using peak cost in gold? Because nobody takes a gold as an example, even in 1970, and buys a house.

But yet you'll say in 1970, the peak cost in gold of a home was more than a third. thousand ounces of gold in 1970, right? So why do you use gold as the standard here? Yeah, well gold has been money throughout human civilization going back thousands of years, and as you mentioned, you know, before the 70s,

we were actually, our dollar was pegged to gold in some way. So what we found is that, you know, when you kind of diverge away from sound money, that is gold, things kind of go all over the place. So gold actually has gone up in value a lot, and everything else has declined in value relative

to gold. So although you have the price of everything up 133 times since 1910 based on our analysis, priced in gold, they're 42% cheaper because gold prices have appreciated, whereas the dollar has not appreciated. It's gone the opposite direction. In other words, if we had not inflated the currency, we would be looking at 42% cheaper costs of living everywhere, kind of like in all the various sectors according to your research. Wow. Yeah, correct, correct. You know, and that's kind of goes to show you gold with his honest money and it kept the government honest. And when you get off of that, I mean, when we got off of gold, we solved a lot of problems, but we also created a lot of problems. And now you're starting to see it with inflation.

One of the challenges I think that President Trump is facing, I think he's, well, he and whoever would be president right now is caught in a squeeze. I mean, isn't the president caught in a squeeze one way or the other? He'll sit there and said, you know, as a real estate guy, he wants cheap money, right? What's cheap money, wants to be able to borrow cheaply. Of course, the moment that you're borrowing cheaply, essentially we're doing quantitative easing, borrowing stuff into existence once again, and the value of the dollar plummets more, doesn't it? Absolutely, and that's kind of a rock in the hard place because people need cheaper financing to be able to afford homes. You know, now the price of a home since COVID has doubled, not because prices have doubled,

because of the cost of financing has doubled. So it's a rock in a hard place because if you keep interest rates elevated, you kind of keep inflation in check, which is good for the economy. On the flip side, people can't afford to buy homes anymore when you have interest rate at 6%. You mentioned you buy your first home with an interest rate about 10%. Now it's 6% that people can't handle that anymore. So that just kind of shows you just kind of how we've kind of evolved here in the economy where we are today and the fact that everything is more expensive.

You know, six and a half percent out of a $600,000 home is, you know, nothing, nothing easy to afford for a younger generation, you know. Sam Borgie is a senior analyst and Investors Observer in this new investor observer's analysis going back 115 years. So you go back and you're, you know, analyzing price of gold, value of dollar. And so the peak cost of a home in gold was 1970, according to your research. The cheapest in gold, the average house, was 137. ounces of gold in 1980, right? So that was a cheap time to buy homes, relatively speaking. So where are we right now? Where are you right now for if you were to actually take a median home and value it in gold? Yeah, we're actually on the way up now, you know, because, or actually on the way down, because

gold prices have really skyrocketed recently. So we got gold prices. They did kind of pull back recently, though. They're not at the $5,500 at this point, but they're still pretty high, historically. Oh, yeah. I mean, Yeah, yeah. We're not at 5,500, but we're at, I think, just below 5,000 right now, and gold prices have really skyrocketed since early 2024. And, you know, so, yeah, if you're, if you're older and gold, and if you've been holding for several years, things have gotten a lot cheaper for you. I mean, the source of gold buying has been a lot of central banks around the world, which is a bit ominous, considering, you know, where things are with the dollar. Sam, why do central banks buy gold then? And maybe that's worthy of going into, I think I know. I think it's just about having some, like a real asset, and nobody wants any more bonds, you know, another promise to pay from somebody.

