Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 02-20-25_THURSDAY_6AM

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

Conspiracy THeory Thursday news kicks things off, Delta crash update, Trump news and more. Kenneth Rapoza from Coalition for a Prosperous America - China owns our generic meds...what could or should be done about it?

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. Happy Conspiracy Theory Thursday for Thursday, February 20th, 2025. 43 degrees, relatively dry at the moment. Going to be on a warming trend over the next few days. Could be seeing low 60s Saturday, Sunday.

We'll talk with Mr. Outdoors about that. It's going to have a Conspiracy Theory Thursday version of the Outdoor Report at 7.30 this morning. Now, you can join the conversation here, 770-563-3770-KMED. One of the funniest stories, I think, is over the last 24 hours, and we're talking about the Trump and the Doge and the various exchanges of words and angry words and this and that and the other, is President Trump canceling the New York City congestion toll program. This is the congestion-based pricing. Now, by the way, this is the wet dream of the Oregon Department of Transportation, too. Remember OREGO, the testing program a number of years ago? I don't know if OREGO is still in effect or not, but this is when they were putting the

tracking chips, the tracking transponders onto cars, and you would volunteer for this. And instead of paying gasoline taxes, you would pay per mile on those. And there were several thousand people that were part of that test program. But ultimately, the reason that you do these kind of congestion or these transponder tracking of stuff is that you want to be able to charge people to go into the cities at certain times of day. The idea is that the roads really belong to rich people. I think that's kind of where it goes.

At least that's the effect. It may not be the intent. But the essential message is that rich people are important enough and rich enough to be able to afford to drive in downtown during the rush hours. And so we're going to make it very expensive. The rich people will not think that's a problem at all. And regular working schmoes are screwed. You know, that's kind of the way it is.

And then, well, let them eat cake. Let them ride the dangerous subway. You know, that's kind of the way that, well, that's what they were doing in New York City. What I didn't realize, though, and this is after Trump ended up canceling the approval for New York City's congestion-based pricing. Fox and others reporting this yesterday. And let me just give you the basics of this. President Donald Trump's administration has moved to block the New York City congestion price toll program, according to U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, pending a letter informing New York Governor Kathy Hochul yesterday that the Federal Highway Administration's approval of the pilot program

was not authorized by law. And they said New York State's congestion pricing plan, a slap to the face to working class Americans and small business owners. Duffy also said that a statement obtained by fox that commuters using the highway system to enter new york city have already paid for the construction and improvement of these highways through the payment of gas taxes or other taxes but now the toll program leaves drivers without any free highway alternative and instead takes more money from working people to pay for a transit system and not highways. It is backwards and unfair.

And the thing is, and that's fine. So I didn't realize that Kathy Hochul had to get approval to do this in the first place. Apparently, I'm sure there was grant stream funding and various other things. Remember, there was probably money involved in building a lot of the downtown streets and various programs, like the strings that are attached to grants that southern oregon cities will take for example city of medford wants to pave its downtown streets and hence takes a oregon department of transportation grant and then you have to do the uh the bollards and everything downtown and and have your bicycle bum ways

that's the you know that's the stick attached to the character they give you and you have to you have the the bike lanes and the diets the road diets and all the rest of it this is the way the game has been played well it came around to bite kathy holcomb in the butt on this uh congestion pricing program now the thing is is that donald trump ended up doing a social post uh his truth social post a little bit later words to the effect of uh you know having rescinded this and um and the people new york city has been saved long live the king and of course you know that heads are going to explode with this long live the king dictator even though Trump called Zelensky a dictator. That's another story entirely, though.

