Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 03-04-25_TUESDAY_7AM

Episode Date: March 5, 2025

Mor pebble in your shoe Tuesday open phones and topics, later former state Senator Herman Baertschiger and I talk the tariffs from DJT and other issues, debt, and ....most important of all, are the people willing to take some pain to save the U.S.?

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at ClouserDrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. 13 minutes after 7, 7705633. Happy to have you join in. What is a pebble in your shoe for this morning? This morning.

Are you in favor of President Trump tariffing the trading partners of uh of canada and mexico i have some mixed emotions about this because um it's my opinion that trump has already inherited a recession from the biden administration a recession or a growing recession which was um already kind of obvious when you look back at what was going on. But the system was trying to paper this over. I'm not sure that it will have the proper response or the expected response right now. It might be more pain without necessarily gain. I mean, tariffing lumber is not going to get uh american mills

rebuilt and open this year could be a longer term deal i don't know it's a lot of capital takes years to do things like this permitting process and more but we could talk about it because it would seem to me that the um now i'm just talking about the way i would look at at you know tariff on lumber or whatever it is. It is going to make it more expensive, which would tend to be an inflationary influence and also would hurt business, too. But I'm sure he's going to talk about it and give us the rationale. I'm not a tariff man. I'm not, generally speaking, a tariff man.

I'm okay with tariff man if, in essence, all we're doing is responding to someone tariffing us. I don't know if making some of these... I don't know if making lumber more expensive down at Home Depot and Lowe's is necessarily going to help make America great again. If you think I'm wrong, that's fine. I'd love to get your take or if you have a more nuanced take on it, but we can certainly discuss this. I want to also thank you when you write me the email bill at billmyershow.com. I read them all.

I don't always get a chance to answer, but I try to share as many of them as I can. And Dave wrote me the other day from Eagle Point. He says, Bill, I just wanted to drop you a note, tell you how much I appreciate your good advertisers. Nate from Tech Nomad just replaced my computer hard drive, did a really good job. And in the recent past, I've had great results from Skypark, both from Steve and Lynn,

Quality Tree, Patriot Electric. I've been to Freddy's Diner several times, and just he enjoys the show. I really appreciate you letting me know about that. And nothing happens here in Southern Oregon, including in my industry, until something gets sold. And when you have the people like Sky Park and the Jay Austin types and other people that advertise with my show, they're keeping talk radio going. And they're really just, I mean, you're my customer, they're my show. They're keeping Talk Radio going. They're really just

I mean, you're my customer, they're my customer, and together we all get together. I get to buy overpriced kibble for my two cats. Oh, by the way, update on the fat cat. Remember I was telling you about yesterday, Charlie?

Charlie is only let's see, his birthday was April 29th, and so he's, gosh, not even quite a year old, about 10 months old. So he's about physically full grown, and we're thinking, boy, he has a tiny head. He has a tiny head because he's been porking away on the food too much, and the rest of his body has gotten big. And so we started, I've been taking your advice. People have been saying, well, why don't you feed them both this morning? Feed them. Feed both. And that's Matt the skinny cat, the skinny Maine Coon.

He's the old guy. He's 15 years old. Then there's Charlie, not even one year old. But Charlie's kind of waddling over there a little bit. And so when Matt is done, when they're both done with their first go around at the food this morning i was doing this at 4 30 today take away the bowl and i did matt was perfectly fine went into the living room curled up going to sleep something like that and charlie's looking at me like you took away the bowl this is like this is my my raison d'etre my reason to exist what am i going to do um i'll tell you how this is going i think even just the last couple of days of us trying to

reduce the amount of food going into the bowl i've noticed a little bit of pudge coming off of him and maybe we'll start doing a little bit of uh well his uh kitty version of intermittent fasting so we'll see but yeah when you have one skinny cat and one fat cat i know my sister-in-law out in the apple gates the same way one skinny cat and one just fat tub of lard you know and how do you feed them both and uh and make so everybody gets what they need instead of always what they want. Charlie is very food forward, I must say. I've never had a cat that is food forward as him. Pebble in your shoe Tuesday. We go to the phones.

Hi, good morning. Who is this? And welcome. What's your name? Welcome to you, too. It's DeFloro Patrick calling from the Bill Myers Show Callers Hall of Fame. Oh, that's right. You are the original member. You are the original member.

You are the original gangster, Patrick. Original gangster. That's right. And so, first of all, Charlie is a liberal, Bill. Well, I don't want to ascribe politics to him, but did I ever tell you what happened when we first brought him home from the shelter? You better go through it again. Okay.

