Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 02-21-25_FRIDAY_8AM

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

Dr. John R. Lott Jr from Crime Prevention Research Center digs into the new FBI director needs for reform, and John says go after the fake crime statistics. Joe Pate checks in from the Sportsman and Outdoor Show, some emails of the day wrap the show.

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. Dr. John R. Lott Jr. joins me. Of course, he's the founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center. And what they really want to do there is academic quality research into the relationship between laws and regulating the ownership or use of guns, crime, and public safety. And Dr. Lott, it is great to have you back on. More guns, less crime, all sorts of other books that you've written.

You've been, I guess, shoulder deep in all of these numbers for a long time, haven't you? Welcome back. Yeah, well, I guess some people have hobbies. You try to find a job that you enjoy. Yeah, well, it's good. Thanks for having me on. It's great to talk to you again. Now, actually, you started off an economist by trade, right? Isn't that how you started?

Well, I'm still an economist. I mean, I have a PhD in economics, but I've taught and had research positions at Stanford, University of Chicago, Wharton, UCLA, Rice, Yale. And the numbers don't lie as long as you're getting honest numbers. I guess that's the way to look at statistics. Isn't that a lot of your work is focused on getting good numbers? Yeah, I believe that there are real relationships that are there, and you have to find them.

I mean, people's safety is at risk here if we don't do a good job of trying to figure out what makes people safer or not. You know, unfortunately, as I guess we're going to be talking about, a lot of politics seems to get mixed in with the numbers that the government even puts out. And that's why we wanted to focus on the takeover of the FBI by Kash Patel. It was confirmed yesterday. It was a pretty close vote, but still confirmed it is. And, you know, the one thing I can say about Kash, he seems to be pretty serious and intense. It's a heart attack again. It's a good way of looking at it. But one of the challenges that you have brought up before has been that the crime statistics, though, that you will get out of the FBI, the way it has been run for quite some time, we've been looking at political numbers rather than true crime statistics. And I was wondering if you could comment on where the problem is

and what Kash Patel would need to actually take the politics out of the crime reporting statistics. Right. I've met and talked to Kash. He's an extremely bright guy, which I think is probably one of the reasons why some people are most concerned about him. And I think he's an extremely honest guy who's willing to take the slings and arrows for going up against vested interests. But look, there are multiple different problems with the FBI data. I dealt, when I worked in the Department of Justice, one of my jobs was to go and look at some of the data that they put out. And it's pretty troubling. I mean, there's basically two different issues. One, transparency, and two, the accuracy of the data that they put out. So we saw this just this last year. I think the FBI had a significant impact on the presidential election, where, you know, for a year,

we were seeing headlines and news articles saying crime has fallen, but people mistakenly think that it's increasing. And what people were relying on were the 2022 crime data from the FBI, where they claimed that violent crime in 2022 had fallen by 2.1 percent. That data came out in October of 2023. And the next data release really wasn't until September of this last year. And, you know, when David Muir corrected or tried to fact check President Trump, when they had their little back and forth on crime data, He was referring to the 2022 crime data. The problem was when they put out their data last September, they not only put out the data for 2023, but they revised the data for 2022. Rather than a 2.1% drop, it turned out it was a 4.5% increase. And the problem was they didn't mention that in their press release, that they had changed this data. And even in their report, which goes through in excruciating detail all the data that's there, all they did was have one footnote that said,

we've updated the data for 2022. No mention about the change from a drop to an increase no and by the way not just uh not just a little drop but also a big increase especially when you're going from hey down two to now up six or up four or five or whatever you said four and a half right yeah so i mean oh it's a over six and a half percentage point swing there that they had. And and, you know, they basically hit it. You know, they would even in the even in the report, they just said we've updated it. No mention of the change or why. And then even when the media started reaching out to him and says, you know, it looks like

you guys have changed the data here, all they would come back with was this vague statement saying we stand by our data. They just refused to have any statement that the press could quote where they actually admitted to the change that had occurred. And that was troubling. And the fact that it was such a big issue, you know, it's hard to believe, given the amount of attention, particularly that their earlier numbers had gotten in the media. And surely the FBI was familiar with that, but they should have mentioned it anyway, the change. And was there ever any admitting or why did they get it wrong in the first place or what methodology was done at first to bring up a 2% crime drop when it was actually a 4.5% up in crime?