But the part that is hilarious about this, though, not just the long-lived king thing, but Kathy Hochul, all along when they were saying, OK, we're going to charge all these people who want to drive into downtown New York City, parts of Manhattan, we're going to charge you $9 a day each time you're coming in and out, you know, that sort of thing. Well, we were actually saving money for the working people because originally the charge was $15, and we cut it down to $9. Now, doesn't that sound like government math in which the cut means that, oh, no, you're still getting screwed. You're just being screwed a little more lightly unfortunately there's a lot of that thinking going on even in

washington dc even in the trump administration and i will get to a little bit more of that in in just a bit okay all right 770-563-3770-KMED. Why don't I do a follow-up here? Oh, you know, why don't I just do that story right now? I just got it. Remember, I said that the fraud that gets sold to the sheeple is that a cut ends up just being a reduction in the planned increase. You know, that's the way that government bodies work. Well, here's a story, which is another example, is when is a cut not a cut? And I'm sure that there are many people on the MAGA side

that are going to say, Bill, how can you say this about the Trump administration? I just call it as I see it, okay? Here we are. I'm reading in the Military Times this morning, militarytimes.com. White House officials are considering severe cuts to the military budget in coming years. Any proposed cuts would fall to the Republican-led Congress to approve. Now, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered senior military officials to develop a budget plan that would slash defense spending by 8%. Now, this is a dramatic cut, which could reshape military end strength and readiness for decades.

This is what the Military Times is reporting. And, of course, Military Times would never want to see anything cut. And I understand this because this is the nature of bureaucracies. It's human nature, right? Bureaucracies want to make sure that, I mean, the first job of a bureaucracy is to protect the bureaucracy, you know, just a group of humans. But this is the interesting wrinkle about it. In a memo first obtained by the Washington Post, Hegseth has ordered that proposed cuts be compiled by February 24th. That's fine. 17 categories would be exempt from budget reductions, including military operations at the southern border, nuclear weapons and missile defense programs, and the acquisition of certain drones and munitions. Now, the idea of steep defense cuts, Military Times reports,

is certain to draw opposition from lawmakers on capitol hill where republicans have been discussing major increases in defense spending in upcoming years not significant cuts but hegseth's budget plan appears to follow broader instructions from president trump to reduce government spending including the dismissal of thousands of federal workers in the last few weeks now then pete hexeth so it says we want to cut eight percent of the defense budget and we want to reassign it to help president trump boost his other priorities now see this is an example of when a cut is not a cut. It may be a cut to the military budget, but unless it is a cut to the overall budget, if you're going to take money from the defense budget, 8%, you're going to cut 8%, and that sounds great, and people are going uh probably that that's absolutely wonderful nothing wrong with that we would say that's a good thing but then just to hand it to president trump to assign it

to be spent in some other way is not a cut okay that's what i'm getting at and this is the uh more of the three card monte that congress will tend to play when is a cut not a cut well when you cut one budget and you just take the same dollars and you shovel it out another way. This is the challenge that we're facing right now because a lot of promises have been made in the Trump administration and there are very few constituents that are saying, eliminate my grant stream funding for my district. That's the bottom line. Yes. And and that's why I would imagine even the Trump tax cuts are going to face a rough road, a rough road.

Now, David Stockman has an article in Lew Rockwell that is kind of saying that the whole thing's kind of a fraud right now, the way it is being portrayed out there. I hope he's wrong. But Stockman, who is a former Reagan budget guy, is making a lot of claims. I'm going to have to read this article. Francine wrote me about this this morning. I'll tell you about her email here in just a moment. But, yeah, when is a cut? Not a cut. When it's a cut, then you just shovel it into another portion of the budget.

A cut just needs to be a cut. And not even talking about, you know, now we even have Elon Musk talking about, hey, wouldn't this be great? We could send $5,000 tax refunds, everything that Doge cuts, we could refund it to the people. That sounds great, kind of like a federal kicker now that would certainly get a lot of support from uh we the sheeple you know okay i'd like my five thousand dollar check you know that sort of thing but we're still borrowing what is it um one dollar out of every three that we're spending right now you know you got four dollars and one of them is

borrowed right now and the debt is just insane i don't think they could be doing anything about like you know refunding the cuts refunding the cut you know you just cut it and you keep cutting you keep cutting until you're balanced and until your budget is balanced don't even talk about sending it back i that's what i would think if you're being responsible about it but a lot of inner intersecting agendas and things you know we're going to cut defense so that what we can you know pay for something else that has been promised it's politics right uh this is the bill myers show 22 minutes after six so we just have to be honest intellectually honest with ourselves about the reality and what we are facing if you're going to cut one thing and not just keep it cut