All right. You'll love the story. When we first brought Charlie home, he was in the humane shelter, you know, down on Table Rock in Medford. And he was one of those guys. It was a chaotic environment, whatever it was. We brought him home, and he had some diseases that needed to be treated and all this other stuff. So I don't think it was a great early kitten time for him before he made it into the shelter for whatever reason. And so we brought him home and gave him food, and it was like he had entered kitty heaven and i have a feeling that he

was actually very very hungry at an early age maybe the runt i don't know what but he was sitting there doing biscuits you know doing the little kneading thing and purring as loud as you can with eating food and he did that for about the first month so something it was almost like he was saying this is all mine this is all mine and i don't have to share it with anybody you're not going to stop me i think that's what it had to do what it had to do with it i don't know if it was something that he was sort of programmed with or if he's just uh you know programmed to be a little fat tub but his brother doesn't look all that different from him over at Franklin's house, by the way. You're a man of many talents.

Now we see that you have the ability to read a cat's mind. Well, you have to because you can't make a cat do anything that a cat doesn't want to do. Having a cat is kind of a negotiating. You have to negotiate the job, kind of, I think. All right? Well, I tell you uh the reason that got me calling is i reached into this big hat it has all these scraps of paper in it to pull out a subject to talk about because there's like 40 bazillion subjects in there but having a

and i should call kevin sterrett but i i uh i'm calling you instead. I've got this question here in liberal heaven. I've got two sisters down in Florida. Now, if I go down there and visit with them, and I decide to buy a handgun while I'm down there, probably take, you know, five minutes. Do I have to stay down there? I could never come back. I don't know if it is. I don't think it would be legal for you to purchase a handgun there without it being shipped back to Oregon to an FFL dealer in our state,

to a firearms dealer in our state. I think that's the legal way you would have to do it. I don't believe that even in Florida it's legal to buy as an out-of-state resident there. Well, I was just curious, and you probably had the best answer. But I'm not a perfect studier of firearm law. I know that you can purchase firearms from dealers out of state. You do this. But it always ends up being sent to your FFL here in Oregon where the background check is then conducted.

That kind of thing. The resident of your state. You know the laws of your state. Okay? So, well, that sounds pretty good i uh i just wondering about i should have written my thoughts down but i appreciate that and uh i don't know where we're going with all this because you can't just have a have your property in your car and and drive uh you can't i you're in the land of the free. Yeah, the land of the free, you put that in parentheses, right?

Scary air quotes, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah, the land of, you are allowed to do whatever the bureaucratic state is permitting you to do at this point in time, but that doesn't fit on the pocket constitution quite as easily. All right. the pocket constitution quite as easily all right i remember one one more thing if i can if we if we can get uh 762 repealed uh could we also get jeff golden repealed taller lift but uh the people down in the south county apparently love that guy they love that son of a gun they just do you know why because we don't they love him because we don't. We don't like his politics. And I think it's the equivalent of, you know, Jeff is the equivalent of Paul Adams or whoever, Evans, Paul Evans I was talking about, who likes just stamping on eastern Oregon County's faces. Okay? Thanks, DP. Good to hear from you. 7705633. Let me go to line two. Hi, good morning. It's Pebble in Your Shoe Tuesday. And who might you be? Bill, this is Bob Hayworth.

Hey, Bob. How are you? Well, I'm doing fine, but I wanted to tell you about a pebble that I got out of my shoe. Oh, really? What was that? Well, you have a sponsor on your show that had a commercial that said, we bring precise and efficiency right to your doorstep. And I had a pretty good education here in Medford School District back in the 60s, and my English teacher, Mrs. Littman, educated me about adjectives and nouns. And that sentence didn't make sense to me. So I wrote an email to the company and asked if they were aware of their grammatical error.

And wouldn't you know, they changed the commercial. Oh, is this... We bring precision and efficiency right to your doorstep. Precision and efficiency. So they changed it. So you had an effect on an advertiser. But I wonder, I don't know anything about recording processes for commercials. I know about music.

But in Medford, voiceover guys have to be actor people? Do we have to be actor or after, you said? After members, yes. No, no, no. We are not a union shop, and anybody who wants to be a voiceover person, you can do that. We have sponsors come in. I voice many commercials.

Other people voice them. There is no union membership required. Nothing yet. Okay, well, I hope I didn't cost this company a lot of money to redo their commercial anyway. I doubt it did. I'm sure it's just one of those things like, hey, we need to fix that,

and then we get a note from them, and then the sales guy says, hey, Bill, can you re-voice this or whatever it is, and then it gets done and life's good. Okay? Well, life is good. All right. I thank them for doing it. All right.