Was there ever any explanation? No explanation for the change. Huh. None at all to this day. I mean, I've reached out, others have reached out to them, and they, you know, you can see troubling. I mean, and that's something that's been true for years, that they've just refused to explicitly explain their behavior. So I hope that's one of the things, the transparency for all this that you have there under cash. I wonder if part of the distortion in crime statistics here, Dr. John Lott Jr., by the way, from Crime Prevention Research, is with me this morning, by the way.

I'm wondering if there is another way that the FBI in the past and perhaps other federal and state agencies have distorted crime statistics is when, okay, let's take firearms because you've talked about firearms quite a bit within your various books and you dig deep into the statistics. I've noticed that one of the things of the anti-Second Amendment groups that they're very big on, they're talking about the deaths of teenagers. Oh, teenagers are getting killed by guns in teens and teens, right? And we're thinking like fresh-faced, nicely scrubbed 12-year, you know, 13-year-olds, you know, just finding themselves victims of all of a sudden gun violence just jumped out and killed them on the way to school, you know, that sort of thing. And I recall you've talked in the past how they would talk about teen deaths or youth deaths, and then you find out that it's, you know, 18-, 19-year-old gangbangs, you know, in which, you know, we have, you know, feral gangs in the cities fighting each other and killing one another, right?

Is this this kind of a way of distorting crime statistics, too? Well, it's more a function of the media and a function of kind of public health people than the crime data, because, you know, you can look to see that they're overwhelmingly being driven by, and even then it's wrong. Look, I'll give you an example of kind of misuse of statistics generally. You have two measures. You have homicides and you have murders. Right. A lot of people think those two things are the same, but they're not.

Homicides include murders plus justifiable homicide. It's never really been obvious to me why you want to go and lump those two things together. at this data, what you see is that it's only because they're including homicides in there that they can get the total deaths to be above some of the other areas that you have, like traffic deaths. Oh, okay. And also, they're not looking at all traffic deaths. They're looking at only some. That also lowers the numbers for traffic deaths relative to firearm deaths. But there's even a more fundamental problem with all this stuff, and that is the discussion essentially just assumes if we could get rid of guns, if we could ban guns, these deaths would go away.

And the thing is, in the United States, we've experimented with banning guns. We've had Washington, D.C. and Chicago banning handguns. What happened to murder rates? Well, they went up. What happened to suicide rates? They didn't change. You know, so maybe uh suicides went down but because most people who commit suicide use a handgun to do it but it didn't change total what

all that happened was that people switched to other ways to go and commit suicide and someone who was suicidal is still going to be suicidal one way or the other whether it's with a firearm or whether it's with uh you know medication or poison or taking pills or all sorts of ways that people can go and kill themselves yeah and we're not advocating for this but i gotta tell you dr lott i find it fascinating that a state like even oregon which celebrates death celebrates death and assisted suicide, we're doing everything possible. But if you kill yourself with your own firearm, that's bad. Better to have a state doctor.

I've had the exact same thought. You know, why? Why is it that a place that allows for assisted suicide or for people to kill themselves, it's OK for them to kill themselves in every other way other than using a gun. I guess it has to be the state authorized way of going about it, though. But I do find that fascinating. So what would it take then, you know, back to Kash Patel taking this over? Because you've been talking about the distortion of crime statistics for a long time and one thing i'm kind of well before i get to cash patel has there been any any way i don't