if you're going to cut one thing and then say that just means you get to spend more over here that's not a cut this is the bill myer show 7705 633 start your morning right with artisan bakery stylish footwear assault hi i'm randy with diner 62 and i'm on camy d 24 minutes after six we'll have a diner 62 quiz i think tomorrow is where we're going to have another one here to wrap up the week i tell you fridays with the clam chowder friday and everything else just wonderful things you know i was talking about when it's a cut not a cut is when they talk about doing a cut in Washington, D.C. and then reassigning the money somewhere else. And Pete Hegseth honestly going out there saying, hey, we're going to do an 8% cut on defense spending

and then we will allow President Trump to reassign it to other needs, his priorities, that sort of thing. But that's not a cut. All this is is a reassigning. And Janet, who was not able to hold on and come on the show, said, well, President Trump really wants to do the Iron Dome with that, the Iron Dome defense system. And I said, yeah, it could be. But it is still not a cut and so don't don't fool yourself when you hear that kind of talk and we we just have to be honest and and just as we just have

to be we have to be as suspicious of our friends as we were arguably suspicious of what was going on in the biden administration because you know what happens uh everything is always done to try to everyone's playing hide the salami with you know hide the deficit hide the spending hide the this and then bring the money home to your to your districts that's just the way it goes the way it always has been all right uh I'm going to do a little follow-up here on the Toronto plane that crashed upside down. The Delta, the Endeavor. Actually, it was the Delta plane from Minneapolis, but it was being operated by Endeavor Airways. And Endeavor Airways is a small airline that had gone totally, totally, I mean mean just like neck deep in dei they had tiktok videos all over the web i was watching yesterday in which you know it's a yay girl power and and they were

praising their unmanned cockpits their unmanned flight crews in other words no men on the flight crew now there's nothing wrong with all femalefemale flight crews if you're qualified, right? The thing is, though, there's been a real push to hurry up and hire a bunch of people who are not all that experienced just so you could check the boxes for DEI. This has been all over the airline world. United, gosh, you know, if you were a white male applying to fly for United, forget about it. It's just like, you know, you're way too experienced, and your toxic masculinity is not welcome into the flight deck. You know, that sort of thing. I don't know if that's especially what they said.

But essentially, you know, white males, experienced pilots, not welcome. We need you, hopefully, transgendered, lesbian, and Muslim on top of that. And then, you know, who knows? And then all of a sudden, boom, you're hired into the pilot program. Now, here it is three days after that crash. And they still haven't identified the pilots. Still haven't. And I have a report here from Reuters.

And, of of course everybody loves reuters news we know that but um the ceo delta airlines here the ceo ed bastion said yesterday the pilots of the regional jet that flipped upside down upon landing in toronto this week were experienced and familiar with flying in wintry conditions. And he says at Delta, as he tells CBS Mornings, another great news organization, all these pilots train for these conditions. Now on Monday, the day of the crash, Toronto appears at airport dealing with high winds and frigid temperatures as airlines attempted to rebound after a major weekend snowstorm. And the CEO called the video of the accident hurts 21 of the 80 people on board

horrifying but praise the actions of the flight crew to quickly evacuate the airplane and we train for this continuously and that's true i have no doubt about it and um the thing is though arguably they muffed the landing they screwed up the landing there i don't i think there's any doubt i've watched enough videos on this. And whether they weren't fast enough, flying fast enough to take care or take account of the headwinds that could disappear, and then you lose some lift and you do a hard landing, you break the wing off, the wing catches on fire, but fortunately it's behind you, but your plane flips over. It's still the problem. It's most likely pilot error here so people have been focusing on

the flight crew except that delta and endeavor wouldn't say who the flight crew was and then you find all of these uh you know dancing female flight crew uh tiktok videos they're talking about girl power yay girls yay this yay that and hey we're unmanned we have unmanned planes in other words no no men around there. And so naturally people are looking at this kind of stuff, especially when you don't let the information out, and they still haven't confirmed this. Well, now what MSN News is reporting,