But why are the central banks loading up on gold so much right now, you think? Yeah, they're doing so for various reasons to diversify their reserves as a hedge against inflation. They're also diversifying away the U.S. away from the U.S. dollar, especially since the, you know, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the freezing of assets, central banks are like, well, we don't want that. to happen to our assets either. So yeah, they've always been a, you know, pretty substantial buyer of gold. They've actually been net buyers now since the mid-2010s. So again, reflects things like safe haven of gold, inflation hedge, diversifying away from the dollar. The dollar's not your currency. You don't want to rely on it too much. And yeah, as you mentioned, you know, demand for bonds has been

kind of uneven among central banks worldwide. Now, are you a gold bug, per se? Is that what you are? I just want to find out where you're coming from. You know, I've always been a gold. bug going back to the early 2010. Remember back in 2008, 2009, 2010, we had gold prices surge above $2,000. And back then I was, you know, out of college and I was buying gold and I was clamoring that gold was going to $5,000

announced very, very soon. I never did quite get there over a decade ago. But I've always been, you know, a supporter of gold as being, you know, sound money. But, yeah, I mean, it did a whole lot of nothing for about 10 years, right? And now only recently have we started to come back up. So it's a bit of a, you know,

dire straight of the economy, given the fact that gold is at $5,000. But, yeah, I think gold is honest money. I think it's real money. And I think that maybe eventually one day currencies will once again be pegged to it. Central banks now are, you know, buying enormous amounts of it for their reserves. What about silver? What is your impression of that? Because I'll tell you, a lot of people lost their shirt here.

If they were leveraged up on silver when it hit like 125 or whatever it is, I think we're at about 78 at the moment. Yeah, I see silver, you know, in the same kind of bucket as gold, obviously not necessarily the inflation hedge, but, you know, much more for industrial use. The problem, as you mentioned, is that it's become extremely volatile at these prices. So I have not been buying, I wouldn't be buying silver above $100 an ounce right now. We saw a one-day swing of 31%, which is basically unheard of for precious metals, maybe for crypto, not for precious metals.

I know, yeah. Yeah, seeing Bitcoin lose a third of its value. that's nothing unusual, right? You know, he's had days like that. It was silver. I was looking at that chart that day going to like, what the heck? You know, it's going on. But, you know, the way it was explained to me, people to know, and maybe you're one of

these people to agree with me with these people, but saying that it was all about momentum, and there was so much, there's so much money sloshing around in all of these markets, whether it's the stock market, bond market, in this particular case, come out of the markets. It's momentum. They're seeing it go up and then, you know, trillions of dollars. or billions of dollars end up going into these markets. And then when they notice that the momentum has kind of hit its peak, then it's like, okay, we got a fisher cut bait, we're selling.

And I'm wondering if it was something as simple as that, supply and demand in that respect. Absolutely. So a lot of the early demand for gold and silver over the past few years was just gradual buying, methodical buying. Once these things hit the airwaves and people start noticing it, and momentum is definitely a big factor, especially among the, these hedge funds and these traders. You know, you saw gold and silver reached over-bought levels on what's called the Relative Strength Index, the RSI. It's like a technical chart indicator

that just kind of shows you once the price reaches a certain level so quickly it's considered over-bought technically, which means it's due for a correction as people come in and take profits. So there's a big difference between investing in the long term and then trading for short-term gains. And momentum plays a huge role in both, but especially on the trading side, which affects prices in the short-term. Sam, what do you think about, you know, A good part of your article is that the affordability gap that you're saying is not boomers versus millennials or zoomers and, you know, all that sort of stuff. But it's more about whether you own assets that go up with inflation or are holding cash, right? Isn't that really the dividing line that we're finding right now with who is getting ahead and who is not at the moment?

That is exactly the divide. And I've always been saying own assets or be left behind. And that's the unfortunate reality. Unfortunately, a lot of people who are in the lower income brackets, they don't have access to financial assets like everyone else does or other people do. So obviously, the wealthy do have an advantage there. But your own assets or be left behind because inflation will eat your purchasing power. And you have to invest in assets that are productive that will grow up in value. Real estate has been that for a long time, gold, stocks.

The S&P 500 has been brilliant. And, you know, millennials and Zoomers have recognized that they're investing, heavily in the stock market, the S&P 500, which is good. So even though the S&P might go down, it's been around 7,000 right now, it might actually correct lower over the long term. The S&P 500 is one of the best investments ever, and that's, you know, own assets or will be left behind, as I said. Sam, a final question I would have for you other than where to go to find this report

and more is do you ever see any chance of actually getting true deflation rather than always being continuing inflation, inflation, inflation. Because the one thing is that, you know, true deflation would be one of the best things that could ever happen to just regular Joe's on the street, people who don't have a ton of assets, wouldn't it? Wouldn't that ultimately be the best thing to have happened, to have money worth more rather than worth less? Yeah, you know, a lot of economists have tried to scare people about deflation. You know, deflation is bad for the economy. It means that, you know, jobs are scarce, all this stuff.