even know i don't haven't looked at the data like you've looked at the data here dr lot but do they break it down by race adequately or or has that been also politically sanitized, I guess, to make certain things, let's say the urban hive mines, not look quite so bad? Could you comment on that? I don't know if you get into that or not. Well, the murder data is broken down by race. So there are issues. A lot of things are put into the unknown category by local police departments around the country that probably could be done a better job on that. But, you know, and maybe politics plays a role in how different places around the country collect the data that they report to the FBI. There are other types of data, like the hate crime data could definitely be broken down better

by race. And there's a lot of subjectivity there about what they want to go and classify as hate crime or not. So I really don't trust the hate crime data at all coming out of the FBI. But, you know, generally when you're talking about murder, they do generally a pretty good job on that. All right. When it comes to, all right, let's even look back to that 2022. Was it the 2022 data you were saying was actually a four and a5% crime increase? Was that the data you're talking about? Right.

Now, does that mean, in essence, though, that crime in the urban areas got much higher than 4.5%? Because out in the rural areas, I don't think that there was as much of a bumper uptick in crime. I could be wrong about that. Could you speak to that? And so when people would say in Chicago or New York, it's like, man, it's been going crazy around here. And then the FBI says, oh, no, no, no, crime actually went down. And then they actually went up. And I'm wondering if it actually went up even more in the dense urban cities. What do you say?

No, I think that's exactly right. I mean, you look at the arrest rates for murder, for example, or for violent crime generally, it fell dramatically in the largest cities in 2022. If you look kind of the five years before COVID, the average arrest rate for violent crimes was like 50% in cities over a million in population. But by 2022, it has fallen to 20%. One out of five violent criminals arrested. Boy, that's low. It means four out of five still not touched reported crimes oh and you have to realize that not all crimes are reported and

if you look at arrests for all crimes it was down to about eight percent and the fact that you have this big dropout in arrest is one of the reasons why a lot of people didn't even report crimes anymore because what's the point of reporting the crime if you don't think they're going to be arrested and punished yeah or even if they're arrested and they're cut loose and not prosecuted right the uh the george soros prosecutor trend which i think has started to be reversed uh somewhat so as we get ready to wrap i'm going to link to your article on the Federalist, which you talk about these things. What do you think that Kash Patel taking over the FBI can actually do then to bring just honest numbers here?

So that way, you know, if you're going to gather the numbers and we look at crime statistics in the various cities and states, that we can actually trust what's there. What would you suggest? Well, he has a huge job ahead of him because, you know, people have obviously pointed to all the crazy political stuff that the FBI has been doing, like targeting Catholics or, you know, investigating people that have gone to school board meetings. And gotten angry with somebody and then the FBI agent shows up, right? That kind of thing. know, investigating people that have gone to school board meetings, you know. And gotten angry with somebody and then the FBI agent shows up, right?

That kind of thing. Yeah, well, I mean, it's not even clear how angry that they got at people. But it's just, and of course, you've had the spying on Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. A lot of things that he has a lot to on his plate. And also, I mean, they have a huge number of agents in the Washington, D.C. Bureau that's there. He wants to put them out into the field to go and actually deal with crime. You know, like in most bureaucracies, I've worked in the federal government. It's amazing how little people work in the federal government. I can tell you story after story about people. Once you're in the federal government, it's virtually impossible to get fired.

And your salary goes up each year. Just the longer you're there the more you make and uh you know think of what would happen to private companies if they ran uh their businesses like that they'd be out of business very quickly and uh so he has a lot on his plate in many areas of the of the federal government well who's in charge of compiling the statistics though maybe that's the what you focus on no they have data people there they're gonna have to he's gonna have to you know one of the problems is and i gotta gotta ask this sometimes you have the question is how can you have the fbi spy on a presidential campaign and make up lies about why they're doing it and have no whistleblowers or leakers about that. And the reason is, is that if everybody agrees with everybody else politically, you know,

and they all think this is a good thing to go and do, you're not going to get any leaks. And I've basically dealt with the data people. That's the one group that I dealt with. And you have a lot of true believers there. And the problem that you face is that you have this institutional knowledge about how the data is put together there. You just can't fire everybody because you're going to lose that institutional knowledge. So he has a difficult task of trying to go and figure out who's the most politically biased there and what type of people he can keep. How many years did it take for the crime statistics to be politicized and not be reliable? Do you know?