and this is via Times Now Digital apparently, they're claiming that the flight was being piloted by Kendall Swanson, a 26-year-old pilot who recently received her flying license. Back in January is what they're saying. Although the claims remain unconfirmed, social media rife with the post. So, once again, still not confirmed. This is not confirmed. And they're also claiming that the co-pilot was a male and that didn't really fly all that much,

is what the claim had been. Now, this is social media, the big CB radio. But what gives the ability for stuff like this to get traction is that Delta won't release the names of the pilot. And so there's a lot of conjecture that I think is going on here. So is it 26-year-old Kendall Swanson? We don't know. But the one thing we don't know is that Delta won't let you know. And usually I tend to look at corporate reaction to such stuff

when the facts support you and your version of what happened, you get the facts out there. And when they don't, you shut up and clam up or you start saying, hey, you're racist for asking or whatever. And, of course, Delta just says, we train for these things. Well, did she just get her pilot's license in January the way people are claiming? We don't know. But the fact that they won't discuss the pilots does tend to lend credence that there may be more of this or it would be made fun of as a DEI situation. We don't know, though.

We don't know. And it's not that you want to believe these things, like I said yesterday, but oh, my goodness. It's Conspiracy Theory Thursday. Hi, good morning. Who's this? This is Randy. Hey, Randy. How are you doing this morning oh pretty good i called to see if you saw the the post on uh babylon d yes you know the one with the tennis ball yes why don't you explain why don't you explain it explain it just tell it for the listeners.

Okay, Randy? Well, for people, you know, they hang a tennis ball in the garage. So when you pull it in the garage, it hits the windshield, and so you know where to stop. Right. And so the Babylon Bee has this spoof of the airplane flying in with the tennis ball hanging down so they know where to land. Know where to land. I laughed until I cried. It was hilarious.

Yeah. Are you thinking, like, I am thinking that there's probably, you know, alleged DEI that could be involved in this, the fact that they won't talk about the pilot's identity three days after this? Oh, it's very possible. So I wanted to bring up one more thing. I was just perusing X x and there's a picture of a neighborhood in detroit it's three feet deep in ice oh my goodness yes it flooded and you can

see cars you can't see the tires on the cars it's up halfway you know almost to the windows and it's solid ice how do you get out of that i mean that's people are worried about the green i sent you a picture of it yeah check your email yeah i did i did check it i just saw it briefly right before it came on yeah so i mean that i can't even imagine dealing we had a little snow yeah big deal yeah what happened to us last week was nothing as what midwest and various other places are facing right now serious weather people people need to be thankful for the greenhouse effect because if we didn't have it the whole planet would look like detroit right now that's a very good point thanks for making it randy 7705633 yeah global cooling kills way more than global heating ever did

let me go to a line two hi good morning who's this line two it's deplorable patrick bill good morning morning dp how you doing you know doing all right hey uh i'm going to talk about the female pilot but before i do i want to tell you i've known a lot of really really good female pilots absolutely absolutely however though the one thing we have to be honest with ourselves about is that there has been a massive massive push to get a bunch of pilots that check the boxes in very quickly would you agree with me on that that That's been happening everywhere. That's what we're finding out. And I totally stand in the shadow of some of these female pilots. And I don't want to, I'm not looking down my nose at women at all. I like them a lot. But if you look at those videos now, I'm going to update myself from what we talked about the

other day. I said it could have been the wind current, the crosswind and the fighting the wind or whatever. No, not if you're looking very particularly at those videos, this one from the side. If you're looking at the, you see the right side of the airplane as it's landing. Anytime you, if you watch videos of jets landing all day, you get videos of one landing after another, you'll always see coming down toward the runway from, let's say, 500 feet, still in the air, they're coming down at maybe 700 feet a minute descent rate. Yeah, 700 feet per minute would be like about 10 feet, 10, 12 feet per second, you're going

down, right? Yeah, you're going down, right? Yeah, and it's a gentle, stabilized approach to the runway. You're still up 500 feet in the air. You're at a steady descent rate suppose I say 700 feet

a minute. Then right at the last, trying to word this for non-pilots, right at the last, you'll see, like from 50 feet, you'll see the nose of the airplane come up a little bit, the angle of the airplane. Yeah, they have to pull it up a little bit, right? Yeah, just sit up, just a bit. That's right, and that slows the descent rate to maybe 200 feet a minute.