Thank you very much. Small favors there. This is the Bill Meyer Show on KMED 99.3 KBXG. Price of gold. I know that it was kind of on a bit of a, a little bit of a pullback. Let me see if I can get this. But, I mean, I'm still, you know, I'm still bullish long-term here on gold. Let's see, what is it?

I always go to Bert's gold, Bert's gold page on Lou Rockwell. Always has the latest one. Bert was a great guy. I always enjoyed. Oh. Oh. Oh, oh, oh, we actually saw about a $50 pop-up in gold overnight. Oh, you know what's going on here. They're looking at instability, probably in trade.

Could be about the tariffs coming in, looking at this as recessionary and inflationary, maybe more inflationary at the moment. Anyway, that's the way markets work. And if you're looking to buy and or sell, though, deal with or recognize experts. They'll treat you fairly. One of my longest sponsors, great people supporting talk radio and supporting your ability to get your news and entertainment and get your voice on the air here, too.

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News Talk 1063 KMED. This is the Bill Myers Show. Scott writes me this morning. I'll give him an email of the day. Bill, tariffs on Canadian lumber will bring back the lumber industry to the United States and to Oregon. Short-term pain for long-term gain for Oregon. I hope you're right about that. My only question about this, Scott, is that even if the value of the timber did go up, that doesn't fix the political risk that the system in Oregon, including the senators, don't want it.

They don't want this. So what will the terrorists actually accomplish i'm just bringing up the uh you know the the opposing force you know we have the okay we're going to make canadian lumber more expensive so that it makes more sense to then uh to cut ours and i think you know in a in a free state that would make sense does that actually change in oregon i think that's a reasonable question to ask, Scott. But I appreciate you. I know that's what President Trump is trying to do with this,

and I would like to see that. I just don't see the mechanism of that right now, the billions of dollars of capital that would need to be put into this to make that all happen. But you could be right. You could be right. Emails of the day, by the way, are sponsored by Dr. Steve Nelson, Central Point Family Dentistry, centralpointfamilydentistry.com.

By the way, if you don't have medical or dental insurance, they have a dental plan there, which works a lot like insurance, more affordable, better benefits, centralFamilyDentistry.com. Another email today. Mike writes me here. Mike Lindgren. Bill, I was at that meeting about the fire map at Medford Library. It was very orderly, one person at a time.

And they had to yell because of the size of the room. I think Jeff Golden was intimidated by the size of the crowd, opposed to something that he sponsored. No one there was disorderly or talking over him or anyone asking questions you keep repeating jeff's perspective of what happened at that meeting the people in that room were rural landowners not rioters respectful of each other and orderly mike i appreciate your perspective but i had many people wrote me who are friends of mine who looked at it a little bit closer to where Jeff Golden was talking about. It wasn't about rioting, but it was a lot of the shout-out from their point of view,

and they were opponents of Senator Golden. So I think maybe we'll split the difference between what Jeff Golden is saying and what you're thinking. But it was a little more sporty than we thought. Okay? Just doing that. 770-5633. This is an emergency alert from Jackson County Emergency Management. Imagine if instead of this ad, you were receiving an evacuation notice.

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732 News is next. Jeff in Selma is here, though. Jeff, you were kind of agreeing with Bob Hayworth about changing precision or whatever it is or changing the ad. You were laughing about that, huh? Yeah, I used to hear that commercial all the time. It would just drive me crazy. Precise and efficiency. No, it's supposed to be precision.

Then I heard it yesterday that they had changed it. Man, I started laughing out loud. I used to, when I was my first gig in radio, the salesman would write the copy, and the guy who did Fawcett's IGA was just terrible. And I would change the copy and do the spot and then after about three times of doing that I get called in the office because I hurt the salesman's feelings. Oh, okay. I've always wanted to do an advertising agency and call it Storewide Productions because you know all the trite phrases that we would use in advertising. I've always wanted to do an advertising agency and call it store-wide productions.

Because you know all the trite phrases that we would use in advertising? You know, well, store-wide savings. Store-wide savings. And what's the other one? You'll be glad you did. You'll be glad you did. Well, all the other cliches that we can come up with. But it's promotion, Bill. You know that.

I understand it. No such thing as bad promotion. Thanks, Jeff. Let me go to the next line here. Pebble in your shoe Tuesday. Hi, you know that. I understand it. No such thing as bad promotion. Thanks, Jeff. Let me go to the next line here. Pebble in your shoe Tuesday. Hi, who's this? Good morning. Hello?