And, you know, maybe at the margins there are some truth to that. But ultimately, we've been in an inflationary spiral for decades. You know, I think if prices go down, it's going to be very good for the average deal. We've seen deflation in electronics, for example. Has that been bad for people? No. We all have really nice TVs, electronics. It's fantastic.

You know, prices should come down, and that's good for people. But, you know, economists like to, you know, mystify these things and say, well, deflation is bad because of XYZ. But no, I think things should go down in price over time. We see it in various sectors, electronics being one of them. For some reason, you know, they've tried to make that as into a bad thing, but it's not a bad thing in my opinion. Yeah, I would agree with you wholeheartedly. I'm thinking about, I have three laptops that I've purchased for about, you know, five, six hundred bucks a piece that run circles around the first laptop I purchased for $1,900 back in the 1990s. So believe me, It just cracks me up.

I guess the real point, though, is that our government couldn't really handle deflation, could it? If prices were actually, if the dollar actually became worth more, because wouldn't we be, like, instantly more bankrupt than we already are? Maybe that's the reason why we keep having inflation. Yeah, and, you know, the government has also conditioned us to believe inflation is normal. You know, if you actually go back and take an old Webster definition of inflation back from the 1960s, it'll tell you that inflation means the expansion of the money supply. that's what inflation is. You increase the money supply, and that eventually affects prices. But now,

if you ask for what is inflation, they say, well, it's rising prices. And that definition has actually been changed. So, yeah, they've conditioned us, you know, to expect inflation. But, you know, the natural tendency of prices is to go down, not to go up. But people should tell that to people in Washington to, you know, wrap their head around that. Sam Borgie, senior analyst at Investors Observer. Watch the website, and where can you find out about everything, Sam? Yeah, it's investorsobserver.com. All our reports are free. You can read about our latest report comparing gold to the dollar and all of our articles on the Fed, on inflation, on monetary policy. And yeah, you can follow me on X at Forgeforth underscore, or you can just follow us on investors observer.com. All right. Sam, good talk. Appreciate the conversation, okay? Be well.

My pleasure. You too. Sam Borgie. It is 755, KMED, KBXG. Do you hesitate to heat the whole house when you spend most of your time in a particular room? Glacier Heating and Air is a diamond dealer for Mitsubishi ductless heat pumps that offer efficient, individual room control with no duct work. These super efficient compact units deliver fast and precise comfort without the worries of a giant energy bill. Call Glacier Heating and Air at 734-4489 and keep your favorite space cozy in the winter and cool in the summer. For less, Glacier, making sense of the heating and air business. Online at Glacierhac.com.

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Call or visit Reedlawfirm.com for a free consultation. And listen in Saturdays, noon to two, Radio Law Talk on KMED. It's the Bill Meyer Show on KMED, Southern Oregon's place to talk. KMED, KMED, HD1, Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG grants pass. Translator K290AF Rogue River, 294AAS, Ashland, or K2994AS, Ashland. There we go. Got to get the legal IDs in there correctly, okay?

By the way, speaking of radio law talk, and I just want to let you know, programming note that we're changing things around a little bit on the weekend. I wanted to make sure that people who like Handle on the Law get all three hours back to back. We've been kind of chopping it up recently because of other things that we've done to the weekend schedule. So Handle on the Law is moving all three hours to after Gun Talk on Sundays on KMED. So 2 to 5, it's going to be Handle on the Law. Two to five on Sunday's afternoons. All right. And Radio Law Talk, which is a two-hour segment that we have. will be noon to two where Handel was. So we're going to have just still, you know, legal talk just a different way. So Radiolawtalk.com with Frederick Penny and the crew. I like that. I love the case or no case when they're sitting around there telling a story, which sometimes is true and sometimes total BS.