And that way you don't hit the runway so hard. Well, if you're looking at that video, the body angle of the airplane never changes. No, it never nosed up a bit. So just boom on the right. And, of course, breaking the right landing gear and then digging the right wing in, tearing it off, catches on fire. And then the other wing still flying and flips the jet over. Now, fortunately, you know, everyone's going to make it out of that, but still, yikes. It's pretty easy to analyze.

The pilot technique was not there in this landing. And, you know, could have just as easily been a man, but whoever, don't argue about the wind thing. It's bad flying, is what it is. Yeah, and I think they also got – they also landed early. In other words, they hit very, very early on the runway, didn't they, if I recall? Touchdown. Too soon, the regulations have you touching down 1,000 feet from the beginning of the runway just to give yourself a margin of error. And what we're finding is, no, this plane touched down too early.

And the flight data recorder will show all this. I'm thinking of those horrible memes back then. Remember the people that called in to this jokester calling in with that crash in San Francisco and they had the names of the captain, We Too Low, that sort of thing? Well, my favorite observation of the whole thing, if you're looking at the evacuation, you see him stepping out the upside down door and then there's two guys out there helping the people out. I thought I heard one of them say, welcome to Toronto. Gotta love it. All right.

Thanks for the call there, DP. 637, this is KMED. Honey, we're out of water again. Did you call Clouser Drilling to discuss a replacement well? Not yet. I just talked to a company who said they'll beat anybody's price no matter what. No way. Remember the cheap plumber, electrician, the cheap roofer who disappeared halfway through?

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extension of a temporary restraining order that blocks grants passed from enforcing most of its homeless camping regulations but the order does carve out kim commendo she's right here on 106.3 kmed this is news talk 106.3 kmed and you're waking up with the Bill Myers Show. Proud to have Ken Raposa back on. He's had a long career in the press, staff member for Wall Street Journal in Brazil for six years doing that. He then moved to the U.S. to cover Brazil, Russia, India, and China for Forbes up until 2023. Currently an analyst at the Coalition for a Prosperous America. That's a trade association focusing on industrial strategy and preserving investments in domestic manufacturing.

In other words, not having stupid foreign supply chains for everything. Would that be fair, Ken? Welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me on, Bill. Good morning. That is exactly what it is. So you're not totally reliant on countries you know, countries like China for everything under the sun, you know. I mean, we already know that when we open our closet, we used to see Made in China everywhere. But now China has become, in many ways, an indispensable nation, you know, and it's very difficult to manage that relationship. And what I wanted to focus on this time has to do with our medicine supplies.

And I knew that a lot of our medications came from communist China. And we've become somewhat dependent on this. And apparently they're very good at making drugs, including fentanyl. But that's another story. We'll set that one aside here. But in all seriousness, you write a piece that China more or less owns America's entire generic drug supply chain. And what's that story? Let us know about this. This is big.

So that piece you're talking about ran on Prosperous America website. And that was a review of the recent U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission hearing. They hold about six hearings a year. And the hearing was on the Made in China 2025 platform, which is a strategy to pick certain sectors of the economy where China wants to be a world leader. One of them, of course, is biotech. Now, biotech runs the gambit from making amoxicillin for pneumonia to creating synthetic biology, which might be the thing that turns your bionic hand into looking like skin, for example. They want to be leaders in that, and they're spending a lot of money on R&D. And then not only that, but they're also contract manufacturers for American guys who are studying this type of biotech, and they rely on China to do the R&D for them.