Well, I mean, it's been a gradual process, and it kind of depends upon what you're talking about. I believe that the vast majority of the problems started occurring under the Obama administration, and then it's continued to get worse under Biden. So it just—and it wasn't dealt with under Trump, unfortunately. The first Trump administration, though, that's going to change now. The first Trump administration, the problem that Trump had was he tried to be nice to George W. Bush and to Jeff Bush. And as an olive branch to them, he let them go and appoint all the people in the Department of Justice and in the Department of Education, respectively. And the thing that was amazing when I worked there is you had not only the civil service hating Trump, but you had all these political appointees who were Bush

people who just hated Trump. They would do whatever they could to make his life difficult. And, you know, it's amazing. He would have accomplished even half of all the things that he accomplished with having so many people that were trying to fight against him on what he accomplished. From the appearances of the way it's going right now, though, there is a wiser Trump administration. Oh, much better.

Yeah. No, he's learned his lesson on all that stuff. I mean, he still accomplished a lot during his first term. But, you know, when you had people like Rosenthal going and kind of pushing the Russiagate investigation and things like that that people knew was false. I mean, the only way you can really explain that is that, you know, Rosenthal was a Bush guy, and lots of these other guys were Bush guys. And the Bush people just hated Trump, and I still think they hate Trump. Trump's FBI reforms need to include ending its data distortions on crime.

That's on thefederalist.com from Dr. John Lott, Jr. Dr. John Lott, Jr., of course, from Crime Prevention Research Center. He's the founder of this. And, boy, they're all about wanting good numbers and keeping us apprised of such matters. Dr. Lott, I always appreciate you coming on. And, by the way, Crime Research Prevention Center is crimeresearch.org. All the information I'm going to place on my blog today. Doc, it's great talking with you, and we'll have you back on.

Be well. Thank you. Well, thanks very much, Bill. I appreciate you being there. Yeah. Sounds like Akash Patel has his work cut out for him, wouldn't you say? It is 8.33. You're on KMED. Oregon Truck and Auto Authority is celebrating its 20-year anniversary as the Rogue Valley's car, truck, Jeep, and SUV accessory upfit headquarters, specializing in spray-on bed liners, vehicle undercoating, tonneau covers, and the largest selection of fiberglass, commercial, and metal canopies in the area. Running boards, nerf bars,

bumpers, winches, and LED lighting are also on the menu, along with hitches, decked drawer systems, and bed slides, too. Come see Oregon Truck and Auto Authority today and get your vehicle ready for your next adventure. Ready to upgrade your roof to a durable KMED? News Talk 1063 KMED. You're waking up with the Bill Myers Show. Glad you are here. We're going to break for news here in just a moment. Ran a little along there with Dr. Lott. We're going to break for news here in just a moment.

Ran a little long there with Dr. Lott. I'm going to talk with Joe Pate. Of course, Joe Pate putting on the Big News Watch 12 Sportsman and Outdoor Show. Kicking off today. We'll talk a little bit about that. And by the way, a little sweetener for this. I still have some pairs of tickets for that left to give away. And as soon as I'm done with joe pate talking with joe i'm going to go to the phones and give you a chance to pick up the remaining tickets that i

have and you can go out there and just have a wonderful time this weekend it'll be good stuff okay had a lot of heavy conversation there with dr lot and then of course from the uh you know the crime prevention research center and all these things about the distortions and what Kash Patel is going to have to put up with, all this kind of stuff. So we need a dad joke. We need a palate cleanser, okay? So dad jokes of the day, and those are sponsored by Two Dogs Fabricating on Brian Way off Sage Road in Medford. I love this dad joke. I was at the restaurant, and the waiter asked me if I wanted a box for my leftovers.