Hi. Am I on the line? I didn't hear the static. You are on. Thank you. And you don't have to give me any static. There we go. Go ahead.

My name's Lori, and I wanted to comment. I also was at the library at that town hall with Jeff Golden, and I feel very strongly that people did not yell at that meeting. When I went, started going into the room before the meeting started, Jeff was standing out in the hallway talking with somebody from the library, and I heard him say as I walked past, he hasn't had any threats yet, but he anticipated that there may be. And that bothered me because we were there peacefully. We weren't there to cause trouble. He was nervous before the meeting started, and he anticipated that people were going to be unruly.

I wanted to let you know that he called me after the meeting really shaken, and I don't think he was kidding around. He was upset before it even started. Oh, he was. And it really didn't get started until 45 minutes late because they moved us, had to move us to a different room. But his very first comment, when somebody, the first person that spoke, his comment was, I can't remember the word he used, but I chimed in and said that that person wasn't disrespectful. He said that he accused that person of being disrespectful, and that person was not disrespectful in any means. But most likely disagreeing with his policy, right?

Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. And a lot of us were and there was a couple of people that voices were elevated but remember there was like 150 people in that room and i attend a lot of meetings in that room and people have to be loud to be heard anyway i just want to say i absolutely agree with your previous caller saying that the audience was not out of line and we did not yell but emotions are high over this issue yeah well i've heard it from both sides i i really have and from people

who are not supporters of jeff golden they thought it was getting a little sporty at point i don't want to legislate the uh the past of that meeting but thank you for your opinion that it wasn't maybe as bad as some had portrayed it okay thank? Thank you for your time. All right. And thank you for listening. 736. News brought to you by Millette Construction, specializing in foundation repair and replacement. Get on solid ground. Visit milletteconstruction.com.

From the KMED News Center, here's what's going on. Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency is closing more than 100 IRS field offices, including two in Oregon. Doge says closing offices in Bend and Salem will save the federal government around $450,000 a year in lease payments. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden issued a statement saying the consequences for families in Oregon and across the country are real and dire. Telecommunications topped the list of consumer complaints last year to the Oregon Attorney General's office. Imposter scams were second, followed by auto sales and auto

repair. The Attorney General's consumer hotline received over 22,000 calls and 9,200 written complaints. A former Oregon Youth Authority counselor was sentenced Monday to five years in prison for having sex with a young adult in her care. Emily Etchenkamp was responsible for the victim's substance abuse and mental health treatment. She met the victim in places she knew were not monitored. Bill London, KMED. The song Our House by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young only reached number 30 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1970. But it stands the test of time.

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MilletteConstruction.com. It's true. Even the rogue gardener faces challenges. What's a good thing? What isn't a good thing? It can be hard to distinguish. My frustration this year in my gardening was with the birds. That's why I'm talking about birds. All the stuff that they did starting with the first crop of peas. And I mean, it has just been constant. And yet they did some good things. Talk about it with the Rove Gardeners. Saturdays 10 to noon, Sunday morning encore at 9 on KMED.

Sponsored by Grange Co-op. Hi, I'm Randy with Diner 62, and I'm on KMED. One of my favorite Brit shows of all time randy lewis randy lewis had a bunch of old dogs up there on stage with him a number of years ago before he passed away and i i swear that if ramsay lewis hadn't been getting paid he would have still been on that stage they were just having the time of their life one of my favorite brit shows ever uh 7 38 former state senator herman barrett shiger senator welcome back to the show always good having you on welcome sir well good morning yeah i'm just sitting here you know looking at some social media stuff bill and i usually don't get too you know too involved with that i kind of watch but i'll tell you there's so many, you know, too involved with that. I kind of watch. But I'll tell you, there are so many posts.

You know, I stand with Ukraine. And I've just seen a crazy one that has Trump and Putin laying in a coffin and Zelensky taking a selfie with them, you know. So I've been responding this morning. You know what I've been saying? What you've been saying? I've been saying, are you ready to send your kids and grandkids over there? And the answer is always no.

And that's and it blows my mind, you know, as a person that has read a lot about wars. It's always great as long as we're not sending any of my kids i can't uh help but notice that the democrats or at least or and and many some of the republicans that are just uh you know licks on the ukraine issue they seem to be really i mean i mean it's uh it's kind of an old saying at this point but wanting to fight for the last ukrainian i swear that's what's going on but they're still trying to uh to press forward here am i wrong on that and if and if you really you know take a good look at history and wars and everything most wars are started over border disputes but the other thing is most wars are won by one person outlasting the other through attrition and that's what is exactly happening

in ukraine we've got to figure out a different way to reconcile our differences in war because you got almost a million people dead i was yeah and i was watching videos in which they're grabbing people off the street yes they're wiping out a whole generation of Ukrainians. Yeah. And, you know, and these people I've seen, I won't name the individuals, says, well, we got to fight to the end because Putin's a bully. Well, Putin may be a bully, and I certainly don't like his policy. No. Or most of the policies that have come out of the Soviet Union.