So – Okay, no, and wait a minute. I just want to make sure I heard you correctly. So even when we have American drug companies and even biotech firms that are coming up with the most amazing stuff, they don't use American scientists? They outsource it to China even right now? Oh, absolutely, 100%. I mean, not all of them do that, but of course they do. I mean, look, we just went through the COVID pandemic with the main headline being the National Institute of Health and EcoHealth working with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a GMO, a bat coronavirus. I mean, you know, this is just something that, and that's the government.

So of course, you know, Ken and Bill's pharmaceutical biotech company in Boston, we're developing a new product, maybe a new oncological product to help fight brain cancer or whatever, to study brain cancer. And we don't have all the guys here in the United States to do it. We don't, might not have all the equipment to do it and the chemicals or the environmental regulations that allow us to do it. And we outsource that to China. Yes, absolutely. That's one of the biggest plays in China pharmaceutical right now. They're a huge contract manufacturer. But you wanted to talk about generic drugs. And so that's the stuff that most people take when they go to the hospital. They might be given some amoxicillin. I know of one lab in the United

States that makes amoxicillin. There's someone who had COVID. Amoxicillin was a great remedy for me when I had COVID pneumonia. It's a miracle drug, very safe. Things like ADHD medication. Of course, Americans are on all sorts of drugs. We're the most drug-addled nation in the world. And of course, that could be another complete thing. Yeah, that could be another deal on that. So the generic drugs, and the thing is, though, the reason why we have a great generic drug supply is, and they're used so often, prescribed so often, is because they're considerably less expensive than the name brands. Now, are you talking about just the basics?

Like you said, amoxicillin, I'm thinking of like the ibuprofens and the acetaminophen. All of it. All thathen. All of it. All that stuff. All of it. Absolutely, all of it. So all of the generic drugs, like your blood pressure medication, your thyroid medication, these low-cost, off-patent generic drugs, most of them are imported with India really leading the charge, right?

So India is the one. They're the brands, right? They're the ones like Cipla and Sun Pharmaceutical and Orobindo and Dr. Ready. These are brands that many doctors know about. And you might have seen when you go to CVS or your local pharmacy and pick up your medication, you might have seen those brands on there. But a lot of the ingredients that go into that, for example, those ingredients come from China. So India is also really reliant on China for the basic chemical compounds. Some of those compounds are made in the lab with chemicals,

and some are just organic compounds that come from nature itself. And these are what they call precursors, right? The precursors. Precursors, exactly. So obviously a drug is essentially like liquid, and then it's turned into a powder, right, or whatever, however form, or a pill, however form we take that. That's the final medication.

But the stuff that goes into that, a lot of that comes from China. So China is a big supplier of India, who is the huge supplier to the United States. I think 60%, 70% of our generics come from there. And China is also moving up the chain and becoming a generic player themselves, eating into India's market share. So most of your generics are made in India or China. Okay, All right. What level of generic drugs are actually manufactured in the United States right now?

Because I know President Trump, a big part of his issue is to reshore a lot of manufacturing for national security purposes. So that way we're not beholden to China or even India, for keeping medications on the shelves. Right. So in that article that is on Prosperous America website, if I remember correctly off the top of my head, I think the number of labs in the United States that make generic drugs, I think the lab count has fallen by about 60% over a certain period. I'm going to guess it's a 10-year period. It's been cut in half by more than half. So now we have maybe a little over 1,100 facilities that can do that in the United States, okay? And that sounds like a lot, but it's not in the grand scheme of things. No, no. Yeah, right. Because again, those facilities might be,

so there might be a facility that makes amoxicillin. So that facility doesn't make Tylenol too. They don't make ADHD medication. A facility that makes a certain type of drug can only make certain types of drugs. They can't just, you know, run the gambit and make anything they want. You know what I mean? It's a certain, a certain, you know, thing that they can produce. They only have equipment to make certain types of medication. So yeah, that number sounds like a lot. Like if I told you we had a thousand automotive companies, you'd be say, holy cow, that's a lot. But that's not a thousand companies or so. That's a thousand labs. A lot of these are just contract manufacturers. I don't know how many we need to get up to par, but what you need is you need to have, at least on the critical medicine side, and the FDA always has

a list of critical medication that's in short supply. And again, I mentioned amoxicillin, that one's always in short supply, that we should at the very least have the capacity to manufacture more of it in the United States. The problem is, of course, with generic drugs, because they're so cheap that a lot of these labs aren't going to make any money off of that. So you have to give them some sort of incentive to do it. And that's very complicated, because even if Trump puts a tariff on, or even if you get some sort of CHIPS Act for medication, which is another thing that people are trying to do on Capitol Hill, you have to – there's an entirety of the healthcare supply chain. If a hospital is going to say, well, I could buy amoxicillin for $1 from the United States, or I could buy it for 69 cents from India. Well, that's what they're going to do.