I said, no, I don't like to fight. That one just made me smile, okay? Two Dogs Fabricating off of Brian Way off Sage Road in Medford. By the way, Two Dogs Fabricating can do any hitch or tongue repair, too, for the upcoming camping season for your

RVs and trailers. They also build custom diamond plate battery boxes that a lot of people love. Custom fabrication is a big part of it. Two dogs fabricating, okay? It is 837. Now, remember, no, we're not giving away the Newswatch 12 tickets right now. It's going to be as soon as I'm done talking with Joe Pate. So you listen to what Joe Pate has to say, and then you can call.

Okay? All right. Just want to make sure I want to be specific. 19 before 9, Joe Pate joins me for the 2025 Newswatch 12 Sportsman and Outdoor Recreation Show, which, by the way, is put on by or presented by Bymark. Joe, welcome back. How are you doing this morning? Bill, thanks for having me.

Great to talk with you this morning. Okay, you've been getting no sleep, of course, and your phone never stops ringing, I would imagine. Would that be fair? Of course, and hoping it doesn't come during this interview. I hope not. Hey, we'll manage here. Today, though, is the big opening. By the way, now, I told people I was going to give away some more tickets to the show as soon as we're done talking. So they're going to pay attention to you quite intently, all right?

But if you don't win the tickets, though, how much does it cost to get in and give us kind of the high points of what's going on? Because it opens up, what, 12 noon today is when it starts? Yeah, 12 noon. Listen, it's $9 for adults, $2 off BuyMart coupon, good Friday and Sunday. And it's for, let's see, $11 to $5 is $1, and under $5 is free. All right, very good. So what makes this kind of show, your Newswatch 12 Sportsman and Outdoor Recreation show, what makes it so special in your view?

What is it? Because is it about just kind of looking at what's available, or can you actually buy, set the table for us if someone's never gone? Well, certainly it's a show and sale, if you will. And the idea is to unite the public with outdoor recreational opportunities in an area steeped in outdoor recreational pursuits. So what we have here is we try to bring in, you know, boating, RVing, ATVing, and all other types of outdoor recreational activities, you know, hunting, fishing, and so on. And the products and services that are represented to the public. And by doing that, and when you ask what's special about it, I think given the area that we live in, it's certainly appropriate. And the reception we've received over the years, Bill, has been outstanding.

Does politics play a big role in what affects the outdoor industry? Because, you know, I'm a political talk show show guy so we're always talking a lot of politics and we know that there has been uh sometimes there seems to be a real focus on on uh okay we don't want you using your truck or going out there in nature or they kind of left you alone at this point i mean i just want to get the pita people ever coming and protesting and they're going joe joe what's wrong with You know, that kind of thing, you wonder. Right. Well, you know, again, the family orientation of this show represents outdoor recreational pursuits available to everyone. And we're big supporters and promoters of that. You know, getting to the outdoors is an extremely healthy and constructive opportunity. And people take advantage of it.

It is a privilege as opposed to a right, but we find ways to enjoy ourselves. And as far as the—we're inextricably involved with the environment. So all the things that we preach about are conservatism and having, you know, enjoying the outdoors and leaving it as you found it and all of the— Yeah, in other words, playing nicely and wisely out there, right? Right, right. You know, and there's also, listen, every industry, if you will, has its ups and downs, especially politically.

But in this case, I mean, I think in general, everyone agrees that we should have access to the outdoors, especially public lands, and access to the privileges we enjoy, hunting and fishing and camping and backpacking and hiking and biking and RVing, et cetera, and boating. Do it all. So, you know, yeah. So – No, go ahead. No, go ahead.

I didn't want to interrupt you. Obviously, you had more to say there, and I'm always happy to hear your take on that. Yeah. Well, again, the revolution, if you will, in outdoor recreational pursuits has been coming in the aftermarket items, where people are taking an ATV, a basic unit, and then improving it with lighting and sound and all types of activities so they can enjoy themselves out in the dunes or out in the woods or wherever they go to find the solids. You know, there's one thing I asked my young son, a bass fisherman, a term bass fisherman, I said, hey, what does it mean to you when you jump in your boat and you get out there? And he said, freedom.