And then they're trying to fool each other as to what's real because there's so much weirdness in the law world these days, that's for sure. Now then, it is open phones and it is conspiracy theory, Thursday. And oh, Holly is here. Holly, what a miserable event yesterday in Josephine County. An hour from now they're going to get together and that temporary board is going to choose the next two county commissioners. But, boy, that interview process wasn't a lot of fun to watch, huh? Oh, it was painful. I mean, you had a lot of people fawning all over, oh, this is the first step and correcting all of the problems that the county has. I mean, that was nauseating enough since we didn't follow our charter and so forth.

But the actual process of the interviews was abysmal. And, I mean, what they did is they gave everybody the questions the day ahead, gave them a chance to do the research, to answer the question. Well, first off, if you're, now, come on, Holly, if you're going to have an interview, why would you give the people the questions first? The idea is, what do you know? Not what you can ask chat GPT to write for you. Exactly.

And what was really more frightening than that, which was absolutely absurd, was the fact that they allowed people to read their answers. So they couldn't even, it was. It was just insane. I sat there. My jaw just dropped. I'm telling you, this temporary elected board, in my opinion, is committing a soft coup against the Josephine County electorate is what they're doing here.

I just think they're probably going to pick someone who is just very pliable and will just give them what they want. I wouldn't be surprised if they end up hiring back some of the people that got blown out by past commissioners. You watch. Well, they're already talking about doing stuff like that. No, it's a painful process. It was an embarrassing process because anybody who has ever done any interviewing will tell you that they violated almost every single rule of interviewing.

One of them was that, you know, they interviewed the 11 or whatever people, nine people, but they one at a time. And they could all hear what the other one said. So by the time the 11th person came, you know, came around for their interviews. Oh, yeah. They knew how to polish up, not polish the apple by the time their turn came, right? Right. And some of them did.

And some of them did it. I know, you know, Darius England, I think, was pretty honest about it. He came in without his notes or anything. and just answered their questions. And, you know, there were some people that did that. But there was one guy, bless his heart, it just sounded like he was, you know, reading an AI document. And so it doesn't help the citizens to do what it is that they profess to want to do, which is give public confidence. I mean, certainly not me.

I've interviewed a lot of people in my life. And I would, in a million years, never have used a process like that. Well, the part that I, well, the way that it should have been done, And it's the way you brought up to me, you know, you called me yesterday because I didn't have time. I was busy with other things. I couldn't watch this. I was doing my job doing other things. And when we had that, remember a few years ago when we had the gubernatorial candidates and they were over at the auditorium, and you would, everybody would answer the same questions.

The same questions would be asked of all the candidates. But each time it was a different person starting off, right? So everybody got their first question. question in the barrel, you know, so to speak. And it wasn't like where, you know, every single person who ended up going last was ended up, ended up giving a free pass hearing what everybody else said before them, right? You know, in other words, you alternate, who ends up taking the question first. They should have done the same thing for this if you're going to do such a nonsensical kind of interview process. Right. Well, you never give anybody the, you know,

it doesn't do any good to give them the questions first, because then they sit down with all their buddies or they call their interview guru and say, how do I answer them? Yeah, what will help me get the job? Yeah, this is, you know, this is not going to be one of those great moments in Josephine County government history when you look back at it. It was, it was evident, you know, that it was evident how foolish it was as you listen to the various people. It was painful. Now, do you know Wally Hicks? Now, do you know Wally Hicks? County Council? Professionally. Professionally, I know him. He's a nice and guy. I don't like how things are going right now. Yeah, I thought so too, but I just thought, you know, why would a county council, who is an attorney, understands what the council or what the

charter says, why would he even be going along with this is what I don't understand? I really don't. I really don't, Holly. Well, I think the big gaggle of people pleasers right now, what they're trying to do is make it look to the citizens like they're doing the right thing and they're solving all the problems of the, you know, the county being, you know, lacking confidence in They think this is going to store confidence in what the county is doing. Well, to me, it did absolutely the opposite. I was so appalled. All right.

Well, we'll see where it goes. Less than an hour from now. They're going to get together at another hour, so we'll see what happens there, okay? Thanks. People can look it up at Joko County streaming and watch it, and people should. So we can, you know, probably get a handle on what's going on down here. All right. Thanks, Holly.