They're going to buy it from India. Yeah, and India is going to get that deal, and I understand. So we are just, with our costs formulas here in the United States, we're not competitive with India and China. There's just no way we can compete with that, huh? Well, there is, right. There might not be a way unless you put something like tariffs and use other tools like you have, like I said, you have something like a CHIPS Act for generic drugs, especially to produce the critical drugs that are always in short supply.

And I'll tell you something else. Here's another issue as well that's been raised among some academics who look into this industry closely. A lot of those drugs that come in from India, a lot of them get banned or get pulled off the shelf because of some type of problem in the mixing of the drug. And most of the bans that you have, most of the problems that you have with drugs, they're all the imported generic drugs. So let's say, for example, you have 10 imported generic drugs that are pulled from the shelf in one quarter of the year. 90% of them, a large percentage of them comes from the import market rather than the U.S. So, you know, the import lab, the imported lab, is not doing as well a job to the sanitary measures. Yeah, but it is the lowest cost, so that one tends to be the default that the doctors and the hospitals will go to, right?

Because everything being equal, they're going to go with, I mean, price drives. Hey, you know, what happens when we go to the grocery store, right? If we have a choice between a $12 loaf of bread or a $5 loaf of bread. Yeah, it's a million-dollar question. Yeah. It's a million-dollar question, though, with stuff like that, though, Bernie, right? Because all this stuff is coming from overseas, right, Bill? Yeah.

It's coming from overseas. So FDA can only inspect those labs so often, okay? Mm-hmm. So would you rather have pay 20% more or 30% more, a dollar instead of 69 cents, for a drug that has efficacy, that works, rather than one that has a higher level of contaminants in there? And maybe these medicines that aren't inspected all the time, that do have higher level of contaminants, maybe these drugs aren't efficient. Maybe these drugs aren't working well.

Maybe that's why you're on more and more of them. Maybe that's why the side effects are worse. And yet we don't know. Because the drug's not working right. But we don't know if that's the – but, of course, is the insane cost of drugs and services within the medical system even right now. So any talk about increasing the cost of something, even if it were better, is probably falling on a lot of deaf ears right now, Ken? Or not. I'd say it might fall on deaf ears to someone who runs a hospital chain, right?

Because those are the guys who are ultimately spending the money. But if your insurance goes up, it's all very complicated, right? Because maybe your insurance goes up $50 a month. I don't know. I can tell you this. Right now on Capitol Hill, there is a bill out. It's called the Pills Act, which is run by a New York was written by a New York congresswoman named Claudia Tenney. So, and again, it's modeled on the Chips and Sciences Act. So that was the, that was the law signed by Biden

that was designed to bring the semiconductor and the chips manufacturing base back to the United States because it was heading to Asia, right? Intel, all those guys. We talked about the high-end biotech, about you and I running this great synthetic biotech lab, but we have to rely on China as our outsource partner. They're the ones who are doing a lot of the research. And that's exactly what was happening with our big players like Intel and Qualcomm. The threat of the next big quantum chip being made or partnered in China, who would probably steal the IP and put Intel out of business in 10 years was very real. So you have something like the Chips Act. And you can't help but think that the medical developments that are created in the United States end up being – you outsource it to China. So in essence, China gets access to that research too because there is no real private industry in China, from what I understand.