And there is a freedom aspect to that, whether it's on the dunes or on the water or on the slopes or wherever you happen to find, wherever you recreate. All right. Now, let's say that you're your mom or dad and you're bringing kids to this. or on the slopes or wherever you happen to find, wherever you recreate. All right. Now, let's say that you're mom or dad and you're bringing kids to this. What is there for the kids to do? I imagine you've probably worked on this quite a bit. Well, thanks for asking that question because, yes, we do.

We have a climbing wall and we have a live trout pond for kids. We have an NWTF BB gun range where the actual sound effects of the BB guns that we all knew as kids, that kids seem to enjoy. We have the Boy Scouts managing our archery range for kids. And so there's a lot of things to do as you walk through. While the parents are being hopefully engaged and entertained by the larger attractions, we also have things for the kids to do as well. And it seems to me that they always have a good time by the plate we've set, if you will.

And then, of course, there's the wild wolves of Yellowstone, which have drawn immense interest over the last few shows that we've had. We just can't seem to put enough bleachers in there for the people to come to see them. And these are the actual wolves that you've seen on the Yellowstone series. But the most impressive thing is the trainers and the way that they manage these animals. And they show you how they hit their marks on TV, movie, and so on, commercial shots. And especially the ending of it, it shows you how they make them look fierce, and it's really fascinating. So we're looking forward to having, I don't know, probably four or five presentations a day,

but the wolves will be around most of the time for people to look at. And lots of other films, all sorts of activities going on along with doing your shopping, so to speak. What I always find fascinating about the wolves here, Joe, is that I know for a long time people were talking about they saw a lot of wolves and then you end up finding out that many of them were maybe dog and wolf hybrids, but then you see how much larger a wolf is, as contrasted with practically most any dog any of us would have. Would that be fair when you look at them?

Some of the wolves that you see, Bill, are, you know, especially the purebreds, they're four feet tall, five feet long, and they can put a football in their mouth. We asked them to bring three of their smaller, and they're not small, but three of their smaller because, you know, we've got a public entertainment thing. We don't have so much fencing to handle them. So they've brought some good representations, and they are hybrids. Obviously, you can tell by the looks of them, they're dominantly wolf, but they are hybrids, and they do show how these animals are trained in doing their public presentations.

It's going to be a great show this weekend. News Watch 12 Sportsman and Outdoor Recreation Show at the Jackson County Expo. This is presented by Bi-Mart. Starts at 12 noon today. You've got a website for people to actually look at all the... ExposureShows.com is all the information they need. ExposureShows.com. And, hey they need. ExposureShows.com. And, hey, Bill, you said you're going to do a ticket giveaway?

Yeah, yeah. Well, we want to spice it up this morning for you. Okay. And say that anybody, whoever your winner is today, just text it to me, and they will also do an exclusive picture with the wolves inside the cage, if they're up for that. Okay, picture with the wolves. Okay, you're not going to feed them to the wolves, the cage, if they're up for that. Okay, picture with the wolves. Okay, you're not going to feed them to the wolves, just the, right?

Only if the children are bad, we say. Okay, all right, only the bad kids. Okay, I'm going to make a note here of it. How much more time do we have? I gave another minute. You got another minute or two? Go ahead. Well, I wanted, before I'm done, I have a joke that I've been dying to tell on your show.

Okay, what's that? I think people will understand. It's this little story. Maine humor is very wry, right? Uh-huh. So that's where I live. So I want to, if I can, get into character here. All right.

I want the people that are listening to pay attention, because it's one of those little twists in the end, okay? So not much to do in Maine in the winter, don't you know? Wife and I, every Saturday night, headed out to Moody's Diner for their famous baked bean supper. There we were, standing in line, waiting to be seated, when out of the corner of my eye, I noticed this group of four hunters sitting there, swilling beans and drinking beer, smelling kind of gamey, don't you know? All of a sudden, just we're about to be seated, I noticed one of them hunters let go of the longest, loudest fart I'd ever heard.