But at the end of the day, there's this little thing called reality and the reality is that no we're not going to have uh ukraine as a part of nato and no we're not we're not going to have that trip wire over time because putin's not going to tolerate it putin made it clear he was never going to tolerate it he was very clear with this right from the beginning. Now, we can have all sorts of arguments about the Crimea, and we could also have the arguments about the evidence that the United States more or less fomented a color revolution there, you know, really, and installed our own guy a number of years ago. We've had a lot of sticky fingers in there for a while,

and we're going to have to extract ourselves in some form. And I guess if Europe wants to get involved and wants to send their sons and daughters there, I guess that's their business, but I don't think that's really what they mean about getting involved. What do you say? Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And, you know, if you study MacArthur's last speech to Congress when he retired after 57 years, he realized because of the atomic age, his words, and I don't know if I'm going to get the exact quote, but it's going to be pretty close, is that we have got to figure out another way to reconcile our differences other than war, because Armageddon is knocking at our door. And, you know, things have changed now.

The nuclear age has changed things. And, you know, these people that promote war, I just simply don't understand. And they obviously don't understand. Well, it appears that the battlefield when it comes to war has shifted to the economic front, so to speak. And we're looking at this going on right now. The markets ended up having a Trump relief rally after he got elected, and now there appears to be kind of a Trump sell-off. And this is most likely temporary. You know, when it happens, the emotions get high, and then the traders start going nuts.

But tariff wars, as a principle, I don't know how effective it's going to be in this particular case i know like scott from jacksonville writing me and saying you know tariff on canadian lumber that will help uh restore the united states uh or you know like oregon's timber industry and i don't see the political support for that because of our environmental policy and public land policy am i wrong about that to to notice that or is there a chance this could be changed? What do you think about that here? Well, with the current infrastructure what's left, the only thing that's going to happen is it's going to make the timber more expensive in the United States. That's what is going to happen. So because there's going to be – so it's always – you know,

the timber industry, as I've always said, is the simplest form of supply and demand. It's always been like that. And so now you're going to limit the import of Canadian timber. So you still have the same demand, but a lesser supply. So what happens? Price goes up. Price goes up. But then as the price goes up up now all of a sudden the

canadians say well you know what no problem we can afford to pay the 25 because uh the price is up would that actually uh create more timber mills in the state of oregon would that would that tariff be kind of a goose in your opinion i mean you've lived here during the timber time i mean you've been here a long time herman all right yeah well that was my bread and butter for 35 years i mean i didn't come to southern oregon until 1991 all right so i came in there after the uh the spotted owl destroyed was destroying everything and the general consensus seems to be at least in oregon that trees are not to be harvested trees are not a uh benefit trees are a burden that have to be paid for to

and you have to pay to burn them at taxpayer expense uh with uh the collaboratives you know it seems to be the you know we're putting native fire back on the lands you know this kind of nonsense in my opinion well well just spool spool up the timber production for lumber and plywood and stuff like that, you know, first, the remaining mills, how much are they going to want to put in infrastructure to up productivity? There would have to be long-term, a long-term plan that would make it clear that policy has changed before anyone's going to commit

billions of dollars of capital to do this. That's how I'm looking at it, though. But I mean, I'm not an economist. I'm going to shrug my head. I'm going to shrug my shoulders. You know how like the Italians

always do in the mob movies? It's like, I'm not an economist. What do I know? I'm going to the kind of, what do I know? I'm going to shrug, right? Yeah. But I just know that no one's going to be committing billions of dollars to building timber mills in Oregon and harvesting facilities and doing this unless they see a long-term benefit and no political risk. And political risk, as long as it's the West Coast, it's still there,

because all it takes is, you know, Wieden and Merkley, they shut that down, and the state of Oregon's probably not that friendly to it. Am I wrong? No, you're right. But it's a lot longer, bigger conversation. You have to remember, when we became the timber giant, that was because of World War I and World War II. And the big build out of american infrastructure we were also rebuilding the rest of the news plan and and we yeah yeah

we were rebuilding the rest of the world at that time too right and that's because we had the infrastructure that has changed now every continent can produce fiber products and has the infrastructure. Okay, back in those days, you didn't have, you know, South America or Australia or even, you know, Eurasia producing timber products because they didn't have the infrastructure to move the timber. But that has all changed. There's fiber being produced all across this planet. So our competition in that market is greater than it was, say, 50 years ago. So we have to be careful then when we look back wistfully at what we once had and just saying all we have to do is just put a tariff on and we're going to get that back. There's more moving parts to this.