Everything is more or less a state-sponsored entity in one form or another or controlled by the state, is it not? Well, China does have a very robust private sector, right? So I'm not a China hawk in that sense that everything China has is run by the CCP. But by law, I believe the publicly traded companies that listen on the stock exchange, they have to have someone from the government, I think, somewhere in the board. But the private sector, they could do whatever they want to do. But of course, within a certain boundary right of course the ccp is not going to let them you know yeah look at look at the leader of uh alibaba yeah well what happened to jack ma didn't he he still disappeared isn't he is he still

disappeared yeah he's alive he's alive and kicking but he's not he's not as outspoken he's not as critical he was he was wandering around with you know westerners anders and talking and critiquing the CCP way, and that's not how you do it. So again, if you and I run a $1 million or $10 million pharmaceutical company in Shanghai and we run afoul of the CCP, they'll definitely knock on our door. That's the extent of their involvement in the private sector, right? So there is a robust private sector. China, biotech is state-of-the-art. It's, you know, anyone who's in the industry would know, right, that this is not the equivalent of a happy meal toy-making economy anymore, right? China is state-of-the-art in terms of high-end manufacturing.

And so don't snare at this, okay? It is the threat here. You think the Pills Act has a good chance of passing? What do you think? I think it has a good chance of passing, yes, because especially if you could sell it as the CHIPS Act for generic drugs. And if you can make the point that, look, at the very least, let's do this for the critical drugs that the FDA says are always in short supply, if not unavailable. You know, then the question is, well, how is it get paid for? Then you have Trump talks about tariffs and other things as well. Then, of course,

you have Doge, right, cutting costs in the government as well. So there's a lot of moving parts always. We never know. But there is bipartisan consensus in Washington that getting medicine delivery to the United States, to Americans, you know, securely and affordably is top of mind. Well, I remember during the COVID time, especially how what a critical shortage there were of so many basic drugs out there and even basic supplies that were being supplied. I remember bandages, trying to get bandages shipped to you. Now, I'm not talking about Band-Aids. I'm talking about like the medical cottony things that they use to sop up wounds

and everything else. And I mean, I remember that stuff was hard to get. You had to wait weeks and sometimes, you know, for hospitals would run out of this kind of stuff. Well, you're talking about drugs. Let's talk about two drugs that were, you know, you could not speak of back in the COVID years. Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, those are considered drugs that were, you know, maybe would have some kind of effect against viral growth in your— Hey, Ken, it helped me.

I took it all throughout the pandemic. Didn't have a problem. Don't tell anybody, but so did I. I know. Anyway, but where is that stuff made? That stuff is all from India. Yeah, vermectin and hydroxychloroquine comes from India. So maybe, yes.

So maybe we didn't have a problem with that here because the United States wasn't promoting that. But in other countries like Brazil, they were having a hard time importing those things because the Indian government said, hey, we're going to use these drugs in a cocktail to do whatever we can do to get people to stop the viral load from growing in your body. We know this works at least that way with very little side effects, so we want to keep it at home. So imagine China doing that in a situation where you have a Cold War type obvious or real. Or imagine if we had a hot war, God forbid, at some point. Yeah, forget that.

That will never happen for this simple reason. China could just withhold so many things. Yeah, well, all you have to do is, do they make Ozempic? That's what I'm, do they know, do we know if the Ozempic, you know, are the fat drugs made in China? Because if so, that would stop World War III instantly, I think. I don't know, but Ozempic would be considered a branded drug. It's not a generic drug.

So these are the money-making drugs, right, of the big pharmaceutical companies, right? So most of those drugs would be, I would say, would be made in Europe or made in the United States. Okay, because, see, Hollywood stars would actually march in the streets of Ozempic if the fat drug's gone away. They would not handle that, okay? Yeah, well, you've got to lose 15 pounds before your next film, and, you know, the knees turn and you can't do the squats like you used to, you know? Yep, that's right.

Ken Raposa, reporter-columnist for the Coalition for a Prosperous America. I'm going to link to your excellent article here about China owning the generic drug supply, what can be done about that. And I appreciate you coming on. We'll have you back, all right? Be well. Thanks, Javier. I appreciate it.

All right. Ken Raposa, Kenneth Raposa. This is the Bill Myers Show on KMED and 99.3 KBXG.