You can imagine the sound effect. How dare you fart before my wife, I said. Excuse me, he said. Didn't know it was her turn. Hey, that's a dad joke. It's a longer dad joke here, Joe. But it's a good dad joke. I like that.

Thanks so much. There you go. All right. Lighten them up. All right, thanks. I will text message you then the numbers of the winners that we have here. And so you'll get them a picture inside the cage with the wolf, right? That kind of thing?

All right, Bill. Thanks for the help, and we'll look forward to it. Thanks for your sponsorship over the years. Appreciate you. Always happy to. Thanks so much, Joe. Joe Pate from the News Watch 12 Sportsman and Outdoor Recreation Show, presented by Bi-Mart. You take care, Joe.

I'm going to hang up on you just so I can get to the callers right now because the lines are exploding. We will take the next... I'm going to clear all the numbers right now. We're going to make this evening. The next five callers, 770-5633, 770-KMED.

We will get you into the show and also get you a picture with the wolves inside the cage. That'd be quite a collectible thing, huh? 7705633. Good luck. DO the IRS back. Hi, I'm Michael with Gage of Construction, and I'm on KMED.

855 and change. Hey, thank you for all the calls. I am now cleaned out of tickets, okay? I just want to let you know. I wish I could have just sent everybody. We were giving away a lot of those tickets this week for the Newswatch 12 Sportsman and Outdoor Recreation Show. And the people who ended up winning my final tickets this morning, Steve Grigsby, George Elmore, Krishna Vaughn, Jerry Stevenson, and Devin Ogden.

And they're all going to go, and they have tickets, and they're also going to get that free wolf picture, which I think is pretty darn cool. I just think that's just wonderful, okay? And like I said, keep it here. We'll have other shows and other things to give away, too, maybe even on Monday. Hard to say, okay?

It's 8.56 and change. Thanks for your listenership this morning. I want to, okay? It's 8.56 and change. Thanks for your listenership this morning. I want to do some emails of the day. Emails of the day are sponsored by Dr. Steve Nelson and Central Point Family Dentistry. CentralPointFamilyDentistry.com. And if you don't have any dental insurance, they have a dental plan that's available

that works a lot like dental insurance, but less cost and better benefit payout. You can find out more at Centralpointfamilydentistry.com. It's on Freeman Way right next door to the Mazatlan Mexican restaurant. And John writes me this morning. Let's, oh, here's what John is saying. Bill, why is the Pandemic Recovery Center flying under your radar? John, I don't exactly know what flying under the radar means

in this particular case uh i'm not a fan of grand stream funding but the county went and got that uh that center paid for by uh you know by federal grand stream funding and also partnering with the city of central point i hope you're not implying that they think that this is going to be the next pandemic, but you know, I get it. But we've talked about that before, talked about it with the commissioners on the, on the show, but appreciate that. All right. Lewis ends up writing me this morning about the Ashland kids.

We were talking about that earlier this morning, the you know, the Ashland electrification group, very inculcated in my opinion and they're talking about oh boy you know we look at how much money we're able to save you by you choosing an all-electric house yeah yeah after they put a four thousand dollar fee on the gas furnace right isn't this great that terry were able to go but but lewis ends up saying this morning, Bill, I believe most of the problem of the Ashland School District kids thinking is, we're actually the parents leading the kids to believe what they believe, their liberal thoughts. Appreciate the take on that, Lewis.

And we also have Donald saying, Bill, can we stop referring to it as a fee and call it what it is? A fine, a penalty. You know something, Donald? I think you're absolutely right. I'm going to start referring to that no longer as the fee for a furnace. It's a penalty. It's the fine, the natural gas fine. Great. Thank you so much. Email Bill at BillMeyer.com.