We've got to be able to sell it to somebody and make a profit there's there's a few moving pieces there that people kind of seem to ignore all right and for all we know and you've talked to me about this before tariff wars which i guess we're now entering now they do have a way of uh of out. Deal-cutting, right? That's just the way it works. Yeah, it is. And tariff wars, they always work their way out. They are. They're wars. They're tariff wars.

And, you know, so that's just how it works. I'm not too worried about it. But, you know, the bigger picture, picture what's going on and we've been talking now i've been thinking bill hey i'll tell you what i know where you want to take this we talked about this a little earlier we got a couple of calls i think people want to ask you a question about this first okay then we'll then we'll then we'll move on to the second topic about the ice cream okay yeah everybody wants free ice cream still uh let me go to line two hi line two you're on there with Herman.

Who's this? Hi, this is Damien. How are you? I'm doing fine, Damien. Do you want to talk about this subject or something else? Well, no. I'm all with the last caller on tariffs. Mm-hmm.

And that's before the Tax Act of 1913, our federal government made their only money their only source of income was tariffs absolutely we were uh totally that way uh we were a much smaller government too though be fair well it well exactly and then and that's that's its own subject but in you know in the 50s and 60s here in southern oregon between ashland and Glendale, Oregon, there were 57 lumber mills. That's right. 57? Yes. How many do we have left at this point?

The only lumber mill I know of now is up in Glendale. Glendale. Superior. Yeah. And as a truck driver, I used to haul two befores out of Boise Cascade here in Medford and into California. And we were bringing sugar pine logs from private sales in California back up here. And you think in – I'm sorry. I'm just reading my notes. Eagle Mill Road in Ash yeah was a logging town

and that's how ashland is and now ashland is 14 miles of something else yeah but but that's kind of to my point there and it's and i'm not being defeatist about this. All I'm saying is that, you know, if you were going to find a place to put a billion dollars of investment into a state, one or two billion, would you put it into timber at this point, knowing the political risk here, Damian? Well, and that's my point, too, is even though the tariffs will try to bring business back or should to, the regulations that are there are not conducive to new business. All right. I appreciate your opinion on that one. I guess kind of seeing things our way a little bit here, and like I said, maybe it will. Maybe it will generate more business, but there has to be safety.

There has to be a lack of political risk for this to happen. Hi, you're on with Bill and Herman. Who's this? Good morning. Hey, well, Sam in here, Bill. Hey, Steve. You're with Herman. What do you have to say to him?

Well, I used to run sawmills, so I know what it takes to make one function. And I've got a couple calls in to some of the manufacturing companies who make that equipment. It's not only sawmills. It's some steel manufacturers. It's foundries. There's a lot of cast iron products that go into sawmills and sprockets and gearboxes. And, you know, the wheels on the band mills, you know, like a seven or six foot band mill, the wheels on the bandsaw are that big. They're six or seven feet and they're cast iron. So there's a lot of issues it's going to take to get that industry back up again.

Like I said, I've got some calls in just to get some ballpark ideas. I would love to hear from that when you do that, Steve. I appreciate the call. Yeah. All right? Okay. I really would. I would love to hear about this because I guess our bottom line is that we hope that

it could bring some of it back there. It's just another high lift, though, Herman. That's our bottom line here. The bottom line, there's just too much risk in going into that right now and too much competition. That's correct. No, that's absolutely correct. So, you know, at the end of the day, you have to be able to do the investment, produce the product, and make a profit. And if you don't do that, you won't succeed.

Yeah, yeah. And it's a different business model than post-World War II for sure. All right. So I guess we have to look at other things perhaps that we can work on to spur Oregon economic development, assuming that the state legislature actually wants Oregon to be productive. All right. A little bit of a snarky comment, I know. But let us move on to a real threat, I think. I'm thinking this could be a real threat to the Trump agenda right now. And something we've got to be on the lookout for. And I'm starting to even, and I'll bet you, given the fact that Cliff Benz is your friend, Rod,

I know you talk with Cliff all the time, don't you? Yeah, yeah. Well, he was my deputy leader when I was the Republican leader, so we go back a ways. I know him not as well as you do. Like I said, you've been working with him for just ages, okay? I'm starting to hear complaints coming from people who we consider the rock-ribbed conservatives, the independent rural folks and all that sort of stuff. And I'm concerned that the Trump agenda gets shot down by rural supporters that they need their self-licking ice cream cone continuing to be funded.