Let me go to Brad. Brother Brad's here. Brad, you want to talk about some craziness, too. Go ahead. It's conspiracy theory Thursday. Bill, I need to borrow some of those high-powered brain cells years to understand something. Oh, I don't know. I don't know if there's enough coffee in the world this morning, but what are you thinking? What's on your mind, huh? Why is the left so obsessed with hijacking congressional districts? I mean, isn't the left all about equitable representation, one person, one vote, you know, and all that sort of thing?

Isn't that kind of the banner that they like to fly? You are a very funny man. Really. I didn't realize you were such a comedian when it comes right down to it. No, it's always, they can sit around and talk about, you know, equity and one man, one vote or one person or one birthing person, one vote, you know, whatever the case might be. It's always about power. That's all it is, Brad. It's power, power.

And the ability to crush the people who oppose us under our boot. So just for fun, the Oregon, you know, the Oregon I grew up and had five congressional districts, now we've got six. The last national election, Kamala Harris won by about 14 percent. Let's give her 15 percent. So in Oregon's six congressional districts right now, five of those are represented by Democrats, the only one, which geographically is pretty big, represented by Congressman Bentz, but that's only one out of six, right? So because I went to Oregon Public School, I learned that five out of six is about 80%. So 80% of the congressional districts in Oregon are represented by Democrats when the biggest election, your national election, only demonstrated a 14% preference for Democrats across the state. What, I mean, why, what's the deal with this?

And why are they trying to tell that, you know, now we've got lawsuits and California. California, we've got, what, 50-some congressional districts now, and we're only going to have, after this new some redistricting, we're only going to have maybe five Republicans in the whole state. What is this all about, Bill? Why are they trying to hijack all these congressional districts? Well, it's pretty simple, for the same reason that the Republicans were trying to hijack the congressional districts in Texas. Same sort of thing. This is all reacted. It didn't happen in a vacuum here. the political power structure is almost nearly evenly divided when you look at D versus R. Would you agree over in the national world, D.C.?

Almost. Nationally, I think you make a good argument. Well, of course, as you. Well, the only way you're going to change that nationally is that everybody has to dive for the control stick, and they're going to do whatever it takes by any means necessary. to grab control of the crashing airplane known as the United States of America. You know, it's headed to the ground. And, you know, the Democrats of the Republicans think that they're the ones that are God-oriented

or, you know, have been ordained by God to grab that stick and do something with it. Okay? Doesn't that make sense? That's why there's such a push on this redistricting? Well, I think, you know, I think numbers mean things. and let's just use a homeowners association, for example. If you buy a home in a subdivision, that subdivision is generally governed by a homeowners association, and one of the qualifications to be the homeowners associations, you actually

have to live there. And the way they're drawing these congressional districts is they're running these fingers all the way across the state into these demographic dense areas like Multnomah County and giving them a say, even though you might live 200 miles away. That's what Texas did in Texas. That's what California did in California. And of course it's corrupt. And of course it's unfair.

And, you know, the only way I think we get past this over time here would be somehow to revisit a Supreme Court decision from the early 60s. Remember Reynolds v. Sims? I talked about this with another listener the other day. Do you remember that? I do. Reynolds v. Sims was what got rid of the county representation. It used to be that the counties essentially had a version of electoral college in many of our states, including Oregon, and then that all went away. And then it just became something else to screw with by the political class.

Well, you know, I don't claim to be an expert on Texas, but I think one of the legs on the stool on the Texas deal was they said the Democratic, have drawn districts based on racial profiling, and we think that's unconstitutional. So part of it was location, part of it was they were literally drawing whole districts just based on racial stereotyping, which I think most people would say that's kind of crazy. No, it's perfectly smart. Perfectly smart thing to do if you can get away with it. It is. It's perfectly smart, you know, if you're trying to gain power.

So it's not crazy. It's absolutely, well, crazy like a fox is what it is. Brother Brad, I appreciate the call. If you're on hold, I'll get right to you, okay? 7705-633. Open phones, conspiracy theory Thursday. So you've heard a couple of good conspiracies, conspiracy of nonsense in Josephine County, conspiracy of you'll never have a Democrat, well, you'll never have a Republican to worry about here in Southern Oregon or Northern California, if they have their way. But what else? Let's talk. One of each K-4-V-N-237-22 MSRP.