Is that a fair thing to say at this point? I hate to put it that way. You're spot on. And, you know, you and I have been talking about this for six years now, how many times we talk about the national debt, national debt. And now we're getting down to, OK, we all recognize we got this and we got to do stuff about it. But now it's well, as long as it's not my program that we shut down, you know. So I think there's going to it's going to be tumultuous and it's just how it's going to be tumultuous, and it's just how it's going to be.

But to continue to go on this trajectory will destroy the country. And I'll give you a great example. Please. Yeah, Germany. So why did Germany, after World War I, go in such a deep depression and high inflation and just the worst times in its whole history? The reason why was the Versailles Treaty, which put a huge debt on Germany to repay back all the other countries for the war. So it was debt that brought Germany down after the war. It was debt.

And that's what will eventually happen in the United States if you don't start slowing this growth down. Which is why the Trump administration rightly sees the national debt and others there looking at it the same way as an existential threat. So you look at the tariffs and you're looking at tariffs and you're thinking like, okay, you get some income from that. You can get some income from this. He does appear to be looking to want to get more income into the coffers without necessarily taxing people. Would that be a fair assessment? You can't keep borrowing a couple trillion dollars a year to keep the U.S. going. It's just any economist i always remember

um economists you know saying that there's a tipping point alan green span used to warn there's a tipping point and you know when the when the national the interest on a national debt is a trillion dollars if we had had that trillion dollars, that could go to about $3,000 for every person in the United States towards their health care. So, I mean, this is crazy numbers. But the average voter out there just doesn't understand these numbers. 37, those two words, 37. Doesn't sound like much. Oh, well, it's under 40. It's under 100. That can't be too bad. So, you know, I was just reading a book and looking at a quote from Winston Churchill. He always says democracy is great until you have a five minute conversation with an average voter. So what he was trying to say is people just don't understand

and they don't understand this burden of debt and how it will can eventually destroy the country there's no question and we as americans i think have a normalcy bias we have a normalcy bias i think in which um we're the big dog we're we have the world reserve currency nothing can really challenge that stuff and we can continue to do that and be the indispensable nation but the debt overhang has destroyed every nation that ends up having that in that kind of percentage of uh of gdp uh debt to gdp ratio it always ends up having that kind of percentage of GDP, debt-to-GDP ratio, it always ends up destroying the nation unless something is done really seriously to rein this in. Every single time.

There's no exception. Yeah, there's not even for the United States of America. And you know, probably one of the biggest challenges that we're going to face here is, and by the way, I'm someone who is going to be dependent on Social Security. So I got a dog in this fight, Herman. I really do. Oh, yeah. Because even President Trump has talked about hands off the entitlements of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

I get that. Now, I know that politically there's no way that you can sit there and cut it or rein it in. Not right now. I get this. But ultimately, they're going to have to. They're not going to have any choice but to do it because we're having fewer and fewer workers supporting a lot of people sitting in the back part of the wagon. You know what I'm saying? That's right.

The system, they made some real errors when they created that system indeed they did the same thing with first person oregon yeah that's another that's another one you know they made some very big errors and then they they try to hang their hat on well hey things are going to inflate over time and so we'll take these inflated dollars and pay off the old dollars. But what they really do is just, you know, roll it over. They keep rolling it over. They never do really pay it down. Yeah, they never pay it down with the new dollars.

They just keep rolling it over and making it worse. And we're to that point. And I admire the Trump administration for at least finally trying to go about we're to that point. subsidies and very i'm not just picking on farmers i'm just talking about a few headlines that i would end up seeing that um he's going to be getting just as much attack i think maybe not quite as violent but i think he's going to be getting it from his right flank too and i'm a little concerned about that and agriculture is big you know i i always make a joint a joke with my relatives uh back east that are big farmers. I say, you guys spend as much time farming the mailbox as you do farming the field. And they're all crying right now because you got $2.50 corn. And I'm thinking to myself, well, if Brazil and Argentina and South Africa and

these other countries, if they're producing corn at $2.50, well, guess what? You're going to have to do it too. So you better figure out how to do it. So our real question is, will all sides of the aisle truly be okay with watching the six or the self? Will we be comfortable, I guess, Herman, seeing all of our self-licking ice cream cones, government programs at all sorts of different agencies and levels, will we be okay with seeing them cut even if it hurts us? Some. That's right. No, that's going to be, you know, and Medicaid is a big one here in Oregon.

Hey, Cliff, yesterday was talking about 40%. 40% of the 2nd District can't afford insurance for themselves, so it's getting paid for by FedGov, right? Well, how that happened, when I went in the Senate, it was 19% of my district, which is part of Cliff's district. 19% was on Medicaid. Well, the state expanded Medicaid because it's more free ice cream. Yeah, Oregon Health Plan. And when I left, it was 39%. So Cliff was right.

It's 40%. And it's hard to reel those things back, you know. Once you hand out the self-licking ice cream cone, boy, you know, you could say all the ice creams melting are missing, but they want their ice cream cone. Well, then there's other things that happen. So a friend of mine is a physician in Germany, and he's told me multiple times, multiple conversations, that half the people that he sees every day doesn't even need to see him but they do because they have the card is what he says so they got socialized medicine so it doesn't cost anything to go to the doctor so it becomes almost a social event and you just go you just go oh yeah i don't feel good today you know and so

i'm going to go to the doctor and um so you'll have so there's these unintended consequences that that happens when you when things come very easy to people. So I tell you where you're in for some tumultuous times and you are right. And I don't know how much pain Americans are going to put up with. It's going to be interesting to see. But at the end of the day, someplace in the future, it will all come to a head. Because it must. The math doesn't lie. Because history tells it.

It does every single time. Yeah, and same with Oregon PERS. Exactly. tells it it does every single time yeah and same with oregon pers you know an unpaid and an unpayable debt to a certain extent you know if a debt becomes unpayable it won't get paid and if our national debt is unpayable because it's just it's just too large it gets paid in a um well revocation of your of your uh of your currency currency standard, that sort of thing. And one way or another, your standard of living in your country reduces. It's just the basic economics. Let me ask you this.

If we have an appetite and we have to increase the national debt a couple trillion every year to keep going. And people that buy those bonds are saying, well, they may not be able to pay the interest and we can make other investments in other places of the world that gives us a better return on investment. Now we don't have anybody to buy the bond and now we can't, now we cannot borrow the $2 trillion a year. Then what, Bill? Then you monetize it and you just print it. And then what ended up shoving Germany into the toilet in the 1920s, right? Oh, and Germany is a great lesson because, you know, they were hopping the dog in Europe.

I mean, if you ever read an interesting book about Bismarck and what he did in the Federation of the German States, and then all the wars that he created in Europe in the 1800s that they won. So they were like, they were the king. They were the powerhouse. All right. I mean, everybody, oh God, we don't want Germany to invade us. Well, look what happened. Look how that all worked out for them. So it, you know, nothing ever stays the same. It doesn't. It's always going to change. And when you look at personal debt, see, we haven't even touched on personal debt. You would be surprised how many people in this country are borrowing the money to make the payments on money that they've borrowed.

How's that going to work out for them? Long term, it never works. And yet that's what our federal government's been doing right now for quite some time. And Trump realizes they have to stop the growth that's the first thing that has to happen you have to stop digging the hole deeper right right you're not going to um you're not going to pay it down anytime soon but what they're trying to do is get to a point where it doesn't grow that's their number one priority even at the point where it doesn't grow you know they're trying to do is get to a point where it doesn't grow. That's their number one priority. Even at the point where it doesn't grow, you know, they're going to be screaming. You know it, Herman.

Oh, gosh. Student loans. Just name it. Just name all the different. It just go down the list. So just prepare. Just prepare. Just know that it's coming.

It's not always here. And it's not just what Doge is doing. Just know that it's coming. It's not always here. And it's not just what Doge is doing. It's that whole system right now being reformed. I think my parting words the last time I talked to the congressman was, prepare yourself for a lot of belly aching. I hope that Cliff has asbestos undershorts. Okay? That's all I can say.

And then you're looking at Wyden and Merkley. They're taking advantage of this. But if you go to Wyden and Merkley town hall, the question to them is, how do we solve the national debt, Senator Wyden? You've been there for 30 years. You've been the guy that created it because it was pretty much unbalanced uh in the clinton administration so you're part of the problem senator white well i i know what ron would say something along the lines of like uh like uh bernie they need the wealthy need to pay the fair share herman he to pay the fair share he is the wealthy i know well maybe not him no he wouldn't need to pay that but other people need to pay it they share. He is the wealthy. I know. Well, maybe not him.

No, he wouldn't need to pay that. But other people need to pay it. They would probably look at you as being wealthy. I don't know. Herman, thanks for the talk as always. We'll catch you around, okay? Always interesting. So just prepare for the deluge.

And if you think it's loud and cantankerous right now, just wait.